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Writing documentation for your house

luke.hsiao.dev

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Re: Writing documentation for your house

#51

Post by htss2013 »

chezball wrote: post #25

So, i sold a house i had in north Seattle after a divorce in 2018. We had bought it in 04, i was working at Microsoft at the time. We raised our son there. I even built a 8’x8’x8’ brick oven for baking pizza and bread (plans from Ovencrafters). I rented an excavator for a week and dug around the entire house and put in 12’ deep footing drains, with clean-out pipes every 20’ down the 100’ to the road. A new 2” pex wat…

It's just odd from the perspective of a non American, because in much of the rest of the world houses are usually kept in families multi generationally. So your dream of passing on the oven would have worked most other places. It's just your desires are incompatible with the American treatment of houses as commodities to be frequently traded in bidding auctions.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#52

Post by natmaka »

efitz wrote: post #17

For my last house, I had spent years on smart home automation, I had a binder that contained clear instructions I wrote for everything, and receipts for every upgrade I ever made on the home, warranty docs, QR codes to download smart home apps to control the devices, plot maps, floor plans, a 1-page list of repairmen for everything- you name it. I made short YouTube videos for everything like turning the water on/off…

For a fair part of the population, especially those using at home a crappy PC crashing twice a week, 'smart home stuff' means that some bug or backdoor may lead them into a mess: lock them out, let an intruder in, over/under-heat for weeks while they are out of town... They don't want any part of this.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#53

Post by bluGill »

h2odragon wrote: post #26

Another good trick is to label each outlet and light switch with the number of the circuit breaker its connected to. Things such as a big label on the valve: "MAIN WATER CUTOFF" are also a good idea. Centralized documentation is great , but who reads manuals?

Don't waste your time labeling each outlet/switch. While it can be useful at times, most of them will not be used before some other project requires moving the breakers to a different position in the box and then they are worse than nothing: if you trust them you get a shock!

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#54

Post by 20after4 »

c22 wrote: post #38
efitz wrote: post #17

For my last house, I had spent years on smart home automation, I had a binder that contained clear instructions I wrote for everything, and receipts for every upgrade I ever made on the home, warranty docs, QR codes to download smart home apps to control the devices, plot maps, floor plans, a 1-page list of repairmen for everything- you name it. I made short YouTube videos for everything like turning the water on/off…

The last time I bought a house I paid about $600 for a pre-purchase inspection and the inspector basically prepared such a binder for me. A few hundred pages of photos and suggested fixes for not only all the defects she found, but also suggested ongoing maintenance schedules and routines for all the systems of the house, photos of the water shutoff, etc. and even a thumb drive with a few videos she shot and a sewer…

That sounds like $600 well spent. My pre-purchase inspection didn't even uncover some fairly obvious unsafe wiring.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#55

Post by eddieroger »

chezball wrote: post #25

So, i sold a house i had in north Seattle after a divorce in 2018. We had bought it in 04, i was working at Microsoft at the time. We raised our son there. I even built a 8’x8’x8’ brick oven for baking pizza and bread (plans from Ovencrafters). I rented an excavator for a week and dug around the entire house and put in 12’ deep footing drains, with clean-out pipes every 20’ down the 100’ to the road. A new 2” pex wat…

> I will just be pickier about who i sell it to.

You may sell the house, but you keep the memories. It sucks your grandkids won't be able to eat from your pizza oven, but you did, and you can talk about how you made it, and how much you enjoyed it, and that lives on. My parents sold their home a few years ago, and while my dad will regularly talk about how he misses it and what terrible changes the new owners make, it doesn't change that I was raised in that house, and we had great times and memories there, and he will now have a chance to make them with his granddaughter in his new house. It stings, but try not to let it.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#56

Post by dekhn »

jairuhme wrote: post #42

I see a few comments describing how their documentation that they handed over went without love. I'll add a different perspective. I bought a fixer upper (really just needed a face lift) from a couple who's parents lived there but passed away. The only thing left behind was a plastic bag of appliance manuals, some old receipts, and most importantly, a sheet of paper with dates, when things were updated, and how much…

We got the same when my parents moved into their current house (about 35 years ago). I thought it was a very grown-up thing- not just appliance manuals, but actual hand-written explanations of where all the important things were and details on the history of the house. It felt uncommon and special but I guess it isn't!

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#58

Post by hnick »

c22 wrote: post #38
efitz wrote: post #17

For my last house, I had spent years on smart home automation, I had a binder that contained clear instructions I wrote for everything, and receipts for every upgrade I ever made on the home, warranty docs, QR codes to download smart home apps to control the devices, plot maps, floor plans, a 1-page list of repairmen for everything- you name it. I made short YouTube videos for everything like turning the water on/off…

The last time I bought a house I paid about $600 for a pre-purchase inspection and the inspector basically prepared such a binder for me. A few hundred pages of photos and suggested fixes for not only all the defects she found, but also suggested ongoing maintenance schedules and routines for all the systems of the house, photos of the water shutoff, etc. and even a thumb drive with a few videos she shot and a sewer…

I've already lived in my home for a decade and think that would be money well spent. There are probably time bombs coming due I don't know about.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#59

Post by mhh__ »

efitz wrote: post #17

For my last house, I had spent years on smart home automation, I had a binder that contained clear instructions I wrote for everything, and receipts for every upgrade I ever made on the home, warranty docs, QR codes to download smart home apps to control the devices, plot maps, floor plans, a 1-page list of repairmen for everything- you name it. I made short YouTube videos for everything like turning the water on/off…

Some people just aren't the type.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#60

Post by dekhn »

alaskamiller wrote: post #32

Airbnb hosts do this. An engineering friend of mine has documented and labeled every aspect of his vacation rental in Hawaii. The only thing is, it's styled the same as the 1980s terminal systems he worked on down to the embossed black tape labels that gets attached to every switch, knob, and dial. Treat your house like a black box.

Just thinking about those labels made me flash back to the 1980s. I hated the embossed black tape label aesthetic.
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