Annual home check visit

A home maintenance service built around a written report rather than a sales visit. Once a year a crew walks your house on a fixed checklist, exercises the valves, makes the small adjustments that are quicker to do than to write down, and leaves you a document describing the condition of the building and what is coming.

Cars get serviced on a schedule because somebody made that normal. Houses, which cost considerably more, get attention when something breaks. This visit exists to move a house from the second category into the first, and the report is the part that makes it useful rather than just tidy.

What the visit covers

• A full checklist walk of the interior, the basement or crawl and the exterior
• Every shut off valve exercised, including the main, so they still work when needed
• Minor adjustments as we go, covering doors, hardware, handrails and fasteners
• Sump pump cycled under water, with the discharge line traced to where it ends
• A written report with photographs and a plain order of priority

The adjustments matter more than they sound. A crew already standing in a hallway can tighten a handrail, adjust a strike plate and drive a long screw into a hinge in less time than it takes to write those three items on a list for later.

Why valves get exercised

A shut off valve that has not moved in 15 years is a valve that will not move when you need it, and the moment you need it is the moment water is already running. Older multi turn stops seize, weep at the stem or refuse to seal. Turning each one, once a year, keeps them working and reveals the ones that are past it.

Where a valve fails the test, we tell you rather than forcing it. Replacing a set of them properly is the water damage prevention package, which also covers washing machine hoses and the water heater. Doing that once puts the house in a position where the annual check is a check rather than a list of repairs.

The report, and what makes it worth reading

Every item gets a photograph, a plain description and a place in one of three groups. Needs attention now, watch this year, and fine for the foreseeable future. No urgency is manufactured, and items in the third group are named specifically so you know they were looked at rather than skipped.

Year over year is where the value compounds. The second report reads against the first, so a crack that has not moved reads differently from a crack that has, and the difference is a photograph rather than a memory. Owners who keep these find them useful at sale time as well, since a buyer asking about a house gets documents instead of reassurance.

What gets looked at, in order

We start below ground, because the basement or crawl tells the truth about the house. Foundation walls, the slab, evidence of water, the sump and its discharge, the rim joist, the water heater age plate and any sign of pests. Most of what a house is going to cost you in the next five years announces itself down there first.

Then the living space, room by room. Windows and doors for operation, ceilings for stains, wet areas for failed caulk, detectors for placement and manufacture date. Then the attic where access allows, which is where insulation, ventilation and any roof leak show themselves long before the ceiling does.

Last the exterior, walking the full perimeter. Grade against the foundation, downspout discharge, caulk joints at trim and penetrations, siding condition, the deck structure and rails, and the roofline from the ground. We do not walk roofs on this visit and we say what we can see rather than what we cannot.

Things we find most often

A sump discharge ending three feet from the foundation. Detectors past their manufacture date. A dryer vent nobody has cleaned since the house was built. Exterior caulk that has failed on the south and west elevations where the sun hits hardest. And grading that has settled toward the house, which is the slow cause behind most damp basement complaints in this region.

None of those are dramatic. All of them are cheap now and expensive later, which is the entire argument for looking once a year. The seasonal versions of the work sit in fall winterization and the spring opening package, and plenty of clients book the check with one of them.

Where the report turns up a safety item rather than a maintenance one, it goes at the top and gets called out plainly. Detectors and ground fault protection are the common pair, handled properly under the fire and carbon monoxide package.

The five year view, and planning spending

Every house carries a queue of large expenses with rough dates attached. A roof has a life, a water heater has a life, a deck has a life, and the windows will eventually come up. Most owners know this in the abstract and get surprised in the particular, because nobody has ever written the dates down in one place.

The report puts approximate ages against the major components and a rough horizon on each. That turns a vague worry into a plan, and a plan turns a crisis into a scheduled expense. It also means the work happens in the right season rather than in whatever month the thing finally failed.

Owners planning larger work benefit most, since sequencing matters more than people expect. There is no sense putting a new floor down over a subfloor that will be opened next year for plumbing. How that thinking works on a real project is set out in our renovation budget guide, and the costs people miss are in this piece on hidden costs.

Older houses, and the things worth leaving alone

A century old house in this region will have settled, cracked and been repaired by several generations of trades, and not all of that needs correcting. Plaster hairlines that have not moved in 40 years are not a defect. Original windows that have been maintained are usually worth keeping. A floor that slopes gently has probably sloped since before anybody living owned the house.

The report says so explicitly, because a document that flags everything teaches an owner nothing. What it does flag is movement, which is why the year over year comparison matters more than any single reading. Plaster specifics are covered in our notes on repairing plaster walls.

