If you think buying a home is exorbitantly expensive these days, try owning a home. While the price tag attached to even modest homes might make your eyes bug out, the financial bleeding doesn’t stop when you close the deal. The average homeowner spends more than $6,000 annually just to keep that house in good working condition.
If the bills associated with home ownership are making you sweat, it’s natural to seek opportunities to save a little money. But one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a homeowner is assuming that because you don’t have any overt problems with your house, there’s no need to do anything. The opposite is true: The key to saving money as a homeowner is avoiding major repair bills, and the key to avoiding major repair bills is to keep up with a few critical pieces of home maintenance. Here are the things you should be checking on regularly if you don’t want to find out just how expensive your house can get.
HVAC inspections
As the world gets hotter and weather gets more unpredictable, air conditioning and heating are becoming increasingly critical. Even if your HVAC system is relatively new, having it inspected annually by a professional can save you a lot of money. A checkup will run you a few hundred dollars, depending on the complexity of your system, while a major repair can cost you as much as $5,000 (or more).
Even cheaper? Replace the filters on your HVAC systems. You can do this yourself for just a few bucks, and having clean filters will put less stress on your system, resulting in a longer lifespan for the system.
Roof inspection
Most of us figure that if the roof’s not leaking, you have nothing to worry about. But much like democracy, roofs don’t die suddenly, all at once—they die slowly, over the course of years. And a new roof is going to cost you on average about $10,000—and it can be much more depending on the type and size of roof being replaced.
That makes inspecting your roof regularly a smart financial decision. The average cost to hire a professional to inspect your roof is just $215, which is peanuts compared to paying for a whole new roof. If you know what you’re doing, you can inspect the roof yourself for the cost of a little time, looking for failing flashing, ponding, and other issues that might not be actively leaking today but indicate trouble coming tomorrow. You could also consider coating your roof, which can extend its useful life by sealing it and protecting it from sun damage. Inspecting your roof and paying for small repairs is a lot smarter than waiting for water to come pouring in and being on the hook for thousands.
Flush the water heater
Your water heater is one of those things that works right up until it doesn’t. Unless you enjoy the idea of waking up to a surprising lack of hot water (and possibly a flood somewhere), you should inspect and perform some basic maintenance on your water heater regularly. Replacing that sucker can cost as much as $3,500 depending on the type of heater you need, so spending a few bills to check it out—or doing it yourself, as the skill set required is pretty basic—is well worth it.
Flush your water heater annually. This is something you can do on your own, and it cleans out the sediment that builds up inside. This alone will extend the life of your water heater by years. Second, replace the anode rod in your water heater every few years. This metal piece costs as little as $20, and prevents rust inside your water heater by attracting minerals that would otherwise corrode the tank.
Clear gutters
One often-overlooked aspect of your roof is the gutter and downspout system. Gutters collect water as it runs off your roof and direct it away from your house. If your gutters or downspouts get clogged with debris, water won’t drain properly. Getting up on a ladder and cleaning out your gutters is free, and even paying someone to do it will only run you about $163 on average. Installing gutter guards, which prevent debris from filling up your gutters, can run a few thousand bucks for professional installation—but there are many cheap DIY options that cost much less that you can install yourself.
Test sump pump
Some homeowners assume that simply having a sump pump in their basement or crawlspace is a magical talisman that will protect your home from floods. If your house has a sump system that’s never been tested, test it immediately. The worst time to discover that your sump pump doesn’t, y’know, pump is when the water is rising. Replacing a sump pump can cost anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars depending on your home’s needs, but water damage will run you a lot more.
Monitor foundation
Your house is built on a foundation that roots it to the ground, distributes the weight of the structure evenly to the load-bearing components, and keeps ground water out of the structure. It’s an absolutely crucial aspect of your home, and inspecting and maintaining it regularly will not only help you sleep at night, it could save you from disaster. While you can perform your own visual inspection as often as you like, looking for cracks, water intrusion, or other signs of problems, it’s also a good idea to hire a professional to inspect your foundation every five years or so.
If you’re doing a DIY inspection and find a crack, you don’t need to panic immediately. Measure the crack and then re-inspect a few months later to see if it’s gotten larger or changed in any other way. One way to make this easy is to cover the crack with tape. If the tape is still covering the entire crack when you come back, it’s not spreading—but if it isn’t, it’s time to call in an expert. Getting one in early can be the difference between a reasonable cost (an average of about $4,500) to repair the foundation and a much, much more expensive repair later.
Snake your drains
Water is also one of the most destructive forces in nature, and that’s why your house has a robust system of drains to get rid of it. Drains, however, can fail you in myriad ways. They can leak, crack, and burst—and they can get filled with debris and invasive roots.
Water damage and having sewage back up into your house is going to cost you a lot of money. On the other hand, snaking your sewer lines and drains is cheap. You can hire someone to do it for just a few hundred bucks, or you can rent a snake with a root-cutting head and do it yourself for a bit less. Roots can destroy your sewer line if left to their own devices, and replacing that can run you anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000.
