Buying a home doesn’t mean that your responsibilities end after you sign the contract and move into the property. There are several after-purchase tasks new homeowners must do. To name a few, you would need to update your address everywhere, clean the house from top to bottom, and perhaps consider getting a home warranty.
However, nothing is as important as ensuring your family’s safety when you start living in your new home. That’s why you should follow these tips once you’re on your newly acquired property:
1. Fix Your Appliances
You may think that home safety is only about the house’s structure. However, everything inside and around your home contributes to how safe it is. Thus, fixing your broken appliances and ensuring that they’re in good working condition is vital.
Repairing your appliances can be as simple as going online for tutorials on doing the task yourself, or you can opt to request the services of a professional. Each option has an upside. Handling it on your own will allow you to reduce costs, while hiring the right professional is guaranteed to give you a good outcome.
Whichever route you decide to take, there are two distinct advantages of fixing your appliances:
- Improved Efficiency: Most malfunctioning appliances end up using too much water or electricity. Since damaged electrical components could mess up the system’s other parts, the machine would require more electricity even for simple tasks. That’s why addressing the issue will help you decrease your utility bills.
Furthermore, fixing your appliances increases their efficiency. With defective components, a machine may take too long to heat up or cool down, resulting in longer wait times on top of significant electric consumption.
- Increased Longevity: Although fixing an appliance can be costly, it’s certainly more affordable than purchasing a new machine. As a result, you can save money and extend the life span of your appliance at the same time. This is especially good for machines that are one of a kind or hold some sentimental value for the family.
2. Inspect The Fences On Your Property
As mentioned, everything that surrounds your property can affect the safety of your house. That’s why you must inspect your fence if you’ve bought a house that has one. This is an important tip for families with pets or children since a broken fence can lead to children or pets crawling through and leaving the property. Here’s what you should do:
- Look for holes along the fence line, and patch them up immediately with wood boards for a quick, temporary fix.
- If you don’t see any holes, it doesn’t always mean there aren’t any. The best way to ensure the safety of the fence line is to check for signs of weathering or rot.
- Should you find some areas rotting away, double-check them to determine if they’ll break easily. Since holes can quickly form on a weathered fence, you should make it a top priority to fix this issue.
- If needed, replace the whole fence line to ensure its structural integrity.
Many residential properties have pools, and if you have a broken pool fence, this could lead to accidents. To prevent that from happening, you may want to request a pool fence and barrier inspection service.
3. Trim Your Trees
If you have unruly trees on your property, they may cause some problems involving the hard-to-reach areas of your house. Branches and leaves could fall into the gutter and either block or damage it. As a result, you’ll have to clean your gutters, too.
That’s why it’s a good idea to trim your trees on the regular. You can do so with a good pole pruner if your plants are still young, or better yet, hire someone to get the job done for you. Older trees can be difficult to prune, so it’s advisable to leave that task to the experts.
Not only does trimming or pruning trees reduce the maintenance work for your home, but it also leads to more open space. It reduces the chances of your family members tripping over or getting hit by falling branches as well.
4. Check Your Roof
Most importantly, you should maintain your roof to protect your home’s interior from the elements. When left unrepaired, roof issues may result in bigger problems. For instance, water coming into the house could easily affect your electrical system and ruin your wooden floors.
By conducting a simple water test, you can avoid leaky roofs during the rainy season. In addition, you can prevent any minor issues that may worsen when ignored.
Conclusion
Just because you’ve bought a house, it doesn’t mean you can live there right away. A house can’t be your home unless you make it safe for everyone who’ll be residing in it. Maintaining the structure itself as well as everything in and around it may be a long and continuous process, but it’s well worth the effort. And you can always turn to the tips above if you’re unsure about where you should start.
