Regular apartment building maintenance checks prevent unsolicited expenses for both leasing companies and tenants. Besides, it ensures optimal living conditions as well as reduces the occurrence of accidents and tenant complaints. This brief checklist provides you with a plan of what must be done regarding building maintenance depending on your specific situation. The maintenance activities described here should be completed twice a year, even if we are talking about new construction.
Line up Your Maintenance Team
In many cases, hiring maintenance personnel falls into the role of the maintenance supervisor or service manager, but employee performance ultimately depends on the community manager. Your maintenance supervisor should oversee daily and routine maintenance tasks, making adjustments for specific individuals. Occasionally, you and your supervisor may conclude that an outside contractor is needed. Probably the best way to organize your maintenance team is to hire specialized technicians and appoint them to areas like plumbing, appliances, electrical, tools, HVAC, walls and ceilings, flooring, and cleaning.
Check the Condition of the Paint
Ensure that the maintenance team carefully inspects all the walls in the building. Look for all the areas where the paint is scratched, chipped, or worn. Also, check for major and minor marks on the walls. There shouldn’t be any holes, dents, paint drips, or marks on the wall. Any clear signs of wear and tear, like scratches and chips, should be marked down for repainting. Your maintenance report should include a description of areas that need repainting, as well as the date of paint inspection.
Inspect the Flooring
Hire a floor care technician to inspect all flooring in the common spaces and hallways, making sure there are no loose boards, protruding nails, or other tripping hazards. If there’s wooden flooring, the technicians should make sure that the entire area is in good condition. If needed, they should apply a recoat to keep dirt and contamination at bay, as well as use a bonding agent and topcoat to give the floor a durable shiny finish. Your maintenance report should include a description of flooring areas that need cleaning or renovating, as well as the date of paint inspection. As this master in design for urban environment explains, the places that we inhabit are currently facing significant challenges, which calls for professionals who know about the past, understand the present and can anticipate the future to think up solutions in collaboration with their inhabitants and the people in charge of managing them.
Check the Plumbing System
Apartment buildings have complex plumbing systems that ensure that multiple apartments have reliable supply and drainage, so it needs to be inspected at least twice a year to prevent serious problems. A clogged drain is among the most common issues, and depending on the location of the clog, it might affect one or several rental units. Luckily, it’s a problem that is easily solved if detected on time. For example, certain plumbers not only fix your blocked drains but get down to the underlying causes to make sure you don’t experience future problems and expenses.
Inspect Electrical Safety
The electrical inspection is a major part of apartment building maintenance. Hazards that are the most frequent cause of electrical injuries there is direct contact with power lines, lack of ground-fault protection, the path to the ground is missing or discontinuous, equipment not used as prescribed by the user’s manual, as well as the improper use of extension and flexible cords. The electrician should also check that all the lightbulbs and light fixtures in common areas work properly. Replace lightbulbs where needed and have fixtures cleaned if they look dusty.
Test the Elevators
Having one or more elevators in your building is a wonderful asset for attracting and retaining tenants. However, as with all luxury features, they require their share of upkeep and compliance with safety regulations. Although there are national laws that govern elevator maintenance, most states and cities have additional standards and codes. Apart from inspecting them twice a year, more frequent inspections are recommended if the system has a poor track record. Among other things you should check the response time, travel time between floors, door operation, leveling, call lights, and floor indicators.
Perform Pool Maintenance
The pool is an additional luxury bonus that can make your apartment building rental attractive for tenants, but only if it’s maintained. Apart from regular cleaning and chemical treatment week after week, more thorough pool maintenance must be done twice a year. The pool maintenance team must make sure the heating, lights, and filtration equipment are in good condition, as well as inspect life rings, and hooks. Ground fault detectors for underwater lights must be working, and depending on the pool size, make sure there are safety lines with rope floats, hooks, and cup anchors.
It’s on the landlord to provide a safe and enjoyable environment for the property tenants. Regular building maintenance, however, goes a great length from establishing trusting relationships with your tenants. By inspecting the whole building twice a year, you’re also protecting your investment.
