Budgeting for Home Maintenance

House maintenance is undoubtedly an important part of being a homeowner. But how much should your budget for home maintenance each year? How much will it cost for each individual servicing? It really depends on each house. Factors include location, number of appliances, size, etc.

Maintenance Costs

The cost to maintain each appliance or system differs, but it is good to determine the approximate amount for each task. For example, a common task for most houses is to have the air conditioner serviced. This task will costs about $50-150 per unit for a good cleaning and system check. Having the air conditioner maintained each year will extend the life and promote good energy efficiency.

What other tasks should your consider including? Here is a list of items to get you started:

• Dishwasher spray arm cleaning
• Chimney sweeping
• Vent filter replacement
• Furnace servicing
• Garage door opener lubrication
• Garbage disposal cleaning
• Smoke detector test
• GFCI test
• Humidifier cleaning
• Microwave cleaning
• Oven and hood filter cleaning
• Pool maintenance
• Refrigerator coil cleaning

There are many more tasks to consider but this checklist will get you going in the right direction. Note that some of these tasks should cost very little while others will require a professional and higher costs.

Rule of Thumb Budget

If you don't have time or just don't feel like compiling a list of all the home maintenance costs then just use the rule of thumb for budgeting. Set aside 1-2% of your home's value each year. For example, set aside $2-4,000 per year for a $200,000 house. This will give you plenty of cash to handle all maintenance and cover repairs.

Toilet Leak Test

Toilets can quietly leak from the water holding tank all day long. The flapper (blue item in the bottom of the water tank in the image below) needs to maintain a good seal to prevent this problem. And although the leak might be small, over the course of a day over a gallon of water can be wasted.

Checking for slow leaks can be difficult and a visual inspection will most likely not work in this case. The trick for this test is to use food coloring.

Use a bold color (eg red) to make it easier to see. Place 5+ drops in the toilet water tank.

The coloring should be very apparent. Check the toilet bowl to see if any food coloring has already leaked through the flapper. If this is the case there is a sizable leak and the flapper should be replaced. But most times the leak is too small to see immediately and you need to wait overnight. It is best to do this at the end of the night so nobody accidentally flushes the toilet and you have to start again.

If the toilet bowl has coloring in it the next morning, replace the flapper. Otherwise, you have a good seal and no leaks. The pictures show the difference between a good and bad flapper.

Rain Sensor

Whenever it rains shut off the sprinkler system for the following day. Natural rain is much more effective than city water. City water often times contains chemicals that inhibits the grass. It is not enough to cause any damage, but it does make this source less effective.

Installing a rain sensor that coordinates with your sprinkler system control will automatically stop redundant watering. The rain sensor is typically mounted up by the gutter to catch the rain. The sprinkler system control then detects the rain and shuts down the system for the following day.

Double Pane Windows

One of the best insulators is air. To harness the excellent heat properties of air double pane windows were developed. Having two panes of glasses traps about 1/2" space of air that significantly reduces energy loss due to conduction. 

Also important with windows is the shading coefficient. It is a value from zero to one where zero is the best score a window can receive. It is determined by how much solar resistance of window and is dependent mostly on the color and reflectivity of the glass.

One extra benefit of double pane windows is noise reduction. The additional insulation acts as an additional sound noise barrier. 

Electric Bill Explained

It is helpful to know the impact of decisions for your home when focusing on lowering energy consumption. One of the best indicators is the electric bill.

The bill is determined by monitoring how many kilowatt hours have been used over the last month. Price per kilowatt hour ranges from $0.073 (North Dakota) all the way up to $0.31 (Hawaii) with an US average $0.112 (data from the US Energy Information Administration).

