Reference
Every recurring maintenance task on a North Texas home, how often it actually needs doing, roughly how long it takes, and what happens when it gets missed.
No sign-up. Use it, ignore it, print it. It is the same list we work from.
Almost none of these are hard. A fridge cartridge is a three-minute job. Checking a brine tank takes thirty seconds with a broom handle. Testing a garage door's safety reverse is one push of your foot.
The doing was never the hard part.
The hard part is that there are dozens of these, they run on nine different intervals, and together they come due around sixty times a year. None of them announce themselves. A water softener that stopped softening keeps running. A filter that needed changing in March does not tell you in June. You find out weeks later, in the shower, or on the bill, or when something expensive fails early.
Knowing what is due, and when, is the work. The tasks are the easy part.
Mostly quiet ones. Nothing announces itself, which is exactly why they get missed.
Four times a year, which is exactly often enough to forget.
Seasonal. Timing matters more than the task does.
Annual tasks are the hardest to remember, because nothing in daily life reminds you.
Nobody tracks these. They are also the ones that decide whether something lasts eight years or fifteen.
The ones nobody knows about
Not because they are careless. Because nothing about these announces itself, and no builder walkthrough covers them.
Your softener may have stopped softening months ago
Salt can form a hard crust with an empty gap underneath it. The tank looks full, the unit keeps cycling on schedule, and no softening happens. It takes thirty seconds to check with a broom handle and roughly nobody does it.
Backflow testing is required by law in Texas
If your irrigation has a backflow preventer, state rules require an annual test by a licensed tester. Enforcement varies city to city, which is exactly why most homeowners have never heard of it.
Your smoke detectors expire
Sensors degrade over about ten years from the manufacture date printed on the back. A ten-year sealed unit never needs a battery and then needs the whole detector replaced. It will still chirp and still pass the test button while detecting less than it should.
Your dishwasher has a filter
Most models built in the last decade have a removable filter in the floor of the tub. It twists out and rinses in a minute. Left alone it is the reason glasses come out cloudy and the machine smells.
One rod decides how long your water heater lasts
The anode rod is a sacrificial piece of metal that corrodes so the tank does not. When it is used up the tank starts rusting from the inside out. Replacing it every few years is most of the difference between eight years and fifteen.
You probably have more filtered appliances than you think
Kitchen refrigerator, second refrigerator in the garage, under-counter ice maker. Three cartridges, three part numbers, three separate six-month clocks, and no reminder from any of them.
A tankless is never flushed, and yours may not be serviceable
Tankless units get descaled, not flushed, and on Collin County water that is every six to twelve months rather than annually. Doing it requires isolation valves at the unit, and some builders leave them off to save money. If yours does not have them, a routine service becomes a plumbing job, and finding that out on the day it fails is the wrong time.
The most expensive thing on this page is the one nobody measures
North Texas sits on expansive clay that pulls away from a slab in drought and pushes back when it rains. Foundation repair on a home this size runs \$15,000 to \$40,000. We take moisture readings at marked stations around your slab at every visit and put the numbers in your report, so you can see the trend instead of finding out from a crack. We report what the meter reads. What it means is an engineer's call, and we will tell you when it is time to make one.
Read back through the list and almost every task is measured in minutes. The ones that are not are the ones you would hire out anyway.
What makes it hard is that these arrive on nine different schedules, silently, across a house full of equipment nobody handed you a manual for. Staying on top of it is not a skill problem. It is a memory problem, and memory is a bad system.
So we do not just hand you the list.
At the first visit we build this calendar around your actual house. Your filter sizes. Your cartridge part numbers. Which of your detectors take batteries and which are sealed units on a ten-year clock. Then it runs.
When something comes due, your dedicated home concierge is flagged ahead of the visit and the parts are already ordered. They arrive knowing what needs doing and handle it while they are there. Nobody asks you to approve it, schedule it, or remember it. Anything that needs a licensed pro, they line up and you approve once by text.
The same person every time. Not a dispatch queue, not whoever was free that day.
Once a month you get a short note on what was handled and what is coming. That is the only part of this you ever have to read.
If that sounds worth a conversation, call (972) 736-8955 or write hello@otivahome.com.
Intervals here are general guidance for North Texas homes. Manufacturer instructions for your specific equipment always win.
OtivaHome is a DBA of KeystoneGov Solutions LLC. The Home Health Check is a visual walkthrough, not a licensed home inspection.