Furnaces, mant.

[Tami R.]

It seems like every year at this time I wish I had something put in place for maint. on furnaces, etc...

I do not have it in my lease and if I did I do not think tenants would pay attention... but it seems like NEVER do tenants change the filters in the furnace. We did a maint. inspection last in Dec 2012 with our furnace guy - went great plus he went in houses and told us how our tenants lived, etc.

My question is: 1. Do you have scheduled maint for each of your properties and if so how many times per year?
2. How do you handle furnace filters, etc...Suggestions

I just had pipes in a kitchen freeze in one property this week. The tenant who is an architect for a large contracting co. called and had us come and make sure there were no pipes cracked, etc... What we found was the furnace filter was so clogged we were lucky it did not break. They had the heat on 70 and it could only get to 64 the filter and everything was just full.

[David Krulac]

@Levi F.

Welcome from PA.

With the cold winter this year of sub zero temps, electric base board in older uninsulated houses can be very expensive for the tenants. Even houses built in the 1950 & 1960 usually did not have wall insulation, maybe 3 inches in the attic and single pained windows. All 3 of those elements combined with EBB can produce very high electric bills. I've seen 1 br. apts where the electric bills were $400 to $500 a month. When that happens tenants who have options will move out after 1 winter.

After 800 properties we have never installed EBB, we do have some properties that have had EBB, but it has been a very small percentage, maybe 3%. Our preferred heat source is natural gas and we have converted many places from oil to nat gas. We've converted hot water systems and steam systems to hot air, we've added central air and where nat gas is unavailable we have installed electric heat pump.

According to the gas industry the supply of nat gas just in PA. is over 100 years. Nat gas will be plentiful and cheap for the foreseeable future. Nat gas is about 60% cheaper than oil heat and also cheaper than EBB.

EBB heat is the cheapest to install but it is very expensive to operate particularly in houses that don't have heavy attic insulation, wall & floor insulation and double paned windows. We have been adding R-50 attic insulation when we insulate even exceeding the R-38 building code for new construction.