Ep 035 - From Honey-Do to Honey-Done - Smarter Home Maintenance

Welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, where you'll discover strategies to save money, save time, and be better organized in managing your largest financial asset and biggest expense, your home. Your hosts, John Bodrozic and Beth Dodson, who are co-founders of HomeZada, have been supporting homeowners for over 20 years. They are here to share with you their tips and suggestions, as well as interviews with industry experts, with the goal of helping you become a smarter homeowner. Now here's your hosts, John and Beth.

Hello, welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast. I'm Beth Dodson, and I'm here with John Bedrosik. We're here to talk to you all things home. Super exciting. Uh, thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. And here we go. So today's podcast, we're going to talk about what home maintenance you need to do that you may have forgotten about, even as an experienced homeowner. I know I've been in that position, not realizing that houses are different no matter where you own them. Our house in Sacramento that we had, John, was different than the one we have in a different town. Outside of Sacramento because we had different items in it and they were built at different times. So I was learning, even after HomeZada and also having been an experienced homeowner with multiple homes, that I didn't know some things that needed to get done. And we want to talk about how you can start avoiding some of this and Get to it so that things can work properly. Now, John, I'm gonna turn it over to you, and then I'm gonna explain some things that I also was unaware of. But I'm gonna turn it over to you because you believe there's different types of categories of maintenance tasks or whatever that we need to consider, even as experienced homeowners.

Yeah, before I even jump into the categories, just a quick background, right? Which is one is at some point in time we become homeowners. We're a first-time homeowner. And then we are on this journey of discovery of what it takes to actually maintain the home. So it's— you become from an inexperienced homeowner to an experienced homeowner as you are a homeowner longer and longer kind of mentality.

Exactly.

But what you bring up, which is even experienced homeowners, like you live in a home for 5 years, you sell and move to a different place, uh, different town, different climate. Even if it's the same town, it's like How big is the lot? Is it upsloping, downsloping lot? How old the home is. So there's all these additional contextual things that come with every time we move, even though we're an experienced homeowner. There's the learning about the brand new home we just bought. Plus there's even, I mean, I've been in, I don't know how long. I think you've been a homeowner about as long as I have, right? Going on 25 years maybe?

Even longer.

Yeah, based on the gray and my goatee. And even I think I'm an experienced homeowner, that there are things that I didn't even know I should be doing. And I know that you were going to talk about one of them on this podcast. But anyway, that's, that's my background, which is no matter how smart you think you are about your home, you could always be smarter.

Yeah, we can keep learning.

Yep.

Yeah, we can always keep learning, which is always so funny. And to your point, we think we're experienced homeowners, Until we realize we're not and we need to continue on our journey. And it's an ongoing journey throughout our entire homeownership lifecycle, which isn't always so bad because I'm always a big firm believer in learning is a good thing. And here we are.

Yeah. So you want me to kick us off on some things?

I do want you to kick off on some categories. You started saying that you believe that some things are in categories.

Yeah.

And then we can start talking about some of those specifics.

So I'm gonna just talk about 2 categories and jump into one. One is just preventative maintenance, things that we know we need to do. Like that most people probably know, the experienced ones, you need to change your air filters. And that's where it's an actual task. You go do it and, you know, it's some sort of, you know, half-hour task. Maybe you have to buy some product like air filters or tools or whatever the case. Clean something out. But then there's another category of what I call maintenance that's more what I call inspection-oriented.

Fair enough.

It's not like hiring somebody to do inspection. It's you, the homeowner, can go out and inspect things in your house.

Yes.

To detect whether things are an issue. And if they are, you could fix it and repair it and cost you a few hundred dollars versus if you're completely unaware of it it can progress into a $1,000, $10,000 issue because you've been ignoring it for so long.

Totally.

And so—

So to stop you there, avoidance is not a good thing when it comes to homeownership.

Yes.

It will catch up to you.

So here's one that I've done multiple times, which is, if you can, obviously there's a safety aspect, Go into your attic during a rainstorm.

Oh yeah.

It's an inspection task, and what are you actually trying to do? If it's raining outside, you're more likely to detect some roof leak that may be leaking from your roof and into your attic, but not leaking enough to get into your ceiling so that you can actually see the roof leak.

Big one.

