5 Great Tasks To Keep Your Home At Its Best!

It is important to provide your home with routine care and maintenance so that it stays at its very best, but it is very common for homeowners to neglect doing so. Here are a few highly effective – yet simple – home maintenance tasks that will greatly benefit you and your home.

Cleaning the inside of your dryer and dryer vent

According to the US Fire Administration, 2900 fires are caused by built-up lint inside of a dryer every year, which has led to over $35 million in property damage. If excess amounts of lint have built up, it can be ignited from things like gas burners or electric heating elements, which will cause the flames to travel through the lint-lined exhaust vent. These fires can cause extensive damage and easily destroy a home, thankfully, they can be easily prevented. Simply check the exhaust vent as well as the inside of your dryer’s cabinet and clean it on a routine basis to prevent these disasters from occurring.  Many older dryer vents are not up to the new code – metal pipe – they are the plastic flexible lines, those must be replaced.

Cleaning faucet aerators

In case you weren’t aware, a faucet aerator is typically found at the tip of most indoor water faucets and serves multiple purposes. It helps to conserve water and energy costs, reduces faucet noise, prevents splashing, and provides slight filtration of debris. If the water from a faucet has recently started to flow unevenly or slower than normal, then it may be time to clean your faucet aerator.

Cleaning the aerator is a simple process that can help increase the quality and pressure of the water that comes from your faucet. To do this, unscrew and disassemble the aerator, and use something like an old toothbrush to scrub any debris or buildup. While you are there, it is also a good idea to do a quick scrub on the inside of the neck of the faucet, as it is very common for buildup to also occur there. After reassembling, you should find that the quality of the flow of water should be greatly increased.

Cleaning the oven door

Aside from just looking gross, spills and remnants of old food/liquids can cause pretty significant smoke and smell issues. Cleaning the big spills and messes as they happen is a great way to keep your oven looking good, but if you really want to make it shine it is sometimes necessary to go a bit further. To do this, you are going to want to remove the front panel on your oven by removing the screws, if you don’t know where to find the screws consult the manual or do a quick search online to find your model. Once you have it removed, simply take a nylon scrubber and degreaser and get to work! Once you are done, reattach the door and admire the pristine look of your oven.

Cleaning your bath Fan

Your bath fan is very important for the health and comfortability in your bathroom by helping air circulate. However, it’s very easy for it to become downright filthy, thanks to the combination of dust, moisture, and debris that constantly passes through. Cleaning your bath fan is an easy task that provides great benefits.

Before you start, make sure that the switch for the fan is turned off, and then squeeze the springs on the fan’s cover to remove it. Once you have taken off the cover, the next step is to remove the actual fan. First, remove whatever is holding the fan in place, which is most likely a screw. If there is no screw to be found, then there is probably a tab that is holding the fan in place, remove this tab and then push out the metal fan housing. Make sure to watch where you stand though, because there is a high chance that debris will fall out! Now that the fan is out, it’s time to clean. Use a damp rag or moist wipes to clean off all the buildup and use a Q-tip to clean any of the hard to reach sections. Now that your fan and cover are squeaky clean, just reverse the previous steps to reattach your fan and enjoy the benefits!

If you are still disappointed by the lack of performance after cleaning the fan, then you may need a new fan altogether, but that is a topic for another time.

Many older homes have the fans exhaust into the attic and not outside.  The code is to vent them to the outside with either a soffit or roof vent.  If you aren’t sure if yours does, go into the attic, find the fan box and there should be a duct that leads outside.  This is the new code standard…same for exhaust for a vent hood.

Cleaning your trash can

When we say cleaning the trash can, we don’t just mean routinely taking out the trash, although we certainly hope you are doing that as well! Even if you use big hefty trash bags, that doesn’t mean the actual trash can is free from exposure to germs. Sometimes your bag leaks or tears and some garbage manages to make its way to the bottom of the bin, which can cause lingering smells or stains to stay. Thankfully, the solution to this is extremely simple. All you have to do is spray some disinfectant into the bottom of the trashcan each time you take out the trash, take the time once a month to wash it out with some bleach and hot water, and boom, you’re all done.

Keeping your home at its best is something that all homeowners want to do, but a lot of them simply don’t know the best ways to do it. The professionals at PECO Heating & Cooling are your local experts when it comes to home maintenance. Be sure to give our team a call at (864)-639-2424 to learn more!