House Maintenance...

What types of things do you have to have checked/maintained yearly?
Specifically - we have central air and forced hot air...do we need to do anyting to prepare for the winter?

Thanks!

Good Question..I can use some of this advice myself.

There are only two things off hand I know that we should do:

Shrubs - have them treated for winter - nursery gave us a spray and said that should be sufficient.

Sprinklers - I know that you should get the pipes blown out....to prevent freezing. The previous owner said they never had to do that but from everyone I spoke with they said you definitley do - but we also found teh sprinklers don't work like they should so who knows if the owner ever used it !

I would check the het to make sure it is working now instead of waiting until the first cold day. We have maintnance agreements on our central air and our burner so we have them inspected and cleaned once a year. You want to make sure all the filters, etc are cleaned.

For the inground sprinklers, we do have them blown out every year. They are expensive to get fixed so it is better to have this done to make sure they do not freeze.

We don't have maintenance agreements on the A/C or heater. I'll have to look into that I guess.

What about vent cleaning? Is it worth doing?