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Filters, Batteries, and Water Heaters. Oh My!

Man Fixing a Water Heater in Windermere Rental PropertyAmong the 4 seasons of the year, Fall is the best time to perform regular maintenance on some of the hardest-working devices in your rental property. Make the most out of the season by doing your important interior maintenance items. This way, you’ll also be preparing your property, making sure things run safely and smoothly all winter long. Among the things you can do, you can have your filters, batteries, and water heaters checked and cleaned or replaced. These tasks must be done regularly to make sure your rental property stays in good condition and your tenants out of harm’s way.

It’s important that your Windermere rental property’s air filters be changed regularly. These filters keep your property’s HVAC system clean and running efficiently. Because of this, changing the air filters in your rental home is an important part of seasonal maintenance. As the winter months draw near, and people choose to stay indoors more, they’d want to keep out the cold. They crank up the heat and the furnaces start working harder. Because of this, it is critical that your filters are kept clean. There are a variety of HVAC systems and they use different kinds of filters. Depending on what filter your particular system needs, you may need to change the filters as often as every 30 days, every three months, or even every six months. You may think that this is a task that you can delegate over to your tenant. But chances are they’re going to forget to do it or not change the filters often enough. This sort of lapse in maintenance will cause strain on your HVAC system, resulting in a reduction of life and the efficiency of the unit.

Fall is also the best season to test and change the batteries in your rental property’s smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. These devices need to be working well to make sure your tenants will be safe. Imagine if one of your smoke detectors stop functioning— say it ran out of batteries— and your property gets damaged in a fire and one of your tenants get hurt. You can be sure that you’re getting sued. In other words, it’s critical that these devices are kept working properly.

There are smoke and carbon monoxide detectors that need their batteries changed every six to twelve months; others have lithium batteries that can last up to ten years— which is great because the useful life of a smoke or carbon monoxide detector is also ten years. However, no matter what kind of battery your devices have, you must have them tested on a regular basis. And the batteries must also be replaced without delay when it’s necessary. Hundreds of people are injured or killed in house fires every year. The number of these tragedies could have been greatly reduced if the smoke detectors in their homes were working properly. If you give this task to your tenant, what guarantee do you have that they would do it? Instead, they may damage your property’s smoke detectors as they try their hand in testing and checking them. This would just give you additional expenses in replacement costs and increase your liability.

Then we have water heaters. They are often forgotten when doing property maintenance tasks even though they are one of the most frequently used devices in a rental home. It should not be forgotten. Making sure your rental property’s water heater is routinely cleaned is an important part of keeping it working well. Over time, sediment builds up in the tank of a water heater, making it less efficient and even leading to clogged water lines.

You can steer clear of these problems easily by simply flushing your water heater once every six months or so. The task takes time to do but it should be done so your expensive water heater unit can work efficiently. This may also be something you’d want to delegate to your tenants. But cleaning the water heater, when done improperly, may cause more problems. And you can’t really guarantee good execution when you leave it up to your tenants.

Neglecting these maintenance items can have serious consequences and you may end up paying a lot more on expensive repairs. But giving your tenant the tasks to change or clean the filters, batteries, and water heater in your Windermere rental property is not the best option. While it may be the case that you could spend your time and energy to do the jobs yourself, the best choice would still be to employ a company like Real Property Management South Orlando to do all the property maintenance tasks for you. We have a full range of maintenance services that will keep your tenants safe and your property in good condition. With us by your side, you can be free to focus on growing your real estate investing business! For more information, contact us today.

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