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Filters, Batteries, and Water Heaters. Oh My!

Man Fixing a Water Heater in Pasadena Rental PropertyIn the whole year, fall would be the best season to perform regular maintenance on some of the hardest-working devices in your rental property. Take advantage of this time. When you do the important interior maintenance items during this season, you’re also getting your property ready so everything keeps running safely and smoothly all winter long. These tasks include having filters, batteries, and water heaters checked and cleaned or replaced regularly. You need to do this to ensure the safety of your tenants and to make sure that your rental property is in top condition.

It’s crucial that you change your Thousand Oaks rental property’s air filters, and that you do it regularly. These filters keep your property’s HVAC system clean and running efficiently. This is why changing the air filters in your rental property is an important part of seasonal maintenance. As the winter months draw near, residents would want to stay indoors more. That means they’ll let furnaces work harder to keep out the cold. This is why keeping your filters clean is crucial. There are multiple types of HVAC systems, and they don’t have the same type of filters. So, depending on which type of filter you need, 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 neglect would cause undue strain on your HVAC system, reducing both its life and the efficiency of the unit.

Fall is also a great season to test and change the batteries in your rental property’s smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. These devices need to be functioning properly to ensure the safety of your tenants. For instance, there’s a fire and one of your tenants gets hurt. Then the investigation shows that one of your smoke detectors wasn’t functioning properly because it ran out of batteries. What’s going to happen next? It’s almost a certainty that you’d be getting sued. So, to put it differently, it’s critical that these devices are kept functioning properly.

There are also different kinds of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Some of them need their batteries changed every six to twelve months while others— with lithium batteries— can last up to ten years. That’s amazing considering the useful life of a smoke or carbon monoxide detector is also ten years. However, in spite of the kinds of batteries your devices may have, you should still see to it that the batteries are being tested on a regular basis and replaced when needed. 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 leave these tasks to your tenants, you can’t be sure that they would do it. What they would do instead, is run the risk of damaging your property’s smoke detectors— especially if they don’t have the experience with its maintenance. This would lead to replacement costs and increased 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 neglected. It is important to clean your rental property’s water heater so it continues to work efficiently for a long time. 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 dodge these problems easily by flushing your water heater once every six months or so. The task may take longer than you’d like but it’s something you have to do to get the most out of your expensive water heater unit. This may be another task you’d want your tenants to be handling. However, there is no guarantee that they’ll clean out the water heater properly. Instead, they may just be doing more harm than good.

Neglecting these maintenance items can have serious consequences and you may end up with expensive repairs. But leaving it to your tenant to change or clean the filters, batteries, and water heater in your Thousand Oaks rental property is not the best option. The other option would be to do it all by yourself— but that would leave little room to do more meaningful and important tasks. That’s also not so good. The best option would really be to get a company like Real Property Management Ventura County to handle all the property maintenance tasks for you. There is a full range of maintenance services that we offer that would keep your property in top shape and also ensure the safety of your tenants. With us working with you, you can spend your time growing your real estate investment business. For more information, contact us today.

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