I make sure that right after a tenant signs a lease, we take a walk to the water meter and I demonstrate how to turn the water off in an emergency. That way they know how to shut down water to the entire house if they need to.
As far as heating, I had a call on Christmas once. My response was to put on a sweater or coat and I will call someone tomorrow.
My property manager has a whole storage room of space heaters she rolls out if there are any furnace problems on the weekends or holidays. This way we can keep our legal obligations and keep the tenants comfortable until Monday/after the holiday, thus avoiding paying the "off hours" markups to have a service person come out and fix the problem.
If it's a plumbing issue nightmare and something is leaking water all over your property, that's a different story! I'd say you'd have to bite the dust and pay emergency repair fees.
I make sure that right after a tenant signs a lease, we take a walk to the water meter and I demonstrate how to turn the water off in an emergency. That way they know how to shut down water to the entire house if they need to.
As far as heating, I had a call on Christmas once. My response was to put on a sweater or coat and I will call someone tomorrow.
Wow Rob thanks for that gem of information. I'm going to email my PM's and make sure this happens from now on.
Mehran Kamari Check out this thread:
It's full of good info about plumbing valves. It's much easier for a tenant (even one that dropped out of eighth grade) to turn the water off if it has quarter turn ball valves, as opposed to multi turn gate valves.
I highly recommend replacing the valves when you buy a house. It's a hassle having the city come out and turn the water off at the street, but you only have to do it once and then rest assured that everything is cool.
Thanks Rob K again.
Since I may as well be considered an 8th grade dropout when it comes to home improvement/rehab, I have a question. Are there any other places other than sinks/toilets that these shutoff valves would be located?
Sorry Brian for kind of hi-jacking your thread btw! Still related info though.
Since I may as well be considered an 8th grade dropout when it comes to home improvement/rehab, I have a question. Are there any other places other than sinks/toilets that these shutoff valves would be located?
Sorry Brian for kind of hi-jacking your thread btw! Still related info though.
I would say that the most important place is on both sides of the water meter. Next would be the valves for the washing machine since not all tenants will have one. It's much easier for the gate valves to start dripping than a ball valve. Outside spigots should always be quarter turn.
I prefer having ball valves everywhere, but under sinks and toilets is not as pressing since they are feeding faucets and not open where they could easily drip.
I too make sure the shutoff valves are easily accessible. In older houses around here they're sometimes in the crawl space. I get those into a location where a tenant could cut them off quickly.
I too have space heaters available and I have taken those over to the tenants when there was a problem.
Some problems can't be fixed instantly, no matter what we want. I have a paragraph in my lease that states I'll keep the tenant informed, but that sometime repairs take time.
I have some electric space heaters and also a propane torpedo heater that can be used short term. It's great to quickly heat up a freezing basement.
One thing that tenants can do to keep the house warm in an emergency is boil water on the stove. It will keep a small house warm. Some will leave the oven on with the door open, but I recommend not doing this. I have heard that too much carbon monoxide will get out.
I had a furnace break this winter. Of course, it had to happen at 2pm on a Saturday. My furnace guy is good and was there by 4. The heat exchanger was junk and the furnace had to be replaced. It was five degrees out and my tenant requested that I pay for a hotel. As if! I told him that he was the captasin of the ship and had to hold down the fort to keep the pipes from freezing. He ended up boiling water on the stove and running two space heaters. I stopped by on Monday when the new furnace was going in. It was still 65 degrees in the house. Everyhting was cool.
Since I may as well be considered an 8th grade dropout when it comes to home improvement/rehab, I have a question. Are there any other places other than sinks/toilets that these shutoff valves would be located?
Sorry Brian for kind of hi-jacking your thread btw! Still related info though.
No problem. I'm learning from your exchange.
Great information guys - thank you very much.
Here's a situation that I see in my head that I'm wondering about: It's Christmas Day. I'm at a family member's house with my entire family enjoying all things Christmas. My phone is on vibrate and I'm not even thinking about a possible phone call. However, later that night at 10:00PM when I leave their house to head back to mine, I get a voicemail from earlier in the day about a water or heating "emergency". Do I return the call and call a repairman immediately or do I wait until the next morning to handle everything or do I simply text the tenant and tell them I'll contact them in the morning?
I may be making this a bigger deal than it is or worrying too much about this, but when I'm with my family, I'll often take my phone out of my pocket, put it on vibrate or silent, and put it on a counter somewhere until much later that night. Must I be "on call" 24 hours a day?
