Moving into a new home can be an exhilarating experience. If this is your first home, you probably can’t wait to move things around and mold the house into your paradise. Even if you’ve owned a home before, moving into a new home will still be an exciting experience for you.
But, it’s possible to be so excited about the new home that you forget to pay attention to some essential details. Here are eight things that you need to address after you move into your new home.
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Change the locks
Changing your locks is one of the first things you should do as a homeowner. Unfortunately, it doesn’t occur to everyone. Many times, people are so excited to move into their new home that they don’t consider this point. Other times, they are so focused on grander things, like repainting the living room or getting new furniture.
But, changing the locks is an essential part of moving into your new home. It prevents unauthorized access. While you’re changing the locks to your home, you have a unique opportunity to do some upgrades. Instead of going with the old-fashioned locks, you can get digital locks. Besides the fact that you can easily integrate the digital locks with your home security system, they also make your home look more modern.
Conserve energy by installing some LED lights
You may not know how helpful LED lights are if you don’t monitor your electricity bill. One LED bulb consumes slightly less power than an incandescent one in a day. But if you multiply that figure by many folds and stretch it out over a few years, you can begin to see the benefit of LEDs.
Besides saving you money on electricity bills, LED bulbs are also long-lasting. One bulb can last for as long as 25,000 hours, or up to three years of continued usage. That’s a lot! Imagine how many incandescent bulbs you would have bought within that period. You can check out bensbargains for a detailed analysis of how much you can save with LED lights.
Do some maintenance
Granted, all the items on this list are one form of maintenance or the other. However, this point refers to specific maintenance tasks that showed up on your home inspection. If you’re a savvy homeowner, then you had an inspection before moving into your new home. There’s no better time to get to it than right after you move in.
It would be best if you didn’t wait until the lack of insulation starts to cost you a lot of money in heating. You also don’t want the cracks in the wall to spread, thus requiring more money to fix. If you’re lucky, you might even be able to get a package deal from a contractor. The contractor could sum up the costs of your maintenance with other projects you want to do around the house. But, you’ll never know if you don’t try.
Address your plumbing
Speaking of maintenance, you need to check for faulty plumbing like leaking faucets pipes. Your home inspector will no doubt pick up some of these faults and put them in the report. But on the off chance that he does, a quick walk around the house will reveal them. Turn on the main water valve and do a quick visit to rooms that have visible plumbing.
You should be checking faucets and exposed pipes for annoying dripping sounds. Also, since the toilet uses 30% of the water in homes, you may want to begin your search there. But why stop there? You can go a step further and upgrade your toilets to high-efficiency ones. They can save you water, which is good for your bills and the environment.
Replace your furnace filters
Changing your furnace filters is something you have to get around to eventually. Some homeowners include this in the list of tasks they assign to maintenance contractors. Others like to do it themselves. But, the problem with doing it yourself is that it can feel like a chore, so much so that you keep procrastinating it.
Did you know that old filters can impede the airflow in your home and cause the furnace to wear out? When you move into a new house, you might not know that the airflow is off because you haven’t lived there before. Don’t wait till your furnace breaks down before you change your filters.
Clean your air ducts
If you genuinely want to improve your air quality, then changing your furnace filters is just the first step. You can think of cleaning your air ducts as the next step. Dirty and clogged up pipes have the same effect as old furnace filters. They disrupt the airflow, and might even introduce some unwanted impurities into your home’s air.
Therefore, you must take out the time to clean your air ducts after you move in. To make the process easier for yourself, you can even clean the ducts before moving in. That way, you don’t have to worry about anything once you finally move.
Check gadgets like CO detectors and smoke alarms
CO detectors and smoke alarms are literal lifesavers. The last thing you want is to risk a potentially dangerous situation for your family and home because the smoke alarm needs new batteries.
Additionally, because it’s easy to assume they work, you may never find out they need maintenance until an event occurs. Even after you’ve settled in, make it a point of duty to check the alarms and detectors regularly.
Consider making some upgrades
We already recommended a few changes on this list, like making your toilets more efficient and changing your light bulbs. But, if you’re moving into a new home, improvements can actually help you settle in better. You can decide to incorporate elements from your old home, like roll down shades and energy-saving windows.
You can also decide to add whole new upgrades. Perhaps you’ve had your eyes on equinox louvered roofs for a while. There’s no better time to pull the trigger than when you’re in a new home. You can experience all the new features of the home at once! Follow this link to get more information, as we as a free quote on installing an equinox louvered roof in your home: https://www.royalcovers.com/equinox-louvered-roof-pergola/
