Monthly Home Maintenance Checklist

This post is brought to you by Service Experts and The Motherhood. All opinions are my own.

I don’t know about you guys, but sometimes I find that there are aspects of “adulting” where I’m pretty clueless. I mean, between trying to figure out this parenting thing, running a business, and being a homeowner, sometimes this quote sums up how I feel at the end of the day…

While I did learn many valuable skills, my formal education didn’t prepare me for some of the common everyday things I need to know to run our home and keep everyone safe. I bet some of you are in the same boat. For example, while half of homeowners say they’re concerned about carbon monoxide, many of us actually know very little about the subject. A survey completed on behalf of Service Experts Heating & Air Conditioning questioned 1,000 homeowners in the U.S. and Canada about their knowledge of carbon monoxide. Here’s what they found…

A whopping 66.5% of people don’t know if they would recognize the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning if it affected them or their family. More than half of homeowners don’t know that the clothes dryer can be a source of carbon monoxide {I didn’t!}. And here’s the scariest one…over one third of homeowners don’t have or aren’t sure if they have a carbon monoxide detector in their homes, and those who do rarely test to make sure the detector is working. The East, which includes Baltimore, significantly leads all other regions for having a carbon monoxide detector in the home, which is good news, but homeowners in the East are most likely to be behind in replacing the batteries. I don’t know about you, but I want to make sure my family is protected from something that can attack the nervous system and heart!

One way to do that is by making sure the furnace is well maintained. Carbon monoxide emissions don’t just happen with older furnaces, even a new one can emit the deadly gas if it wasn’t installed correctly. A Precision Tune-up from Service Experts checks 29 different points on the furnace and the related ducts to ensure everything is operating efficiently, as well as cleaning and lubricating key parts, changing the filter and adjusting the gas pressure and pilot. This saves money on utility bills, keeps the warranty valid, and avoids unexpected breakdowns.

In addition to annual furnace tune-ups, a carbon monoxide detector should be part of every home monitoring system. Carbon monoxide detectors should be installed outside of each separate sleeping area, and not within 15 feet of heating or cooking appliances in humid areas such as bathrooms. They should not be installed directly above or beside fuel-burning appliances, since those may emit a small amount of carbon monoxide on start-up.

There’s a lot I didn’t know, but the good news is that by doing a few simple things on a regular basis, I know my family is safe from the dangers of CO poisoning. We now have carbon monoxide detectors in place in our home, and will be checking the batteries monthly. In fact, I created a printable Monthly Maintenance checklist that I can use to make sure we’re doing other important things like checking smoke detector batteries, clearing our drains, and more.

Feel free to download and print this checklist yourself to help remind you of some of those not-so-fun but really important aspects of “adulting.” You can print one each month and hang it on the fridge, or you can laminate it and check things off with a dry erase marker.

For more information on Service Experts visit www.serviceexperts.com or www.serviceexperts.ca. Founded in 1996, Service Experts is a leading provider of HVAC repair, maintenance, new equipment sales and related services to residential and commercial customers in 29 states in the United States and three provinces in Canada. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Service Experts is one of North America’s largest heating and air conditioning companies, with 90 locations, 41 of which are located in the top 100 U.S. metropolitan areas, and approximately 2,800 employees serving approximately 2,000 homes and businesses, on average, each working day.

The segments of the market served by Service Experts include: residential HVAC service and replacement; ancillary residential home services, including plumbing, indoor air quality and energy audits; commercial HVAC service, maintenance and replacement for both light commercial customers and national accounts; and HVAC installation in commercial and residential new construction.

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