After a few mishaps with my house last year, I have been extra vigilant with every aspect of home maintenance.
It was as simple as forgetting to clear out debris from my rain gutters.
They became so thoroughly clogged with leaves and pine needles that the rain water started to overflow back onto my roof. After a few months of neglect, I was dealing with minimal roof rot. It could have been much worse, but the damages alone were enough to get my head spinning. Now I am hypersensitive to anything that could conceivably be wrong with my house. The clothes dryer was making more noise than usual and I had a handyman on the phone in minutes. Another day I thought the sound of the water draining in my kitchen sink sounded different than usual and had a plumber inspecting it in a matter of hours. In neither of these cases was there actually something wrong that needed to be fixed. That hasn’t stopped me from being responsible with my home, especially when it comes to my central HVAC system. I have seasonal inspections and maintenance visits, and I also get second opinions regularly if I worry a complication is beyond the scope of one technician alone. More often than not, my contracted HVAC supplier has done a great job with maintaining my air conditioner and furnace. He even goes an extra step and flushes my condensate line once a year. It’s the small pipe that takes the wastewater that the AC pulls from your air during the cooling process, and it puts the water outdoors. Sometimes these lines can clog with debris or microbial growth, so flushing them yearly is an extra line of defense against expensive water damage.