Home Maintenance Anatomy - Part 1
Getting to know the inner systems of your home
This week we wanted to take a step back to start with the basics of home maintenance. I got feedback that the maintenance plan is overwhelming - which is kind of the opposite of what this newsletter is trying to do.
So the next series of posts will focus on a basic framework to help you organize how you think about home maintenance.
The Four S’s
We like to break it down to the FOUR S’s for your home: Systems, Structure, Spaces, and Services.
In this post we’ll be going over systems. But first, a quick overview of all of the S’s.
Think of your home as a human body and your goal is to keep it healthy. In that sense, think of the first 3 S’s, Systems, Structures, and Spaces, as the anatomy of your home and last S, Services as the things you do (or others do) to maintain it.
Systems are the inner workings of your home that keep you alive and the home operational (e.g. electrical, plumbing, internet, heating/cooling, etc...)
Structures holds your home up and protects you from the elements (e.g. foundation, frame, roofing, siding, windows, doors, insulation, etc…)
Spaces are the different parts of your home each with different roles (e.g. exterior, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, etc…)
Services are the things you do externally to keep your home “healthy”. (e.g. utilities, cleaning, financial, insurance, landscaping, etc…)
Onto part 1, Systems.
The systems in some sense are critical to keeping you alive with power, water, heating and wifi. Each system services a specific critical function for your home and therefore requires a specific expertise when it comes to building and repairs.
Within each system there are subsystems and it can get matrixed so let’s just cover the highest order of the systems - electrical & gas, plumbing, internet, and the heating & cooling systems.
What is their primary function?
Table 1. Core systems, primary function and typical experts involved. (See previous post “Who you gonna call?”)
What about security system?
Unless you are a drug lord running a compound - I’ll address security more as a service in Part 4 of this series.
Ok, how do these systems relate to being digital less handy?
One of the goals of this newsletter is to help you digitize these systems - which if done properly provides ease and more peace of mind when it comes to actually maintaining each system. I’ll go into detail in later posts if I haven’t already but more and more you can use internet connected devices to make home maintenance easier (e.g. Smart Air Purifiers, Smart Lawn Watering)
Table 2. Core systems and general methods to get smarter about them - saving you stress, $$$, and time in the long term.
It’s high level but that’s a quick rundown of the systems which hopefully gives you a better sense of when a task is associated with a particular system. You can see how it maps in the maintenance plan template definition sheet.
We’ll cover Structure, Spaces, and Services in the next few posts - subscribe to read them!
Written at home, Dave & Arjun