Introduction to Home Maintenance Skills

While there are general skills that need to be developed in order to effectively take care of your home yourself, like carpentry, electrical knowledge, and plumbing basics, the most fundamental skill you need to be able to effectively take care of your home is an understanding of how your home works, and developing a mental model of how to approach problems that you encounter.

Once you put together your mental model of your house, the single most important skill you can develop is the belief that you can fix your problem. None of this is rocket surgery. You may not have the time, tools, or inclination to fix something yourself, but you should have a pretty good understanding of what the issues are.

The second most important skill is the ability to Google well. If you know what to search for, you can find comprehensive instructions on how to perform literally every task that could be necessary. The problem is figuring out what terms to use. I have heard it called the “Rumpelstiltskin Problem”. Once you have the name, you can do whatever you want, but first you need to figure out the name.

So let’s talk about the 8 fundamental systems of your home. While I am not David Macaulay, and I can’t draw cute mammoths, this is a basic overview of how your home works.

Your Home Systems

Every house has, at a minimum, a foundation, exterior walls, and a roof. Every house that is considered habitable also has interior walls, an electrical system, a plumbing system, a heating system, and a cooling system, and interior features like cabinets and appliances. Because I don’t imagine that many of you live in hovels, we will simply assume that your house has all of these systems.

Foundation:

In Southern Arizona, the most common type of foundation is “slab on grade.” This type of foundation involves pouring concrete into a prepared site to form a solid, flat base upon which the house is built. Other foundation types include piers, which are often used in uneven or flood-prone areas; crawlspaces, which provide a small gap under the home for access to wiring and plumbing; and basements, which are rare in Southern Arizona due to soil and climate conditions. You are unlikely to have foundation issues, and if you do, they are probably caused by water getting into, and under the foundation. Fixing a foundation issue is not inside the scope of this article. You are going to need professional help.

Exterior Walls:

Exterior walls in most homes consist of a wood frame that supports the house and shapes its structure. These frames are typically covered on the outside by siding materials such as vinyl, wood, or brick. Between the external siding and the interior drywall, there is usually a layer of insulation that helps in temperature regulation and energy efficiency.

Roof:

A typical residential roof is framed with trusses or rafters, which are then covered with a sheathing material (often plywood) and finally finished with shingles, tiles, or metal panels. We also have “flat” roofs, which are also called built up roofs. Flat roofs are framed in the same way, and have a plywood decking, but the slope of the roof is much flatter than is typical in other parts of the country. Instead of shingles, or tiles, a series of layers are laminated together by applying various liners and coatings. There are many different products and ways to create a flat roof, but they all work in more or less the same fashion. The roof’s primary function is to protect the home from weather and insulate against temperature changes.

Interior Walls:

Interior walls are typically constructed from a wood frame, and covered on both sides by drywall. These walls define the living spaces within the home and provide additional thermal and sound insulation. They sometimes have insulation in them. They are almost always painted, but sometimes they have wallpaper, or some other covering.

Electrical System:

Electrical power comes into the house through a service panel. That panel will have some kind of device to prevent electrical overload, either breakers or fuses. Breakers are reusable. Fuses are not. Modern homes will have a breaker. Depending on the size and complexity of your home, you may have one or more sub-panels located throughout your house. You want to identify the main service panel, so you can turn off electricity to the entire house, and also any sub-panels, so you can turn off electricity to specific areas of the house. From the panel or sub-panel, the electricity flows through wires to outlets, switches, and fixtures. Of particular note are GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) outlets which are installed in areas where the is a risk of water causing an electrical shock. They can trip and need to be reset.

Plumbing:

The plumbing system in a home is split in two, the drain, waste and vent system (DWV), and the water supply system. The DWV system removes sewage and greywater from the home and regulates air pressure in the waste-system pipes to aid free flow. As you might imagine from the name, the water supply system supplies water to the house. Depending on when your house was built, the DWV pipes will be cast iron, clay, PVC, or ABS plastic. Depending on when your house was built, and what is being supplied with water, the water supply pipes will be copper, PEX, PVC or poly. The plumbing system is the single most important system to have functioning properly because leaks from it are the primary cause of damage that doesn’t involve a weather event. The water supply system ends at “fixtures,” the sink, shower, toilet, etc. Each fixture should have a way to turn off water to that fixture without needing to turn off water to the entire house. For example, the sink will have a hot water and a cold water shut off under the sink. The toilet will have a water shut off behind it.

