Causes and Cures for Common Home Maintenance Problems

Many sensory clues give you early warning of home maintenance problems—if you can decode the symptoms.

Peeling exterior paint

Cause: Moisture is probably getting underneath the paint, perhaps from a leaking gutter overhead or from a steamy bathroom on the other side of the wall.

Cure: If you catch the problem right away, you might just need to address the moisture issue and then scrape off the loose paint, prime bare spots, and repaint that wall, for a total of a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars. Delay too long and the siding might rot. Patching and repainting the whole house might cost $10,000.

To prevent a chronically steamy bathroom, consider installing a new ventilation fan with a humidity-sensing switch that automatically exhausts moisture-laden air. Cost is about $250.

Flickering lights

Cause: If only a single bulb flickers, it might be loose in its socket or in need of replacement. If lights always dim when the refrigerator or other appliance turns on, the circuit might be overloaded. If groups of lights flicker, connections at the electrical panel or elsewhere might be loose, causing power to arc—or jump—over the gaps. Arcing is a serious problem; it starts fires.

Cure: Anyone can tighten a bulb. Handy homeowners can shut off circuits and tighten loose connections within switch boxes. If you’re not comfortable doing that, or if you suspect an overloaded circuit or loose connection at the panel box, call in a licensed electrician. You’ll pay $150 to $250 for a new circuit, and $500 to $700 for a new electrical panel--way less than what you’d spend to recover from a fire.

Rustling in a wall

Cause: Sure, termites usually signal their presence by building pencil-thick mud tubes up from the ground or by swarming from pinholes in floors or walls. But did you know it’s also possible to detect them by sound? Tap on a wall and then press an ear against it. See if you hear rustling that matches recordings of Formosan or other termites. A sound like crinkling cellophane could mean carpenter ants.

Cure: Call a pest-control professional. Cost is $65 to $100 for an inspection.

Loud knocking

Cause: If the knocking occurs when you turn off water, you have “water hammer,” caused when fast-moving water comes to a sudden stop and there is no air chamber (a short, specially designed piece of pipe) to cushion the shock wave. If knocking occurs when your furnace switches on or off, metal ducts are expanding or contracting as temperature changes.

Cure: If water pipes are the issue and there is an air chamber near the faucet, it may be filled with water and needs to be drained. You might be able to do this yourself. If you’re not confident of tackling that or if there is no chamber, call a plumber ($65 an hour) to add one. Those snapping ducts? Just get used to them.

A toilet tank that refills all on its own

Cause: Worn interior parts may be causing water to trickle through the toilet constantly, causing the water level in the tank to lower and eventually triggering the refill mechanism. A leaky toilet potentially wastes 1,500 gallons a month.

Cure: Untangle or loosen the chain—it may be too tight and preventing the flapper from seating fully, letting water leak out the flush valve. Or, try bending the tube connected to the float ball. If those don’t work, replace the valve and flapper inside the toilet tank (under $25 if you do it yourself, and a little more if you upgrade to a water-saving dual-flush valve).

Creaks and groans

Cause: All houses creak and groan a little as parts expand and contract with temperature fluctuations and with changes in levels of humidity.

Cure: None--it's normal for house to make a few snaps and pops. But don't ignore really loud groans when there's been an unusual amount of snow or rain, especially if your house has a flat roof. There may be an excessive or even dangerous amount of weight on your roof. If you suspect that may be the case, be prudent: Get everyone out of the house and call in a professional to check the roof.

Musty odors

Cause: Mildew, a fungus, is growing because indoor air is humid enough to allow condensation to form on cold surfaces. Basements are favorite haunts for mildew.

Cure: Keep surfaces dry by one or more strategies: increase air movement with a $20 fan, keep relative humidity below 50% in summer or 40% in winter with a $175 dehumidifier, or make surfaces warmer by adding insulation.

Rotten-egg smell when you run water

Cause: Bacteria that produce hydrogen sulfide gas (the scientific name for “rotten egg smell”) are in your plumbing, or there is a problem with your water heater. Fill a glass with hot water, step away from the sink, and take a whiff; if you detect no sulfur smell, they’re in the drain.

Cure: Disinfect the drain by pouring in a $1 bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide solution, sold at drug stores. A sulfur smell in only hot water points to the water heater as the problem; call a plumber to disinfect the system or replace the tank’s magnesium anode. If hot and cold water both smell, call your water supplier (or health department if you have a well).

Strange-tasting tap water

Cause: Mineral content of drinking water varies, so taste does too. But if the water tastes metallic, iron or copper may be leaching from pipes. If you taste chlorine, your water supplier may have overdosed on disinfectant, or a correct level could be interacting with organic material within your plumbing system.

Cure: If chlorine seems high at all taps, or if you taste metals, call your water supplier or have your well water tested. If only one tap has water with high chlorine or if the taste goes away after you run water for a few minutes, flush your system or call a plumber.

