Planning for maintenance

If you plan ahead and prevent problems from arising or getting worse, you’ll save yourself plenty of money and heartache.

What is maintenance?

Maintenance is the work necessary to keep your home in a good state of repair to maximise its value and your comfort. Maintaining your home also helps increase its life, ensures it continues to perform and reduces your impact on the environment.

If your home was built or received building consent after 1992 you are responsible for making sure it continues to meet Building Code requirements.

Maintenance includes everything from regular cleaning to repairs and replacements. It can be a job as small as changing a tap washer, or as large as repainting the whole house.

Benefits of good maintenance

Maintaining your home properly will:

Save you money by allowing you to fix problems before they get bigger.
Make it more comfortable to live in.
Protect your home against weathertightness problems.
Ensure it is safe and secure to live in.
Help keep you and your family healthy.
Help it to hold its value.

Maintenance of NZ homes

On average, we’re not maintaining our homes as well as we should. A study conducted by BRANZ Ltd in 2005 found that:

Most of us wait until a defect becomes visible before doing anything about it.
We don’t spend enough on early maintenance to keep our homes in good condition.
We keep the insides of our homes in better condition than the outsides.

Scheduling maintenance

It’s best to plan a regular maintenance schedule. There are four main approaches to maintenance:

Carry out regular preventive maintenance, such as cleaning your roof and walls. This will prevent some problems from occurring.
Carry out repairs as they are needed. This prevents small problems from turning into big ones. For example, a leaky roof could destroy your ceiling if left unfixed.
Plan ahead for major maintenance tasks such as repainting your home or re-roofing, so you have the money and time available when the work is needed.
Be prepared for emergencies. For example, know where and how your water, gas and power supplies turn off, so you don’t have to go searching when an emergency arises. See the back of the Yellow Pages or the Civil Defence site for information on preparing for a civil defence emergency.

Everything that keeps your home liveable and structurally sound needs to be maintained – from foundations to roofing and cladding to plumbing and electricity supply to interior wall linings.

See the Interior and Exterior maintenance sections for details.

Keeping records

Keep a file of the materials you use when building or maintaining your home. This will help you to use compatible products, such as using the right type of paint for the surface you are painting. It will also help you to claim under the guarantee if a product fails and help future owners of the house.

You may also find it useful to keep a contact list of tradespeople handy.

Building consents

You won’t need building consent to carry out most maintenance tasks, but any work you do must be of a standard required in the Building Act 2004. See The Building Act and You.

You will need a building consent for work such as re-piling, plumbing and drainage work, unless it is just maintenance and repair. If you are doing any major work such as construction, alteration, demolition and site works, check with your building consent authority (usually your local council) about a building consent first.

Insurance

Call your insurance company if you are doing substantial maintenance work, such as burning off paint, or re-roofing (with the risk of fire or water damage). Find out whether your policy covers these types of situations.

If you are hiring a contractor to do work for you, make sure they have public liability insurance in case they damage your or other people’s property while carrying out the work. For example, if the roofer, replacing some rotten spouting, drops a hammer on your car or your visitor’s car parked in the driveway. See Insurance for more information.