And yes, you can go into your attic when it's not raining and try to look for signs of a leak, but Clearly, it's easier to detect the leak if you're in there during a heavy rainstorm.

Exactly. I mean, yeah. I mean, you could still detect leaks because there may be damage or at least water insulation. Yeah, wet insulation, or there's like water stains on the wooden stuff.

Correct.

But it is easier to see when something's dripping, and you can also potentially hear it.

Correct.

But to your point, I'm sorry to interrupt, but to your point, when you are in an attic, to John's point, what he said earlier, you have to be very careful. If your attic doesn't have flooring and you're on joists and, and, and roofing trusses and stuff, then you've got to be very careful because you can fall through your ceiling, your ceiling walls.

Yes. And when you're in there, right, take a flashlight. You know, because you may not be able to get access to all the different spots of your roof. Look at what I call the penetrations, meaning your roof has lots of pipes for venting, other vents. That's usually a source where leaks happen. And sometimes, if even if you do detect the leak, where the water is coming from may not be the exact location of where the leak is coming from, because water tends to— Find the path of least resistance. So that is a pretty important what I call inspection task that you could just do once a year when it's really heavily raining outside.

Yeah, and just pick wherever you are in the country; it may be different. So you want another one? Yeah, I do want another one. I have a lot of my own that I learned sometimes the hard way.

It's the same theme. It's which is. after the rainstorm, or perhaps maybe during it, but maybe right after huge rainstorm, walk the outside of your house and look at your foundations.

Huge.

And/or if you're— if you live in a house that's on a raised foundation, maybe you even open the crawl space door and get a flashlight and look under there. And essentially what you are looking for is, is there water accumulating around your foundation and potentially getting under and into your foundation? Which becomes a potential huge issue because that can start to create settlement on your house. Your foundations can start to get unsafe. If water accumulates under your house and doesn't dry out, that could be sources of mold. So water accumulating on the outside and potentially seeping inside the foundation is a huge issue. And again, it's easiest to detect Right after a huge rainstorm, because you can really see puddles of water sort of accumulating and where they're accumulating.

Yeah, and I'm a firm believer too, like, the foundation is key, the attic is key. As you're walking around the outside of your house, or even on the inside, you can also look at windows. So your windows and your doors are also tied to all of this. If there's gaps of some sort, or if you start seeing almost like streaks or water damage to your paint, you— something's going on, something's amiss. And so you definitely want to check out that, but it's, it's all kind of related. Water is like the giver of life, but we all know it can take it as easily as it gave it. So it's really important to work with water by having a structure that is protected.

Mm-hmm.

So yeah, I'm with you on this, even though I would hire somebody to go in my crawl space because I think that's creepy-deepy. But that's my own personal opinion. And for those of you who have basements, you are lucky.

Yeah, for the people in the basements, that's— make sure your sump pump is working if you have one during a rainstorm as well.

Totally.

How's that for an added bonus there?

Yep. That is really good.

Another one that's recently happened to us, and it's also useful as it relates to technology. Sometimes it's like inspecting the top of your roof for potential damage.

Forgot about that.

Now, the reason why Beth is laughing is we had squirrels.

We have a tile roof, first of all.

We have a tile roof, and where all the hip and joints come together at odd angles, there's basically that because of the tile roof, there's tape that has to tape these triangular sections, roofing tape. Well, we had squirrels basically chewing through the tape and storing nuts as part of their, you know, food strategy.

Hideaway. I don't give them enough trees, so they've got to store it in my roof.

Yeah. So we had to make those repairs. Inspecting the top of your roof, I think, is twofold. One is clearly there's a massive safety of, you know, who's gonna get up on the roof and look at it and what's the roof pitch. And so I'm not recommending everybody do that. You have to make your own personal safety assessment.

No.

But let's assume you can't or don't want to for whatever reason. You still have 2 other options. One is you could hire a roofing company and say, hey, just come out and inspect my roof, and they'll be happy to do it. Probably a service charge, but at least you're getting a proactive view. And what I learned also is even the roofing company that we hired, they're like, I don't want to go up there. They used a drone.

Correct.

So if you've got family or friends in the neighborhood that are drone enthusiasts, you could hire the kid down the street who's using a drone as a camera, basically pay them $20 to basically fly the drone around your roof and look at all the different spots. And you're getting sort of a cheapy version of inspecting your roof, but doing it in a safe way. Uh, and making friends with a neighbor who's got a drone.