An under-the-counter water purifier with a top-quality activated carbon filter will remove heavy metals, bacteria, and other contaminants. In addition, it removes odors and bad tastes. Expect to pay $150 to $200 for a purifier with a replaceable cartridge.

Sour milk

Cause: With today’s hyper-pasteurized dairy products, milk doesn’t sour easily. So if it or other refrigerated food spoils unusually fast, the temperature in your refrigerator could be too high.

Cure: Get an $8 refrigerator thermometer and adjust the control so on each shelf stays below 40 degrees. If you can’t achieve this, consider buying a new Energy Star-rated refrigerator. Fridges are pricey, $450 to $2,000 or more, but you’ll save energy as well as food and might qualify for rebates.

Trembling floors

Cause: If items on tables and shelve jiggle and shimmy when you walk past, or if your floor feels like it gives under your weight, the floor joists might not be sturdy enough or past remodeling might have removed a support wall.

Cure: Have a structural engineer or experienced contractor see whether you can add more joists, bolster existing ones with an additional layer of plywood subflooring, or add a post to support the floor better. You’ll pay up to $500 for a structural engineer to evaluate your problem.

Mysterious breezes

Cause: If a ground-floor room seems drafty, air may be seeping in along the foundation or through an improperly sealed window or door. A drafty attic can make things worse, as warm air currents will rise naturally and exit through any gaps in the attic, pulling colder air in through lower-level cracks.

Cure: Starting in the attic and working your way down, seal all gaps. 

Conduct a home energy audit

A do-it-yourself energy audit can teach you how to be more energy efficient and make you a more-educated consumer should you decide to hire an expert.

What you’ll save on fixes

By following up on problems, you can lower energy bills by 5% to 30% annually, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. With annual energy bills averaging $2,200, according to Energy Star, investing in fixes or energy-efficient replacement products could save you up to $660 within a year.

And self-audits can cost virtually nothing if you already own a flashlight, ladder, measuring stick, candles, eye protection, work clothes, dust mask, and a screwdriver—or roughly $150 if you're starting from scratch. As for time commitment, expect to spend two to four hours to investigate home systems, refer to utility bills, and conduct research about local norms for products, such as insulation, say experts.

Types of DIY audits

Since there are a variety of ways to conduct a do-it-yourself audit, you’ll need to know your tolerance for the tasks involved.

Some require you play home inspector, climbing into attics and crawlspaces on fact-finding missions and delving into unfinished portions of your home to look at duct work. Questionnaire-based audits rely the assumption that you can answer such questions as how many gallons of water your toilet tank holds to the R-value (thickness) of insulation in your home.

If you don’t have time to familiarize yourself with your home’s systems or confidence about diagnosing problems, are disabled, are squeamish on ladders and in crawlspaces, or are already planning to invest in a major remodel, you may benefit from hiring a pro.

Even homeowners who complete a self-audit often hire a professional to double-check their diagnoses. A self-audit may reveal drafts but not their exact source, such as ducts or insulation, for instance. Because the costs to address a draft can range from minor to major, investing in a paid audit may be justifiable.

What should you check?

All the home systems and appliances that contribute to energy costs. Here’s the breakdown of a typical home's energy usage that Energy Star references:

• Heating (29%)
• Cooling (17%)
• Water heating (14%)
• Appliances (13%)
• Lighting (12%)
• Computers and electronics (4%)
• Other (11%)

Self-audits hone in on details pros may not

While the pros use special equipment to focus on hard-to-research aspects of a home’s building envelope and indoor air circulation, DIY audits can teach you—based on the questions they ask—to identify and address the numerous small ways in which your home wastes energy.

Since lighting, electronics, and appliances collectively account for nearly 30% of the average home’s energy costs, you can make an impact on your bills by replacing old appliances with energy-efficient replacements and simple fixes—plugging appliances into power strips versus wall outlets, making sure refrigerator doors are properly sealed and don’t leak air, and opting for a programmable thermostat. 

How to spot common energy leaks

1. Check your home’s exterior envelope—the windows, doors, walls, and roof exposed to outdoor air. Hold a candle or stick of incense near windows, doors, electrical outlets, range hoods, plumbing and ceiling fixtures, attic hatches, and ceiling fans in bathrooms. When smoke blows, you’ve got a draft from a source that may need caulking, sealant, weather stripping, or insulation.

2. Check insulation R-value or thickness. Where insulation is exposed (in an attic, unfinished basement, or around ducts, water heaters, and appliances), use a ruler to measure, recommends the DOE. Compare your results against those suggested for your region via an insulation calculator.

Although examining in-wall insulation is difficult, you can remove electrical outlet covers, turn off electricity, and probe inside the wall, the DOE notes in its DIY audit guide. However, only a professional’s thermographic scan can reveal if insulation coverage is consistent within a wall. Insulation can settle or may not be uniformly installed.

3. Look for stains on insulation. These often indicate air leaks from a hole behind the insulation, such as a duct hole or crack in an exterior wall.