Brian W. As a landlord, I am never on call 24 hours a day, although I may be reachable via text and or voicemail. In a situation as you stated above, I will respond to the tenant to let them know I have received the message however due to the holiday and or time it may be a little difficult to have a service tech come out to assess and resolve the problem and that I will work on it in the morning and let them know when a tech can come out or I be there in the morning to assess the problem ( to get a better understanding of the problem), sometimes its and easy fix with a few exceptions.
Brian W. This is why I just rather use a property manager!
Rob K So to do work on/replace the valves next to the water meter, you schedule the city to turn off the water? Or is there a master valve somewhere on the sidewalk you can shut off?
Jon Holdman May I ask the logic behind having that paragraph in your lease? I like the idea but I'd love to hear your thoughts behind it as I don't think I truly understand how it covers/benefits you. Is it so you can refer the tenant to the lease if they complain something isn't being fixed quick enough?
Mehran Kamari There is a main shutoff outside. In my area, it's at the property line (one foot in from the sidewalk). You need a special socket to get the top of the shaft open and then a long tool that goes down in the shaft to turn the water valve. I have both of these tools, but don't use them unless I need to. If the city breaks that valve, it's on them. If I break it, it's my expensive problem. Most cities don't want you messing with it.
Brian W. You will find that you won't get that many emergency calls like what you're describing. I have over 35 tenants and have only gotten one such call on Christmas. I have had tenants text me "Merry Christmas" which is a nice gesture, but annoying. When I had a few houses, I used one cell phone. Sometimes you would get a call or text at time when you're trying not to work. It is a hassle. You don't need to be on call 24 hours a day. You're not an ER doctor or head of the CIA. Most everything can wait.
What I did that made my life a lot easier is get a 2nd cell phone. It's only $10 per month with Verizon to add a line. I have an iphone for personal use and a regular phone with keyboard for my business. I ignore that phone after 4:30 on most days and leave it home when I'm not working. The voicemail directs prospective tenants to my website and lets current tenants know my normal business hours and to only leave a message if it's an emergency. I've also found out that some people's idea of an emergency is different from mine. One guy left a message at 10:30pm to say that he saw a mouse.
You will also find that some prospective tenants want to call about a house at 1am. I never understood this. I turn the ringer off at night. When I get up around 6am, I check the phone. If there's any missed calls from a rude time, I call them back and wake them up. I will say, "I see that I missed your call a little while ago. What's the emergency?" Usually, they will get mad at me. If they sound tired I will ask if they were taking a nap.
The guy that saw the mouse got an early morning call from me. I asked him if he was a little girl that's afraid of mice and what was I supposed to do about it at night? He apologized and said he was afraid of mice. I told him in a nice way to clean his house.
I don't have much to add to this string other than to say that for certain services, I make sure to have top notch people. In Texas, it's not the cold but the heat in the summer that will have the tenants ready to mutiny. I use and HVAC guy who is not cheap but he's johnny-on-the-spot when I need him. (If he's not around someone in his company is.) Tried to go cheap in the past and all I got was angry tenants. I also have a specific provision in my lease about HVAC where I explain that I use third-parties and sometimes it cannot get fixed same day.
I agree with Rob K about the frequency of these emergencies. I don't have as any units as he has, but I very rarely get a call that's a legitimate emergency.
Lots of great info here. My contractor replaces gate valves with ball valves on each property we purchase. When a tenant moves in, we show them how to turn off the water. We also show them, in the SFRs, how to read the water meter so they can check occasionally for leaks even if they don't see any...the needle on the meter will be moving even when there is no water running. They are to call us if that ever happens, but it's not an emergency.
We have condos in FL, and the law there if the central A/C breaks is that a response is required within 24 hours. Not a repair, a response. Of course, A/Cs only break on weekends or holidays, so several times the tenants had to wait a few days for a repair or replacement. As long as we send the HVAC out there the same day, we are covered.
Excellent idea about the space heaters though! We have 2 properties in NJ, and that will likely come in handy some day. We have a service contract on one of the furnaces, so the tenant knows to call them first.
I tend to let the tenant calls go to my voicemail first, so I can determine what is an emergency. Often when a tenant has to leave a message, they don't - or they decide it's not an emergency. When you actually answer the phone, it's always an emergency.
Mehran Kamari folks sometimes get the idea that ANY problem can be resolved instantly. They can expect that, no matter what, you should have someone there right away. That's impractical. We're dealing with mechanical devices here. They break. It takes time to find someone who can get out there and some times they have to get parts. This clause sets an expectation that I'll keep them updated on repairs but that they shouldn't expect an instant response.