Historic properties bring their own constraints, especially where a district has rules about exterior changes. We flag those rather than assuming, since replacing a window on a street with a review board is a longer conversation than replacing one in a subdivision.

Comfort items, and where the heat goes

Almost every owner has one room that is colder than the rest, and the report is a good place to work out why. Air leakage, insulation gaps and duct problems all produce the same complaint and want different fixes. Narrowing it down costs nothing during a walk that is happening anyway.

Where the answer is leakage, draft sealing and weatherization is the cheapest work available and the one with the least downside. Where the answer is the attic, the background is in our attic insulation guide. Where it is the ductwork, we say so and name the trade.

Who books this

Owners who intend to stay in a house for decades and would rather spend steadily than in emergencies. Adult children arranging it for a parent who is still in the family home, where the report answers a question that is difficult to ask directly. And owners of older houses in Ann Arbor and Chelsea where the building has real character and real maintenance demands.

People who have just bought are the other group, usually starting the year after the new homeowner package. Starting a record in year one and adding to it annually is the cheapest way to own a house well, and it takes one afternoon a year.

Houses that sit empty for part of the year need something different, since a single annual visit does not cover a winter of risk. That is the monthly vacant home check, and owners who travel usually run both.

Decks, porches and the structures out back

Outdoor structures age faster than anything else on a property and get inspected least. Ledger connections, post bases sitting in wet ground, rails that have loosened and fasteners that have backed out are all things a person walks past every day without registering. They are also the items where failure is sudden rather than gradual.

Our walk covers the structure rather than the finish. A grey deck that is structurally sound is a cosmetic question, and a freshly stained deck with a failing ledger is a serious one. Where the surface is the issue, timing matters in Michigan, and the reasoning is in our deck maintenance guide.

Where the structure is past repair, rebuilding is real work with a permit behind it and it runs through our deck crews on a project timeline. The report will say plainly which of those two situations you are in rather than leaving it as a judgment call.

Garages get the same treatment, including the overhead door seal, the service door and any water finding its way in at the slab edge. It is the part of the property where a small problem is most likely to sit unnoticed for several years, mostly because nobody spends time standing in a garage looking at the walls.

Arranging it for a parent

A fair number of these bookings come from an adult child rather than the owner. The visit works well in that situation because it is neutral. Nobody is telling a parent their house is failing. A crew walks the building, writes down what it found and sends the document to whoever is paying, with the owner’s agreement.

Where the report raises access or safety concerns, we describe them without prescribing a lifestyle. A handrail that moves, a step that has settled, a bathroom with nothing to hold on to. The work that follows, when a family decides to do it, is the bathroom accessibility package or the wider accessibility modification work.

The multigenerational version of this comes up constantly now, where a parent is moving in rather than staying put. The layout questions worth asking early are in our notes on designing for more than one generation.

What this is not

It is not a home inspection in the transactional sense, and it should not be represented as one to a buyer or a lender. Those reports follow a defined standard, are produced by licensed inspectors and serve a legal purpose in a sale. This is a builder walking a house on a maintenance checklist, which is a different document for a different job.

It is also not a mechanical service. We do not service furnaces, air conditioning or chimneys, and we note their age and obvious condition rather than certifying them. Where something looks wrong we say which trade to call, and we do not take money to look at systems we are not the right company to judge.

Where a report item turns into a real project, it moves onto our normal project process with drawings, permits where required and a proper schedule. The check is the front end of that, not a substitute for it.

What to have ready

• Access to the basement or crawl, the attic hatch and the electrical panel
• Last year’s report if you have one, since the comparison is the point
• A note of anything that has changed or bothered you since the last visit
• Records of work done by other trades during the year
• An hour of somebody’s time at the end to walk through the findings

A copy of the report goes to whoever you tell us to send it to, which matters when the person paying and the person living in the house are not the same. That final hour is optional and it is the part clients say they get the most from. Reading a report on your own is useful, up to a point. Standing in the basement while somebody points at the thing they photographed is considerably more useful, and it takes the anxiety out of a document full of observations.

Booking it

Late winter and early spring are the quiet months for this work, which makes them the easiest to book and a sensible time to look at a house that has just been through a Michigan winter. The visit runs through the repairs and service side of the company, on its own calendar.

Any repairs carried out during the visit carry the coverage in our workmanship warranty. To see what the same crews build on larger work, View our Portfolio across Southeast Michigan and the towns we serve. To get the first visit on the calendar, contact us now for a free quote, or book a consultation if a project is already in mind.