5 Home Repairs That Will Cost You
Maintenance and repairs of your household can be difficult for the uninformed homeowner. Neglecting to check, observe and regularly service your home will lead you to spend a lot of money on its eventual repair or replacement. Just like any other device, your home is also subject to wear and tear. This could be from extensive usage, outside effects, or the device becoming old. Either way, one must always keep an eye on these few repairs.
1. Foundation Repair
The foundation of your home determines how long your home will last. Factors like where your home is built and what kind of land its built on determining the foundation. Whether it soaks up water and becomes soft, or is barren and hard, the nature of the land where your house is built can affect the stability of your home.
Foundation damage can cost you from $450 to around $11,000 based on the extent of the damage. Cracks in your home and pockets of water pooling are signs of a weak foundation. Sloping floors and doors, windows that don’t fit are also signs of a foundation problem.
Foundation damage is similar to tooth decay, while your tooth can still function without causing pain when the decay is on the outside, it becomes unbearable and dangerous once the decay reaches the core. Similarly, leaving foundation issues unattended could create other complications such as leakage and plumbing issues within your home, not to mention the build-up of mold and mildew that could clog your drains and stagnant water that would lead you and your family members susceptible to waterborne diseases.
A very dangerous variant of foundation damage is Termite Damage. If ever there is a termite infestation in your home, it is imperative to resort to an exterminator. Neglecting and allowing a termite infestation to spread would lead to all wooden structures becoming very weak and could lead to parts of your home collapsing.
While having any sort of insect infestation in your home being very frustrating, a termite infestation may cause irreversible damage to your home if neglected for far too long. To fix, repair or replace the damage caused by a termite infestation would cost you an average of $7229.
2. Electrical Wiring
Electricity is and always will be a necessity in a home. Imagine, no hot water for tea or bathing, no AC or fan on hot days and no electrical heater on cold winter nights. Horrible isn’t it? Not only that, appliances like your dishwasher, AC, washing machine, etc, are rendered useless without electricity.
Furthermore, faulty wiring can be fatal to the residents of the house. Poor wiring could lead to residents getting dangerous electric shocks. Another dangerous consequence of poor or faulty wiring is leading to electrical fires which could burn down your home.
If it ever comes to a situation where you need to fix the faulty wiring or need to rewire your home, you probably will have to cough up from $318 up to $15,000! This is because wiring is a component that exists within the walls of your home and to rewire or replace the wiring is a difficult and long process.
3. HVAC
HVAC stands for Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning. As you’d know summers are now blistering hot with the sudden rise in heat waves in the country, and winters have been colder than ever! Now imagine, surviving in a home without the cool air of an AC on a hot summers day or unable to stay warm via heater in the frigid winters. Seems impossible right?
So obviously, one needs to look into the maintenance of HVAC devices at home. Firstly, since they are usually installed and embedded on to the house, they are quite difficult to replace. It is, for this reason, the cost of replacement of HVAC in the home would cost you around $1000 to $2000 for a simple gas furnace and around $8000 if you want or have a professional furnace system.
4. Plumbing
While it isn’t easy to inspect what is happening within the pipelines of your home, one must be wary of leakages. A water leakage would lead to having all wooden parts of your home turn rotten and the accumulation of bacteria which could infect your family members and you with harmful diseases. A broken or leaking pipeline will lead to the build-up of mold which would lead to the discoloration of your walls and other surfaces.
An even worse scenario is when a sewage pipeline is leaking or broken. First and foremost you would have to bear with the horrendous stench, and the harmful diseases and insects that would swarm around your home. A broken sewage pipeline would lead to clogged or overflowing toilets, and the flowing of sewage on to your lawn or backyard. This, in turn, would make your home horribly unappealing to you and passersby, and nobody wants that!
What’s more, in order to fix the problem of a leaking water/sewage pipeline, you’d have to cough up around $1000 to $2000 based on the extent of the damage. But, the worst expense you’d have to endure is to have your entire lawn dug up and bear the horrible stench of an open sewage line and to refurbish and re-landscape it would have you shelling out much much more money.
5. Roof Repair and Replacement
People often forget that the roof on top of their heads also needs to be maintained. As much as it protects you, you need to maintain it. Be it loose or missing shingles, or the dreaded ice dams. Ice dams are a homeowner’s worst enemy as they seem like harmless icicles on your roof in the winter. But when summer arrives, the ice melts and the water accumulates below your shingles. If not taken care of, this collected water will seep through and leak from your ceiling and walls.
Replacement, however, is the worst-case scenario which is common because of owner negligence. A basic Asphalt Shingle roof replacement will set you back $5000, whereas if you own a high-end roof system you could see your expenses skyrocket to around $12000!
Not to mention that if you already suffer from a leaky ceiling and walls, you’d have to spend more money on the repair and repainting of your interiors.
How To Stay Protected
All the above repair or replacement cases above are your worst-case scenario. As a homeowner, you could be proactive and ensure that your home is well protected and all its utilities running smoothly. Maintenance on your own involves you doing a lot of budgeting and expenditure to ensure everything in your home is proper. To make things easier for you, you could use this home maintenance calculator, which allows you to gauge the amount you’d be spending on servicing the various parts of your house. The calculator allows you to foresee how much you’d be spending on repairs for your whole household for the next 25 years!
If you feel that constant watch of your household is a tedious task as you’re coupled with other responsibilities, you can always resort to getting a quote and applying for a home warranty. By paying a relatively small amount of money upfront, you’re ensuring that the repair and servicing of your home are taken care whenever a mishap befalls it. Furthermore, a home warranty isn’t like your ordinary product warranty that grants protection and repair for only one aspect of your home. It potentially adds life to various vulnerable aspects of your home like your plumbing and electrical wiring.
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