The nine home maintenance tasks that are really about safety, not upkeep

Fire services in every one of the four countries report the same finding: in a large share of fatal house fires, a smoke alarm was present but did not sound, and the most common reason was a dead or removed battery. The US National Fire Protection Association puts it plainly in its annual reports; the UK Home Office fire statistics and the Australian and Canadian equivalents say the same thing in their own numbers.

The sensor itself also ages. Ionisation and photoelectric sensors both degrade, and manufacturers specify a ten-year life for the unit, printed as a manufacture date on the back. A ten-year-old alarm that chirps happily when you press the button may not respond to smoke, because the button tests the electronics, not the sensing chamber.

Do: replace batteries yearly, or buy sealed ten-year units and replace the whole thing at the date. Test monthly. Guide: smoke alarm batteries and replacing the unit.

Carbon monoxide is odourless, colourless, and produced by every fuel-burning appliance in the house: furnace, boiler, water heater, gas range, fireplace, and a car idling in an attached garage. Low-level exposure feels like flu. High-level exposure is fatal in the time it takes to fall asleep.

CO sensors have a shorter life than smoke sensors: five to seven years is typical, and the alarm will usually announce end-of-life with a distinct chirp pattern that people mistake for a low battery. Check the date on the back. Place one on every level with a bedroom and near, but not directly on top of, fuel-burning appliances.

Guide: CO alarm batteries and replacing the unit.

The lint screen catches most lint. What gets past it accumulates in the duct between the dryer and the outside wall, and lint is close to ideal tinder. The US Fire Administration attributes several thousand residential fires a year to dryers, with failure to clean as the leading cause. The UK and Australia see the same pattern with condenser and heat-pump dryers, where the lint collects in the internal filter housing and condenser instead of a duct.

The warning signs are a dryer that takes longer than it used to, a hot casing, or a laundry room that feels humid while it runs. Disconnect the duct, clear it end to end (a drill-driven brush kit costs about the same as one professional visit), and check the outside flap opens freely.

Guide: dryer vent cleaning and deep-cleaning the lint trap housing.

A gas boiler or furnace that combusts poorly produces carbon monoxide and can leak it into the home through a cracked heat exchanger or a blocked flue. The annual service exists to catch exactly that: the technician checks combustion with a flue gas analyser, inspects the heat exchanger, and confirms the flue is clear and sealed. It is a safety inspection that happens to also improve efficiency, not the other way around.

In the UK this is a legal matter: any gas work must be done by a Gas Safe registered engineer, and landlords must hold an annual Gas Safety Record. In Australia gasfitters must be licensed in each state. In the US and Canada licensing varies by jurisdiction but the recommendation, from manufacturers and from CSA and ANSI standards, is annual.

Guide: boiler annual service and furnace annual service.

A kitchen extinguisher spends years untouched, which is when its pressure quietly drops or its powder compacts into a solid cake at the bottom. The monthly check takes ten seconds: gauge needle in the green, pin and tamper seal intact, no corrosion or dents. Once a year, turn a dry-powder unit upside down and listen for the powder to fall freely. Most household units carry a 10 to 12 year life, after which they are replaced rather than serviced.

Guide: fire extinguisher check.

Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that seeps from soil and rock into basements and ground floors. It is the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking in the US, Canada and the UK, and it has no smell, colour or taste. The only way to know your level is to test, and levels vary house to house on the same street, so a neighbour’s result tells you nothing about yours.

Testing is cheap: a long-term kit (three months or more) gives the most reliable picture and costs a fraction of a single furnace service. If the result is over your country’s action level (4 pCi/L in the US, 200 Bq/m³ in Canada and the UK), mitigation is a well-understood job that a specialist installs in a day. Retest after any work that changes the foundation, ventilation or heating system.

Maintainly offers this task in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland and the European countries with national radon programmes; it is not offered in Australia, where national surveys report low indoor radon and the health agencies do not recommend routine domestic testing. Guide: radon testing.

Wiring ages. Insulation becomes brittle, connections loosen, and consumer units installed decades ago lack the residual current protection that stops a fault becoming a fire or an electrocution. In the UK, the Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR) is the formal version of this: recommended every ten years for owner-occupiers and legally required every five years for rented homes since 2020.

In the US, Canada and Australia there is no equivalent scheduled inspection for owner-occupiers, which is precisely why it gets missed. The practical rule is: any home over 25 years old that has not had a licensed electrician assess the panel and a sample of circuits should book one, and again whenever you buy a property, add a major load (EV charger, heat pump, hot tub) or notice warm outlets, flickering or tripping breakers.

Guide: electrical inspection (EICR).

Creosote, the tarry residue that condenses inside a flue when wood burns, is flammable, and a chimney fire can reach temperatures that crack the flue liner and ignite the house structure. Sweeping removes it; the inspection that comes with a professional sweep catches liner damage, blockages from nests, and cap and flashing problems before the heating season. Gas fireplaces need less frequent sweeping but still need the flue checked for blockage.

Guide: chimney sweep.

This one is on the list not because a stuck valve is dangerous in itself, but because a burst pipe with a valve you cannot find or cannot turn floods a home in minutes, and water through electrics is a hazard, not just a mess. Locate the main shut-off, make sure everyone in the house knows where it is, and turn it a quarter each way twice a year so it does not seize. A gate valve that has not moved in a decade will often snap its stem the first time you need it in a hurry.

Guide: main water shut-off test.

Every task above carries the safety flag in Maintainly’s library. That flag does three concrete things: it moves the reminder earlier (seven days before due rather than three), it keeps the task at the top of your plan regardless of what else is due, and if a safety task goes more than a week overdue the reminder escalates to a time-sensitive notification that breaks through Focus modes. On the free plan, where the starter pack is capped at twenty tasks, safety tasks are never the ones dropped.