Create a preventive maintenance schedule for your home this spring! A home maintenance checklist will help you keep your home safe and improve its value.
Thank you First Alert for sponsoring this post. Help protect your home and family with voice and location alarms from First Alert!
When I built my home three years ago, I thought moving into a brand new home would mean fewer problems and less maintenance. Boy, was I wrong!
I spent the first year in my home decorating and dusting, but generally ignoring many of the on-going maintenance issues that had plagued the townhouse I lived in for ten years. I was on cloud nine.
Until year two. The second year I was in my home I fixed several broken sprinklers, a leaking shower and replaced more about a dozen fire alarm batteries.
Small, relatively easy to resolve issues, but I quickly learned that preventative maintenance is a must right from the start.
Routine home maintenance will help you save money on utilities, maintain your appliances and improve the value of your home…It turns out it will also save you from being jolted out of bed by a smoke detector with faulty batteries.
Why Fire Alarms are at the Top of my Home Maintenance Checklist
Here in Utah, the law requires fire alarms be installed outside each sleeping area, on every level of the home and recommends that for the best protection additional detectors should also be placed inside bedrooms.
My builder did a great job of following code and there are about a dozen smoke detectors installed throughout my house. Sadly the alarms installed are not the best quality – the batteries drain quickly and I don’t trust them to keep my home safe.
Being startled out of bed by a faulty alarm quickly pushed fire alarm maintenance and replacement to the top of my home maintenance checklist.
A couple of months ago, I started looking into upgrading the fire alarms in my home. The State of Utah provides some great guidelines for installing smoke detectors and I used it to finalize my choice.
Slowly, but surely, I am replacing my existing alarms with top of the line First Alert 10-Year Sealed Battery Alarms with Voice Location Technology.
Why I Selected First Alert Alarms
I am a light sleeper by nature, but there is nothing quite like the fear that comes from being jolted out of bed. The culprits these last three years? A couple of earthquakes and faulty fire alarm batteries.
As the name implies, First Alert 10-Year Sealed Battery Alarms with Voice Location Technology have long-lasting batteries that will help keep your home protected for more than a decade.
10-year sealed batteries have the following benefits:
- No late night battery chirps
- No more need to drag a heavy ladder around the house and climb up to change batteries
- No costly battery replacements for the life of the alarm
Good deal, no?
Well, for those of you with children in the home, I want to share one more benefit. First Alert 10-Year Sealed Battery Alarms with Voice Location Technology are more likely to wake and save children in the case of a fire.
Research indicates that maternal voice alarms woke 86 to 91 percent of children, compared to 53% of kids waking to a standard alarm.
Home Maintenance Checklist
For the first time, I am making my home maintenance checklist on Trello available for personal use.
You will find that while I am transitioning to First Alert 10-Year Sealed Battery Alarms with Voice Location Technology, I still have several associated tests and to-dos on my list.
If you’ve been around here long, you know I use the app to manage my entire life. What you may not know is that I get more requests for my home maintenance board to be made public than any other board I utilize.
If you are unfamiliar with Trello, you can read my introductory how to post here.
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