[Rhettzky]

We just moved into a house from a condo a year ago too. Here are a few things i've noticed.

-Furnace. We have changed the filter 4 times since moving in. So about every three months. We also paid to get the furnace and duct work cleaned out when we first moved in. The home inspector recommended we do it once a year but that seemed a little excessive.

-Toilets. Two of our toilets were apparently losing a lot of water through the flapper (weren't making a leaking sound or anything). After the plumber came to look at our water heater he mentioned that we should get new flappers and so I installed some water saving ones on all the toilets. Immediately started noticing the savings.

-Roof. We have three different levels on our roof and the upper portion drains directly onto a lower portion. Problem was that all the water from the upper part drains into a single part of the lower one and was causing damage to the shingles. The Inspector said that by diverting the drainage directly into the eaves of the lower level could save five years on the roof shingles.

-Carbon Monoxide Detectors. Our house didn't have these when we moved in. I installed one just before winter this year and not even three weeks in it went off. Apparently there is a problem with the seal in our garage and carbon monoxide was permeating through the roof of the garage into the second floor of our house and that's where we sleep. They recorded levels of 170ppm (cigarette smoke is around 30-35ppm). Really freaking scary, so we bought detectors that show a digital read-out of the ppm concentration of Carbon Monoxide and installed them on every floor.

I should also note that we don't ever leave the car running in the garage with the door shut. That was the first question the fire department asked us too but apparently with the way the garage is laid out even having the door open does not prevent the build-up.

-Patio furniture. We bought a set this summer and before winter i stacked them all neatly in a corner of our deck and put all the covers on them and everything. Last month there was a huge crash in the back yard and we noticed the table (glass top) was shattered due to the snow load. Luckily we bought it at sears and they are great at returns but I never even thought to brush the snow off the table periodically, just put the cover on and thought it would be fine until summer.


That's all I can think of now but I know there has been a steep learning curve for me too. Now if you want to get into basement development that is a completely different beast...