Totally. And that was fascinating because I'm always stressed out when people want to climb my roof because there is high pitches, and I worry that people may fall because I've known contractors that have fallen, friends that have fallen, and fortunately for them, they've lived and they've had some surgeries or whatever, but, um, and they still continued their jobs. But it is risky, so pay attention to that. However, Yes, because we didn't inspect it earlier and didn't prevent this earlier, squirrels did thousands and thousands of dollars of damage to our roof.

Correct. But think about what we've saved. We didn't detect any leaks in the roof.

Correct.

And, you know, if we waited another 5 years, who knows, it may have been a $20,000 deal or a $50,000 deal.

It was so bad.

That would've segued into another podcast about insurance and claims and anyway.

All that kind of stuff. Yes.

Exactly.

It's kind of interesting. So we've done stuff on critters. We're gonna have to do more podcasts on critters too, 'cause there's just so many of them depending on where you live. And I'd love to learn from other people what kind of critter issues they have to deal with.

So clearly my theme on inspecting things, even if you're a smart homeowner, is essentially inspecting things that could turn into big ticket issues.

Totally. And then inspecting them, you're suggesting people inspect these things basically themselves, but there's also inspectors they can go hire, AKA you just brought up that we didn't inspect our roofline with a drone, but the company we hired did.

Mm-hmm.

And other people can do other inspections for you. For instance, if you don't have HVAC experience, getting that checked twice a year is actually really good. Because I'm a firm believer they can make minor repairs that are less costly and extend the life of your equipment, which we've had the experience of dealing with all the time, which is amazing. And I see that as a positive for a lot of reasons. One, you're not spending so much money on a new piece of equipment, whatever that is, but you're also not putting more stuff in the landfill. You're literally caring for something so there's less items in the landfill. And I don't even know where they take HVAC equipment. I should start doing research on that. But you're not putting it there. You're literally being good to Mother Nature as much as you are being good to your own house and bills. Because all of these inspections affect your cash flow, your capital, your bills, etc.

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, we're trying to focus on experienced homeowners. Candidly, this is one of the 50/50, right? Some experienced homeowners realize that I should inspect my HVAC HVAC units at least once a year, sometimes twice a year. But perhaps there are some people that think they're an experienced homeowner that are not having them inspected. And yeah, that is probably a specialized skill because there are different components, right?

Right.

There is the furnace, which is creating hot air in the wintertime. There's the compressor and air conditioning unit, which is creating cold air and the refrigerant in the summertime. There's the blower, which is the blowing motor that basically pushes air into your house. And then there's all the ductwork. And so HVAC units have to deal with heating and cooling, and it has to do with mechanical parts. And is it an electric heat pump or is it a split system where it's electric and gas?

Right.

So what kind of fuel is it using? There's electrical components because they have to kick on. Thermostats, all these things are working together to create, you know, climate into your, into your home. And yeah, it's just a couple hundred bucks to have it inspected by some professional will prolong the life of those things because replacing them can be $15,000, $20,000, $30,000 deals depending on how big those units are.

Correct. And the reason I'm laughing is because I think any experienced homeowner or any homeowner is going out and calling an HVAC company because of the way you described it. It's— those units are totally complex, and if you don't know anything about them, then you are not equipped. I mean, mentally, to actually deal with this. But yeah, I mean, so we've got inspections. And what's the other category that you want to talk about? Well, what is there more under inspections?

I mean, I could probably come up with more, but I guess I'll segue into just some of the other tasks that are actual tasks that you need to do that maybe experienced homeowners, depending on what you perceive your experience, either know you should do or don't know you should do.

Yeah.

One of them is if you have a hot water heater, the traditional tank water heater, not the tankless, but if you have a tank water heater, It's flushing that hot water heater once, maybe twice a year. Um, and you're essentially partially flushing it. Why? Because many places across the country have hard water that's full of minerals, and that incoming water will start to deposit minerals on the bottom of your tank.

Yes, that's correct.

