Everyone knows how important it is to maintain our homes. Maintenance will save us from future restoration bills as a well-maintained home will require little restoration or repairs.
However, there comes a time when the difference between maintenance and restoration blurs and you need to make a decision: should you repair the damages or restore your home? Although restoration might appear more expensive at first glance, perhaps it will actually be cheaper… and more efficient!
What Is Maintenance?
You maintain your house to prevent deterioration.
For example, you maintain your water heater by servicing it once a year to make sure it works properly. Likewise, you mow the yard to keep your grass green and healthy. You clean your house to keep away dust mites and other harmful substances. You clean your gutters to ensure water flows freely when it rains, etc.
All these are regular maintenance activities that make your home work better, look nice, and feel safer. If something needs repairing, you do that as part of the maintenance schedule.
What Are Repairs and Restoration?
Repairs and restoration are done when something is broken and needs fixing.
While you often come across such items during your regular maintenance, a broken roof or chipped gutters cannot be maintained: they need to be repaired, otherwise they will let water seep in and damage your indoors.
Not all items can be repaired. To fix a broken window, you need a window repairman to come and bring a new one.
Similarly, water stains on walls, floors, or ceilings are tell-tale signs of water problems. Maintenance will not solve this. If you attempt to ignore them, you will just be pushing the problem—often literally—under the carpet. This issue requires proper attention and repair to ward off possible flooding.
When Maintenance and Restoration Get Mixed up
There is gray area where maintenance and restoration meet. There are a lot of issues that can be solved with proper and frequent maintenance. However, there comes a point where a restoration expert needs to be called in.
Appliances and House Areas That Require Maintenance
Certain appliances and house areas need regular maintenance:
- Hot water heaters, roofs, windows, chimneys, and faucets need to be maintained to avoid flooding, fire, and mold.
- Gutters need to be cleaned to avoid potential flooding and erosion of your foundation.
- Trees must be pruned to make sure no branches are dangling over the house, or they may break during strong winds and crash on your roof.
- You need to maintain and clean your HVAC units because replacing them can be quite expensive.
Besides these, you need to organize a thorough check-up of your property and go through cracks to make sure your foundation is sturdy. Pay particular attention to signs of mold and dampness to ensure you do not have a leakage. If you discover any leakage, then restoration and repair are necessary.
When Maintenance Is Not Enough
A broken roof tile or lost shingle can be easily replaced as part of your annual maintenance.
However, roof damage from a broken branch may be too extensive to fix on your own. No matter how much you clean your gutters and make sure no tree branches touch your roof, accidents, and extreme weather can cause roof damage that is beyond maintenance: in this case, you need restoration.
Likewise, a clogged sewer may be past maintenance. Tree roots can cause backups, lead to unsightly puddles on your lawn, and even break underground pipes. To avoid flooding, you need to repair your sewer lines as soon as possible.
As for mold, small patches can be cleaned with a little bit of bleach. But mold is often a sign of a deeper problem, such as a leaking or burst pipe within a wall. If that’s the case, then it’s time to call mold restoration experts.
Finally, after an emergency like a fire or a flood, there is very little maintenance that can be done. You require a professional restoration company to take care of all the rebuilding to restore your house to its previous condition.
Emergencies Require Restoration
There are several emergencies that can be prevented with maintenance and careful home upkeep.
Other emergencies, however, cannot be prevented, predicted, or stopped. Wildfires, heavy rains, snowstorms, and accidents require professional and expert restoration to bring back your home to its previous condition. In these cases, maintenance can do very little to mitigate the problem.