Using this information the average American will pay approximately $4 to run a 50W light bulb all hours of the day for a month. By comparison an AC unit (3500W) running 5 hours a day will cost around $58 a month. To determine the monthly cost of an item use the following formula:

Cost per month = Wattage x Hours of use per month / 1000 x Cost per Kilowatt

With this info you will have an idea of what items to target the most when trying to save energy. But you won't be able to decipher what the actual usage of each item on your energy bill. The best way to track progress is to compare the total energy used from the current month to the same month as last year.

On my energy bill it lists each month's energy usage for the last year. One very noticeable month is July in 2010. The air conditioner had a leak and doubled the energy bill all by itself.

Note: Not all energy companies measure energy use every month even though they will bill you every month. In these cases they will bill based on an estimate from last years usage and make a correction every 2-3 months when the actual usage is recorded.

Energy Star Rated Appliances

There is a big push for consumers to consider Energy Star rated appliances and push for energy efficiency. But is it worth it to the consumer

Energy efficient appliances are more expensive and don't always yield a higher cost savings per year. Federal tax rebates helps level the costs. And if you happen to live in a area where tax rebates are also offered on a state level it can be well worth the upgrade. But it is best to wait until your current appliance bites the dust before running out and unloading a new machine.

Take into account the following:
-Federal tax rebates
-State tax rebates
-Age of your current appliance
-Estimated number of years to make the savings worth the extra cost
-Special requirements (eg high-efficiency soap)

AC Inpection

I inspected  my AC units the other day to check the insulation on the refrigerant lines and cooling fins for damage. The insulation was very damaged and worn out from the weather. Aside from tears and rips, the insulation had become compact and hard (very bad for insulation). 

I spent about $5 at Lowe's buying new insulation duct tape to replace the old insulation. It only took 15 minutes to remove the replace the old insulation. Shown below is the halfway point where one unit was completed and the second one still needed to be replaced. 

Also needing attention was the cooling fins. When rocks (usually from lawn mowers) or other objects hit these delicate fins they become bent and less effective. Simply examine the fins for damaged spots and separate the fins using a blade. Take special care not to further damage these areas. A special AC fins repair tool is also available but be sure to get the correct size for your model. Also, don't forget to inspect both outside and inside fins on the unit. You will have to unplug the power to the unit and take off the fan and guard to inspect the inside fins.

These simple and cheap repairs shouldn't take longer than 30 minutes per unit and will definitely improve your energy efficiency. Check the units a couple times each year (beginning and middle of warm months).

Note: High efficiency AC units often use brushed cooling fins. Although the concepts are the same they can be more time consuming to repair.

Water Displacement Trick

There are several new toilets with multiple flush options, depending on the amount of water you want to use. If the tank on your toilet is fairly large and you would like to reduce the flush volume try using this trick.

Fill a small plastic container with water and seal the top. Place the container in the water tank of the toilet. Try to keep as much air out of the container when filling it so it doesn't float in the tank. The volume that is used during a flush has now been reduced by the size of the container.

This trick will save you a bit of water with each flush, but it is more important to make sure your toilet isn't leaking from the tank into the bowl. Log into Home Maintenance Tracker to see a tip on testing your toilet for leaks, which can waste far more water.

Taking Advantage of the Sun

The sun is a powerful source of heat and energy-use it to your benefit! 


During the winter months leave curtains open and take down any solar screens. The sun's rays coming into the house with help keep it warm and reduce the workload on your furnace.


For the summer months put place solar screens over the windows and close the curtains in rooms not being used. This will help to keep the sun's heat out the house and keep the AC energy use down. It is especially important to cover windows on the East and West sides of the house since the sun's rays will come mostly from these directions.

Weatherstripping

If a proper seal is not formed around any outside doors, air will leak resulting in lost energy. Periodically inspect the weatherstripping around around any doors leading to outside. Hold your hand near the edges or doors to feel for air movement. Another method, which is even better, is to light a stick of incense and hold it near the edge of the door. If the smoke does not rise straight up, there is an air leak.


Replace any damaged weatherstripping. Extra weatherstripping may be required to create a good seal.