And those minerals start to build up, and if they build up, they get into sort of all the internal components and can cause them to either corrode and/or stop working. So you end up having to replace your hot water heater, uh, more frequently, which is costly, versus this is a task that you could easily figure out how to do. Connect the hose to a little valve, figure out based on your make, model, and serial number how to open the valve and basically put the hose so it drains out to the outside of your house depending on where it is.

Yeah.

And you let it run for 5 minutes, whatever, and it partially drains all that stuff and you might see all those mineral deposits come out. And your hot water heater has got more life.

Yeah. And it's also good for your water flowing through your house as well. So there's, you know, a healthier water component to going through your house. Well, so yeah, so that means that's a good one.

There's a, there's a subsequent one, which is if you check the water flow on all, especially like showers and sinks, sometimes you have less flow and you're like, why is there less flow in it? Because if you have hard water, Sometimes that hard water gets pushed through your pipes into your house and gets stuck into your little shower head where it's trying to stream all those little tiny streams of water and one or two streams isn't streaming. It's a simple task of unscrew that thing and there's a little screen in there. You can blow out any little sand deposits in there that are collecting in there.

Yeah, and you can actually take the shower heads. I'm a firm believer and you can put them in, um, like a little dilution of vinegar and water and it'll also loosen it all up. It's really good. I do that.

Yep.

Yeah.

All right.

And so basically you're saying there's a lot of inspections and then there's a set of task-oriented, um, maintenance tasks even experienced homeowners may not be aware of, but they're more like, um, is, is it truly maintenance or is it— part of me thinks it's like cleaning. Like, I think certain maintenance and, and cleaning are one and the same sometimes. For instance, shower heads. That to me, it's partly cleaning, you know. It's like, but you don't do it as a regular— on the regular. Like, you're not dusting on the regular, but you need to do that. And speaking of which, I'm a firm believer, after what happened recently, being woken up at 4 o'clock in the morning by a crazy smoke detector, you definitely need to go around your house and clean up Any cobwebs or what have you that may have materialized unbeknownst to you in your ceilings and your crevices, because they do sometimes, and you don't always see them because they're really high up and you're not looking up. So I'm a firm believer, do that. And our smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors are sensitive to that, and you will avoid— if you do that, you will avoid being woken up at 3, 4 in the morning. To some crazy loud noise that is not really an alarm. Now, when you are woken up, pay attention. It might be really an alarm, but you don't have to stress and, and your adrenaline's going crazy and everything like that. The other thing I thought of, because this came up recently and I was like, really? Our— we have a gas fireplace. It's at our house and It's awesome. We kind of use it, you know, we're safe with it and everything else. And then one time it just wasn't working, and we hired somebody to come out and we're like, we don't understand why is it not working? And he jokingly said, like, you have to clean it. I go, what are you talking about? And he goes, you have to clean it. There's like dust in here, there's all these different components. The dust is blocking the flow. of your gas to get into the gas, um, the, the fireplace itself, so it won't work. And I'm like, seriously, all we needed to do was clean it? And he goes, yeah, but I'll still take my check for showing up. And I was like, fair enough, fair enough. But cleaning it, we— this was like a 2-person job for us, and we had to carefully take off all the screens, we had to clean off everything inside, and we probably Recommend people doing that. Some people say do it once a year. I don't know that I would do that once a year. I would do it probably every 3 to 5 years if you don't use it that much. We don't use it that much. And so, but it is a 2-person job, and you do have to be careful because there's glass components and you can take the whole thing apart. And we even used HomeZada's AI to help us do that as well, which was brilliant. But things like that, if you want something to work properly, you need to clean it. But it's not a daily or weekly or monthly activity that you would do. And as experienced homeowners who both never had a gas fireplace, we didn't know this. So it was a new learning journey for us as well. And we had the help of service and service providers and contractors as well as Homesella AI. It's like, can't make this up. It's brilliant.

Yeah, I think it's deceiving. You think you have a gas fireplace and it looks all sealed and everything's all in there and you can't really get at it and you're like, That's what I thought. Gas. But invariably the gas still can burn. And when it burns, creates little soot deposits around there and it needs to get cleaned. So yeah, it was definitely a learning process. And it's just yet another example of we thought we were smart homeowners and turned out we weren't as smart as we thought we were.

We could always be smarter. And so, and so with that said, just on a gas fireplace thing, every one of the tasks we're talking about, there may be a safety component to it.