This is good advice. Tenants often complain about their water bill and want to blame the landlord. I always tell them to look at the meter. In my area, the meter has a small red triangle that spins as water moves through the meter. If the red triangle is still, there are no leaks. Of course, the toilet tank could be draining water into the bowl, but you can usually hear that. To make sure a toilet isn't running, I will tell a tenant to turn the toilet supply valve off at night and then check in the morning to see if the tank is full of water. If it's not, the toilet is running.
@Brian W. amd @Mehran K. , a little tip that I learned when we found out the main shutoff had rusted open and the city water shutoff was too rusted to turn off. Rather than have the city curb stop dug up in the middle of winter, we into the apartments and had the tenants turn on their cold water in every spigot. We then went to the spot in front of where the faucet was leaking and cut the pipe with a saw, hit the ridges fast with sandpaper and and stuck a one quarter turn shutoff valve with a sharkbite fitting on the cut pipe and turned off the water. There are several brands now but sharkbite is the best I have found so far, of fittings that need NO SOLDERING to install. When you leave the valve open to put it on you can do so even if water is flowing out. They seal extremely well and I have only had 1 leak out of maybe 40 installations. They work on copper pipe and pex and plastic pipe. Maybe I should start a thread for folks with tips like this.
As to calls on Christmas, due to my work I answer the phone every day at every hour unless I am in court on with someone. I almost never have anyone abuse it. If the call is really an emergency I am glad I answered, if it is not I manage to convey my displeasure to them about stupid calls at 3 am and they tend not to repeat them. Good topic.
We changed all of our outside water spigots to the frost-free type. The valve is thus further in where it doesn't freeze and the water in the outside part of the spigot drains out. We also make sure outside hoses are disconnected and the spigots are covered with a spigot cozy before the cold weather arrives. With the frost-free type spigot, even if a tenant reattaches the hose at the wrong time of year we haven't had any problems.
My plumber told me there are two things that are hardest on a house.
1. Water that's going where it shouldn't be going.
2. A homeowner trying to do his own handyman work.
Water can cause a lot of damage quite quickly. A true emergency. We want tenants to call us any time of day or night if they can't stop the water flowing and to report what has happened. We show tenants how to turn off the water, but learned the hard way you must periodically test the shut off valves under all sinks, toilets, washers and hot water heaters as well as master shut offs. They can age and fail.
We set "water alarms" near every hot water heater and under the kitchen sink. On more than one occasion this has alerted the tenant of a water leak or alerted us that something was wrong and we were able to mitigate the damage.
Establish a good relationship with your HVAC repair company, electrician, plumber and carpet cleaning company. Our business as a loyal customer has gained us their favor and they have been quick to respond to our needs.
@marcia
@Marcia Maynard undefined
you have not had problems because your average low temp in January in 98662 is 36F.
those frost free are junk. i have tried the HD ones and specialty store ones and they split inside the house.
the frost free "cozy" is even bigger junk and a waste of money. think about it... the cozy stays outside the house, where it's cold. the air goes between the siding/brick and the cozy, so the same air temp is next to the pipe. nothing warms the pipe inside the cozy....i dont know how people even believe that it helps.
Great tip about showing the tenant how to turn off the water in case of an emergency!
I also replace all shut off valves with quarter turn valves in any new acquisition as well as replace all electrical outlets specially in older homes where the outlets only have 2 prongs instead of 3 which is required by most electric space heaters
I have extra electric space heaters in case of an emergency. but I keep asking myself, what would happen when there's no electricity due to a bad storm? Off course that would mean that the entire neighborhood has no electricity in which case you are covered but it would be nice to have one of those propane heaters ( which do not need electricity to function) to help out the tenant.
For HVAC i have a service contract with the gas company. It can be expensive but they will come the same day if there is a no heat situation and repair the furnace.
@ George P.
What works for your climate and what works for mine will of course differ. I'm sharing what works for me. This morning it is 19 degrees fahrenheit here. These products are helpful to us. I do what I can to prevent damages from cold weather as we experience it. If I were in your climate in Michigan I would use what works there. If I were in Alaska I would do what works in Alaska. It is all relative.
i know, but even the HD people tell customers not to get those spigots. the best way for preventing spigots from bursting is either not have one or use pex, which expands 3 times more and it would allow the water to freeze (story i heard and that's what i use).
regardless what type of ending you have, one should always have a shutoff inside the house BEFORE the spigot, so when turned off, you can open the spigot and the water can drip out.