Heating and Cooling:

Most homes have a forced air system with either a furnace (for heating) and an air conditioner (for cooling) or a combined HVAC unit that does both, which is typically a heat pump. A forced air system means that there is a fan that blows air over a heat exchanger, through ducts and into the home. There is then an air return system that brings the conditioned air back to the fan. It is a re-circulating system. To keep it most efficient, you want to try to keep the inside, conditioned, air inside.

The other kind of cooling beside air conditioning you might have is evaporative or “swamp” cooling. Arizona is almost unique in America in having evaporative cooling, where outside air is blown over water-soaked pads, causing the water to evaporate and cool the air. That humid cool air is then blown through ducts into the house. Unlike A/C systems, evap systems should have a path for the air to escape the house, because new air is constantly being brought in. Evap systems can significantly reduce cooling bills in the early part of the summer, but rely on the air being cooled to be very dry to work effectively.

An important thing to know about the vast majority of A/C systems is that they are either on or off. So, either they are working their heart out, or doing nothing. As a consequence, turning the thermostat to a lower number does nothing to cool faster, it just causes the system to run longer.

Interior features:

The interior features in a home encompasses all the key elements that make up the livable space. This includes:

Cabinets: These are typically made from materials such as wood, plywood, particleboard, and sometimes metal or glass. Cabinets provide storage and are fundamental to the organization and aesthetics of spaces like kitchens and bathrooms.

Flooring: Flooring varies widely in material, including hardwood, laminate, tile, vinyl, and carpet. Each type of flooring has its own maintenance needs and aesthetic impacts on the home.

Appliances: This category includes all major electrical or gas appliances such as refrigerators, stoves, dishwashers, washing machines, and dryers. Appliances are critical for modern convenience and functionality in the home.

In order for you to be able to effectively develop a mental model of your home, you will need to go through your home and begin to identify the systems that your home has, and figure out, generally, how they work. So, you should know what kind of roof you have. You should know what your exterior siding is. You should know where the electrical panel is, and where the water and gas shut offs are–assuming you have gas too. There are a bunch of books and resources to help you do that. But the best one is the home inspection report you got when you bought your home. If you didn’t get a home inspection, or you can’t find the report, that’s ok too. Amazon has several options for home journals. The one I like best is “I’m a homeowner, now what?”

Practical Steps

Now that you have a basic model of your house, let’s imagine that you wake up and discover a puddle in your kitchen by stepping in it. Your socks are wet, you are tired, and you just wanted to have some coffee, not deal with this nonsense. Alas.

1. Step one is to clearly identify the problem and symptoms you are observing, in this case, there is water on the floor.
2. Step two is to mitigate the problem as much as possible while you do further diagnosis. If the water is coming from the roof, you want to keep it from ruining the flooring, cabinets, and baseboard as much as possible, so you need a bucket. If it’s coming from the sink, you need to turn the water off to at least the sink, if not the whole house.
3. Step three is to figure out why the problem is occurring, what the origin of the problem is, and which of the 8 systems is being impacted. If there isn’t an obvious cause or if you suspect multiple causes, prioritize them based on the severity of the symptoms, then begin testing individual components. Once you identify the origin of the problem–water is coming out from under the dishwasher–you have to determine exactly where the cause is So, you try to identify the source of the problem; is it coming from the sink, the dishwasher, the roof, somewhere else? You may need to dig into the problem to find the exact cause.
4. Step four is to develop a solution to the problem you identified. In this case, the water outlet on the dishwasher had cracked and was leaking. In order to fix it, the dishwasher hose needs to be replaced.
5. Step five is to implement that solution. You may need to iterate through steps 3-5 several times as you discover more clearly what the problem is.

Potential Resources to Start With

It’s not always that straightforward, but I use that framework to begin to approach all of the DIY projects I tackle.

I encourage you to use tools like Google and YouTube to learn more about the specific issues you are having, or projects you want to take on. Home Depot also put out an excellent book “Home Improvement 1-2-3”. Some of the best resources for specific projects I know of are Home RenoVision DIY and the Family Handyman. Also, ChatGPT is actually really helpful, and can provide detailed instructions to help you begin the process. You can also ask clarifying questions, to help you solve the Rumpelstiltskin problem. And if there’s ever a project that you are taking on, I’d be happy to talk through it with you, and maybe come over and help you.