Absolutely.

So please, by all means, safety is the first priority. If you are cleaning your gas fireplace, you need to turn off your gas first.

100%.

Do not, do not like take it all apart while the gas is going and everything. Just don't do it. It's going to be crazy. You know, you could actually die of carbon monoxide poisoning. I mean, seriously, it's that simple, and you don't know what's happening to you.

Yes, and on the flip side, if you have a wood-burning fireplace, it's a completely different process. Uh, there's usually what they refer to as a damper, right, which creates airflow that comes from the top, because we all know that fire needs air and it also needs to escape out because it's burning real wood.

Yes.

So you need to clean that damper, make sure it works. And then if you've used it, or let's say you bought a home that's been using it for a long time, a lot of that Wood that burns creates soot that gets stuck to the inside walls of the chimney. That's probably another professional job is to hire a chimney cleaner.

Yes.

To clean the inside of the wood-burning chimney.

It's very important because that can actually start a backflow of either smoke in your house or a fire.

Yeah.

So very, very important. So a lot of people don't always know this or they don't remember it. One of the things that I also— it was also new for us as experienced homeowners, maybe because we had one garage at one house, but at my other house I didn't have a garage. You really need to take care of your springs on your garage doors because— and it's not something you do on a regular.

No.

It's like something you do like every 7 or 8 years, and it's really important that you actually start taking care of things and maybe even replace some parts Because the garage door can come crashing down.

Yeah. And it really depends on what kind of garage door you have, right? Is it a single door that kind of goes up or is it like our garage door, which you have like, I don't know, 4, 6, 7 panels and the panels kind of flex as the door is opening and closing. So with our doors, because they're flexing, how it flexes, every single one of those flex points has a bunch of hinges.

Yeah.

So you can lubricate those hinges, you can lubricate the rollers, um, you can lubricate the springs, which are round springs at the top of the door. They're called torsion springs. You could try to lubricate those to make sure that they're operating efficiently. But it's also one of those things that if you— the torsion spring will only last so long. I don't know, there's different sizes springs, and if you're constantly opening your door, you can imagine 10 times a day Over the course of 6, 7 years, eventually the springs wear out and they may snap, safely snap, and then just basically you need to repair them. But, uh, there are other garage door issues that you could sort of constantly make sure that it's operating safely and that the hinges are lubricated so that they're flexing properly. So you're not creating other issues that could happen with your garage doors.

Yes.

Um, is absolutely another one.

Yeah, I mean, you just go to all these components in the house, and we've talked about this before, the house is made up of so many components. And the more gadgets and the more appliances and the more equipment and the more, more, more, more, more you have inside, the more, more, more, more you have to learn how to manage. You know, you need to learn how to clean it, you need to learn how to take care of it, and I'm a firm believer, if you love your house— and you know I call her a she— if you love her, she will love you back. And so maintenance is part of loving your family member that has to be— that happens to be this structure that takes care of you.

Yeah, you want some more?

Sure, let's hear some more. What have you got?

Uh, the back of your dryer is connected to a vent that vents hot air to the outside of the house, and that dryer vent oftentimes collect— it gets collectioned with lint.

Yep.

And that lint becomes, A, a fire hazard because it can easily catch on fire, and B, it oftentimes— you can figure this out when all of a sudden it takes longer and longer to dry a load of laundry. Well, why is it taking longer? Is the back of that vent is clogged with lint and it's not preventing that sort of hot air sort of escaping. Now, this— the length of your vent depends on where your dryer is in your house and how far it is in terms of however it was originally built, how far the vent is.

So it gets out of the house.

Correct. So as an example, uh, my mother's house, her, her dry— her laundry room is on, on an exterior wall And her dryer is up against the exterior wall, and so it's super short. I mean, it's like almost easy to clean because the vent is so small.

Yeah.

Well, with our house, we have a 2-story house, and where the laundry room is, it's got to be a longer vent that goes straight up through the second floor. Uh, it's a much longer vent, therefore cleaning it from both the disconnecting the dryer and from the top requires a specialized dryer brush tool. And it's something that a lot of people just don't think about.

Yeah, no, it's important because we do have friends who are experienced homeowners. They've been in homeownership for 20-some-odd years and did not know that they had to clean their dryer vent. And I was like, get it done now, get it done.

