First-time homeowner? The maintenance to do in your first 90 days

The first job in any home is knowing how to stop water, gas and electricity, because the moment you need to is not the moment to go looking. Walk the house with your phone and photograph each of these, then label them with tape and a marker so the next person, or you at 2am, can find them.

• Main water shut-off. Usually where the supply enters: basement wall, utility room, under the kitchen sink, or an outside meter box in warm climates and in the UK (the internal stop tap is typically under the kitchen sink). Turn it off and on once to confirm it moves. Guide.
• Water heater and boiler shut-offs. There is a cold-water isolation valve on the inlet and, for gas units, a gas valve on the supply pipe.
• Gas meter valve. A quarter-turn lever at the meter. Know where it is; do not practise with it, since relighting pilots and purging air is a job for the utility or a gasfitter.
• Electrical panel or consumer unit. Open it, find the main breaker, and check that the circuits are labelled. If they are not, an afternoon with a helper flipping breakers and shouting "which room?" is worth doing now.
• Furnace or boiler switch and filter location. Note the filter size; it is printed on the frame of the current one.
• Sump pump, septic access, well pressure tank if the house has them.

Press the test button on every smoke and CO alarm, and then turn each one over and read the manufacture date. Anything over ten years old (smoke) or over seven (CO) is replaced now, regardless of whether it chirps. Count the alarms against the rooms: every level, inside or immediately outside every bedroom, and a CO alarm near any fuel-burning appliance and any attached garage. Sellers rarely leave a house fully equipped, and this is the cheapest safety upgrade you will ever make.

Check the fire extinguisher gauge if there is one, or buy a 2 kg (5 lb) ABC unit for the kitchen if there is not. Guide: smoke alarm replacement.

Every appliance and system in the house has a data plate with a brand, model and serial number. Photograph all of them now, while you have the energy of a new owner: furnace or boiler, air conditioner, water heater, range, refrigerator, dishwasher, washer, dryer, garage door opener, sump pump, water softener, irrigation controller.

Two things come from this list. First, you can look up each unit’s installation year (encoded in most serial numbers) and get a realistic picture of what is near the end of its life. A 14-year-old water heater is not a maintenance item; it is a replacement you should start pricing. Second, warranties: register anything still inside its warranty period, and file the paperwork. The Vault in Maintainly Pro exists for exactly this, but a folder on your phone works too.

While you are at it, find out from the seller’s disclosure, the survey, or the previous utility bills: when was the roof last done, when was the furnace or boiler last serviced, is there a septic tank and when was it last pumped, and has the house ever had a radon test.

You do not need a dozen tradespeople in the first month. You need three, and the order depends on season.

• Heating service. Unless the seller can show a service record from the last twelve months, book a furnace or boiler service now. It is a safety inspection as much as a tune-up, and in the UK it must be a Gas Safe registered engineer. Guide.
• Chimney sweep if there is a wood-burning fireplace or stove and you intend to use it. Never light the first fire in an unknown chimney. Guide.
• Septic pump-out if there is a tank and no record of one in the last three years. A neglected septic system is the most expensive surprise a rural buyer can get. Guide.

With the emergencies covered and the professionals booked, the second month is for the small recurring jobs that most previous owners neglected. None of these need tools beyond a screwdriver, a vacuum and a stepladder.

• Replace the HVAC filter. The one you find will almost certainly be grey. Buy a six-pack.
• Clean the dryer vent from the dryer to the outside wall. Previous owners very rarely did.
• Vacuum the refrigerator coils and check the door seals.
• Flush the water heater, or at least drain a bucket from the bottom valve to see how much sediment comes out.
• Check each toilet for a silent leak with food colouring in the tank; a running toilet is the most common cause of a shocking first water bill.
• Look in the gutters, and clear them if they are full. Check where the downspouts discharge.
• Walk the exterior after heavy rain and note where water pools against the foundation. Grading and downspout extensions fix most basement dampness for very little money.

By now you know what the house has and what state it is in. The final step is to stop relying on memory. Every task above recurs: filters every two months, the heating service yearly, gutters twice a year, alarms yearly, the water heater flush yearly, the chimney every autumn. Without a schedule, each one comes back as a vague worry that is easy to postpone.

A paper calendar works. A shared digital calendar works better. A purpose-built app works best, because it knows the intervals, adjusts for your climate and equipment, and reminds you before the due date rather than on it. Maintainly’s onboarding does the ninety-day audit above in about two minutes: you tell it what the house has, and it builds the plan with the safety tasks first, ordered by what is due soonest.

Renovation. The temptation to paint, replace the kitchen and re-do the bathroom in the first months is strong and understandable. Resist it until the maintenance baseline is in place, for two reasons. First, you will discover things in the first three months (the damp wall, the flickering circuit, the tank that is near its end) that change where the money should go. Second, living in a house for a season teaches you what you actually want to change, and it is rarely what you thought on moving day.