Building & home maintenance: recommendations for home & building maintenance checklists, calendars, reminder services & data services. Here we list smartphone apps, computer software, books, & guides focused on defining and scheduling home and light commercial building mainteance chores.
The idea that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is not new, nor is the idea that in the clamor for your attention by family, friends, work, email, and your car, remembering to change the furnace filter or clean the gutters is not always at the top of every homeowner's "to do" list. But for the women and men who inspect buildings for a living, bugs, leaks, and loose stuff can translate quickly into bucks, losses, and lawsuits. So a smart to-do reminder that lets you know about important tasks in time to avoid trouble is not a bad idea. Mark Healy from ZogDigital invited us to take a look at Allstate's Home Maintenance Reminder. Here is what we found.
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Take a look at some of these free home maintenance reminder services and then read our review of one of them just below. Most of these tools are free. Several are found right here at InspectApedia.com.
Home Maintenance Reminder Tools & Programs |
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Reminder Tool Name | Platform - runs-on | Source Link | Comments |
About One | Website | About One | Family organizer tool for storing your home's data at a website. Not a reminder, not specifically designed for home maintenance? Early in development, companion tools promises. |
Allstate Maintenance Reminder | Website: PCs, Macs, via web browser & email | Allstate™ Home Maintenance Reminder | Use existing list or add your own home maintenance chores, receive notice by email. |
BUILDING DEFECTS LISTS | Website encyclopedia | InspectAPedia®_Home Inspector Education | Lists of types of defects for all 40+ residential building components & systems, useful as an inspection topic guide. Not a maintenance checklist. |
Home Maintenance Reminder | Smartphone App Android & iPhone |
Mike Perry | Have to install to see functions available. |
Home Reference Book | Book of home diagnosis & maintenance advice available in printed form and as an E-book |
Carson Dunlop Associates |
Extensive "how to" data, no calendar reminder features. |
Home Spot | Website PCs, Macs, via web browser |
HomeSpot | Website collects home data |
House Maintenance Schedule | Smartphone App Android Smartphones |
Cooloy.com, at Google Play | Easy to use, not easy to customize |
MAINTENANCE GUIDES | Website encyclopedia | InspectAPedia® | Detailed maintenance guides for most home & light commercial building components & systems |
MAINTENANCE PRIORITIES | Website article | InspectAPedia®_Dan's_3_D's sets Order of Maintenance & Repairs | Short article explains which maintenance & repair items should be scheduled first. Not a checklist. |
Pro Home Manager | Software PCs, Macs |
Pro Home Manager | PC World review |
SAFETY HAZARDS at HOMES | Website encyclopedia | InspectAPedia® Home Safety Hazards | Lists safety defects across most home areas, components, systems, useful as an inspection guide, not a maintenance checklist. |
Notes: Home maintenance reminder tools & checklists can be listed here at no cost; InspectApedia reserves the right to edit, review, list, not-list topics, products, services discussed at the InspectApedia.com website. |
With countless programs and smartphone apps that serve to remind us of appointments & tasks we were invited to review a free online service provided by Allstate Insurance intended to improve home durability and safety and reduce home operating costs and damage by offering reminders of home maintenance chores.
The free Allstate Home Maintenance Reminder is at http://www.allstate.com/tools-and-resources/maintenance-reminder.aspx
At the Allstate Website (link above) you take three steps (in addition to actually doing the maintenance chore itself):
The reminder service is set up to handle home or automobile maintenance chores but given that you can enter your own reminder items, you could add just about anything (Remember mom's birthday). .
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For people like me who don't much like being asked to register, even giving an email, just to see online information, my first reaction at seeing the Allstate Home Maintenance Reminder screen was not to click on "Get Started" so I clicked on the "Learn More" button instead.
The "Learn More" button displays a screen that says home or auto maintenance is a good idea. Nothing on the page was intriguing. But hidden in the small-print text are three links that we have pasted verbatim along with our comments just below.
Website navigation could be better: click your way through to the gutter maintenance page and try finding a quick link back to the start of the system. No way. Just endless back-arrow clicking.
Try signing up and setting up your home and your first reminder. Check out the reminder "Frequency" setting - after all this is the key event, right?
The drop down menu presents some options with no obvious way to scroll down past 6 months - in other words, even as a computer expert with experience dating to 1965, I could not see how to schedule anything less frequent than at 6-month intervals.
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Bottom Line
The Allstate home maintenance reminder website design, content, and navigation are ... well ... incomplete. Stay tuned; when the system is improved it might be a useful feature for folks who don't keep another electronic calendar for reminders.
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Continue reading at STRUCTURAL INSPECTIONS & DEFECTS or select a topic from the closely-related articles below, or see the complete ARTICLE INDEX.
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