Because it's not the lint trap. No, that you pull out and pull— that's important too.

But yes, no. It's the buildup in the pipe behind—

Yes.

The dryer. And they did not know that they needed to clean that. And they were like, what are you talking about? I go, you need to clean it now because they've been in this house for 20 years.

And here's a little—

Now, and they do a lot of laundry too.

Here's the little tip: lean over to the back of your dryer and look down, and you'll see it connected from the back of your dryer into the wall, well, that is going somewhere. You just need to figure out where that somewhere is. And that part is the part that needs to get cleaned.

That's a good point too. Because if you look at the back of your dryer, if you've got excess lint everywhere, it's trying to escape. Yeah, because it's got so much buildup in, in that and you're just— the risk is lint is flammable. So you can always use it if you need to ever start a fire somewhere. Meaning inside a fire pit or something. But by all means, you need to clean it. You definitely need to clean it because it is a risk to your home.

Yeah. And while you're there, you might as well look at your washer because your washer has to get hot and cold water. So there's a hot and cold water valve that basically delivers hot and cold water to your washer. Make sure those valves are not old and rusty, and/or the hose that goes from the valve that connects to your washer are not old. And potentially a lot of the old ones were rubber, and the rubber can start to— especially with the hot water one, as you know, rubber can start to expand.

Yeah.

And split the seam and create a water leak. And then guess what? Your water— your washer also drains water. So there is a drain that leads from the back of your washer into a pipe that drains it into your sewer system. Make sure that that drain pipe is also just in— look, visually looking like it's working and not potentially old and cracking, because that can—

And if not, it's not that difficult to replace those. I mean, it really isn't. I mean, it's a pain in the neck, but it's not that difficult.

Correct. But people just are so used to the washer and dryer working, and they don't realize that there are—

Components.

Mechanical connections to how those things work.

Correct. So, um, any others you have?

Yeah, I've got one that you're probably gonna go, oh my God, we haven't done that. But it's been a low-risk item because it's maybe one that you do every 15, 20 years.

Yeah, what is it?

But there's only 2 of us in our house and we live in a downsloping lot, so that's why I've ignored it.

See, even, even we at Home Data ignore certain things.

I can already tell you what this is, and I may not have any clue. Your entire house— most homes basically have a sewer line. That's where your toilet flushes and your sinks and your showers. All that water goes into a sewer line. So imagine every fixture in your house kind of combines together eventually into one pipe that goes outside your house and goes all the way down to the street to connect to the sewer line in the street. Well, on the outside—

If that's the case, some people may have on property septic tanks or something. Yes.

Correct. But I don't know what the percentage is. 85% of the people have sewer that goes to the street.

But both need work.

Huh?

Both need work.

Yes. Well, when you're— when that main sewer line is leaving your house, between your house and how far it needs to get to the street, there's usually what they call a cleanout valve. Which you can pop that clean-out valve, um, and if you remember the, the Roto-Rooter or whatever, I mean, that's kind of a brand name, the sort of mechanical snakes that you stick down in there.

Yeah.

Can basically flush that line out to make sure that you don't have any clogs in your sewer line.

You realize I just added that to our list.

I'm sure you did.

Oh yes.

Our plumber suggested we could do it, but then he kind of said, hey, You have a downsloping lot, whatever, and whatever. Yeah, but anyway, yes, I mean, insurance companies—

So when John says we have a downsloping lot, it's a benefit because things flow downward. Get it? So literally everything about this is— yeah, totally.

Yes, that's— imagine if you had an upsloping lot, then you probably have a pump. that has to pump that stuff because water does not flow uphill.

Correct. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So you have to take special care. So yeah, so we're giving some big items. So that's a separate pump that needs to be inspected, yes. Yes, we're giving some big items. We're giving some big things that could have material impact to your home, and we're giving some big structural components as well that a lot of people don't know. And, um, I'm trying to think of even smaller things that people need to know that maybe they're not aware of.

I mean, I don't know, I'm sort of tapped out. I looked at the bulk of the things.

See, John, even John doesn't like the honey-do list. So for all the people out there, I think one of the things we realized, nobody really likes the honey-do list, but it keeps your house operating properly.

Yep.

And she likes it when you take care of her.

Yes.

No, this is good. So we've, we've got some big things that we've heard from a lot of people that they were unaware of this. They had to go make the changes and add this to their calendar like the rest of us. We were unaware of some things. We're as human as everybody else is. We literally started HomeZelda to help us manage all of this because we were just disorganized and realized that this wasn't our true forte. And we wanted to take care of our homes. So it's like, okay, how do we do it?

Yeah, therein lies the value of having a maintenance calendar that reminds you of all these tasks that either A, you don't know, or B, you forgot when's the last time you did it. So it's going to remind you. And then like you said earlier, even AI of being able to take photos of this stuff and Click a button, how to do it, you know, should I hire somebody, safety, all these sort of issues. Makes it super easy.

So yeah, no, that is amazing. And so yeah, I do like the fact that when you have a calendar, it'll remind you of when things are done. But I do like the fact that when did I last complete this task? Because even though I'll get it on my reminder, I'll look at when I last completed it and when I last started using the items that we use. For instance, like the fireplace, we don't use it that often.

Mm-hmm.

And so if we don't use it that often, then maybe I'm not gonna clean it as regularly as someone else who uses it a ton every year, because maybe they wanna clean it every 1 to 2 years. We're probably gonna clean it every 3 to 7, somewhere in that range, depending on how often we use it. Especially because it's— it took us a while. Like, we were very detail-oriented and we were really careful. So for us, we're like, okay, one step at a time.

All right, I did think of one last one. I'll do it super fast. Trees. Big trees near your house. Big trees near your house have branches that may be dropping things into your roof and clogging sort of aspects of your roof. Big trees can snap and blow when you have windstorms. Uh, big trees, your windows, big trees have roots. Those roots can grow towards your foundation and cause issues. So anybody with big trees near your house, it's just something you need to be aware of, whether it's pruning the branches, cleaning the roof, or assessing again those foundation things, because that could be a source of how the water is getting under your house.

Yes, or anything else.

Yeah.

I mean, like, yeah. So to your point, um, I have somebody I know, he had these birch trees which were beautiful, and they were too close to his house, and he didn't maintain them, and they dropped all these beads onto his roof. And because in California we have tile roofs, the, the beads, the little buds from the trees got between the tile links into the paper Literally disintegrated the paper and caused all these leaks. Well, his insurance company wouldn't honor the claim because the tree maintenance was his responsibility, and it was due to lack of maintenance that the claim was not honored. So this is a really good one and really important. And to your point about the root systems, if you have gas lines or, or electric lines or water lines or whatever, let's say you've got a pool outside.

Mm-hmm.

Something we did. We had these beautiful trees and something in me was just saying, I've got to cut them, I've got to cut them. And I— it pained me to do it. It pained me to cut these trees down, but I was worried not only for my house but for my neighbors, because if anything were to get damaged from these trees, I could cause a lot of damage to the entire neighborhood. And I did not want to be responsible for that. for that. So trees are— yeah, that's a good one. It's a big one. Do we end on that?

Yeah.

Yeah. All right. So some of these things aren't that hard. Some of these things you can hire people. Some of these things you can do it. There's safety in everything we've talked about today. So please be very, very, very, very careful or understand what safety measures you need to take prior to performing these tasks if you're going to do them yourself. And if you are uncomfortable, figure out how to budget and hire the right people to help you get all this stuff done. Even if it's $20 for the local kid who's got the drone around the neighborhood, why not? That's kind of good. Unless you have your own drone equipment. That's kind of fun.

Exactly.

And then you can at least become aware. And, um, yeah, and I think that's it for us. Any closing thoughts?

Yeah, instead of yelling at the kid for flying the drone over your house, pay them to take close-ups of the roof.

We're still on this drone. I can't believe it. Um, but yes, okay, so thank you so much for joining us on another episode of Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast. We hope this gave you some inspiration to understand a little bit more about your house and help take care of her in the way that she needs to be taken care of, because your home is Your home, and it's very different than the ones that we're familiar with. And she will appreciate that when you take care of her. So thank you for joining us. If you believe someone else could use these tips and tricks, please share them with whomever you can and subscribe and follow us. We'd love to hear any thoughts that you want us to talk about on Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, and feel free to reach out to us. You can reach us at homzada.com. Have a great day.

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