4. Inspect exposed ducts. They may not work efficiently if they’re dirty, have small holes, or if they pass through unfinished portions of the home and aren’t insulated. Look for obvious holes and whether intersections of duct pipe are joined correctly. Since ducts are typically made out of thin metal that easily conducts heat, uninsulated or poorly insulated ducts in unconditioned spaces can lose 10% to 30% of the energy used to heat and cool your home, says DOE.

When should a professional make repairs?

The DOE recommends calling a contractor before insulating ducts in basements or crawlspaces, as doing so will make these spaces cooler and could impact other home systems, such as water pipes. Plus, these ducts might release noxious air. DOE also recommends you hire professionals to clean ducts periodically. If you’ve noticed that some rooms get disproportionately hot or cold, bring that to a pro's attention. It could be duct related.
      
In addition, some DIY audits—like the City of Seattle’s free online audit guide, suggest hiring a pro if you suspect asbestos materials have been used in insulation or around pipes, ducts, or heating equipment. Airborne or crumbling asbestos particles are a health hazard. And a pro might be the right choice when dealing with insulation around or near electrical or examining electrical systems with bare wires.
      
A self-audit, like a paid audit, serves as a jumping-off point to help you set priorities for making your home more efficient. Whether or not you choose to make repairs yourself, one thing’s for sure: You’ll come away knowing more about your home’s strengths and weaknesses than you did before.

Better Mortgage Rates Start With Better FICO Scores

If you plan to use a mortgage for your next home purchase, you’ll want to keep your credit scores as high as possible. Credit scores play an out-sized role in determining for which mortgage product you’ll qualify, and to which rate you’ll be assigned by your lender.

The higher your credit score, the lower your mortgage rate will be.

What Is A Credit Score?

History has shown that the best way to predict a person’s behavior over the near-term future is to look at that person’s behavior in the recent past. It’s a concept similar to the First Rule of Physics — an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

We can apply this theory to consumer credit, too. A person who has recently paid his bills on-time should continue to pay his bills on-time in the near-future.

This is the basis of credit scoring; using your past to predict your future.

To mortgage lenders, your credit score represents your likelihood of making on-time mortgage payments for the next 90 days. “90 days” matters because, after 90 days without payments, a homeowner falls into default.

Higher credit scores correlate with lower default risk which explains why people with high credit scores tend to receive lower mortgage rates than people with low credit scores. This is true across all loan types, including conventional, jumbo, and FHA mortgages.

Like most else in finance, those with the lowest risks get to pay the lowest rates.

Lenders Use The FICO Scoring Model, Exclusively

There are three main credit bureaus in the United States. They are Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Each offers a bevy of credit-scoring products, available for purchase on their respective websites. Prices range from “free” to several hundred dollars.

None, however, are particularly relevant in the home-buying process. This is because the nation’s mortgage lenders rely on a different credit model — the FICO model.

FICO is named for the Fair Isaac Corporation. It was “invented” in the 1950s and has become the mortgage industry standard for credit ratings. Today, FICO scores are omnipresent to the point that people generically refer to all credit scores as “FICO scores”.

This is akin to calling all adhesive bandages “Band-Aids”. FICO is the brand name — not the product.

FICO scores range from 300-850.

Credit Scores Change Mortgage Rates

Your FICO score has always influenced the mortgage rate for which you’re eligible. In 2008, though, it began to change your loan fees.

In response to major mortgage market losses, in April 2008, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac introduced something called Loan-Level Pricing Adjustments (LLPA). Loan-level pricing adjustments are “discount points” added to a mortgage rate, based on a specific borrower’s risk to the lender.

A discount point is a loan fee, paid at the time of closing. 1 discount point is equal to 1 percent of your loan size.

Example : A $300,000 mortgage that’s assessed 1 discount point will have $3,000 in extra fees due at closing.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac know that low credit scores correlate to high default rates so, like an insurance policy, they assigned the highest costs to the highest-risk borrowers.

Assuming a 20% downpayment, look at how discount points change based on credit score. Fees get massive for FICOs under 700.

• 740+ FICO  : There are no discount points required. This loan is “low risk”.
• 720-739 FICO :  0.250 discount points are charged to the borrower, or $250 per $100,000 borrowed
• 700-719 FICO :  0.750 discount points are charged to the borrower, or $750 per $100,000 borrowed
• 680-699 FICO :  1.500 discount points are charged to the borrower, or $1,500 per $100,000 borrowed
• 660-679 FICO :  2.500 discount points are charged to the borrower, or $2,500 per $100,000 borrowed

Now, not many new home buyers just have that kind of extra cash just laying around. Therefore, as an alternative to paying discount points with cash, many choose to “roll up” the fees into their respective mortgage rates. In general, 1.000 discount point can be “traded in” for a 0.250 increase to your mortgage rate.

Example : A consumer with a 680 FICO score is required to pay 1.500 discount points at closing, or can alternatively accept a mortgage rate increase of 0.375%.

This is why it’s important to keep your credit score high. There are real dollar costs for having scores under 740.

Improving On Your Credit Score

If your credit score is not as high as you’d like, the good news is that you can take steps to raise it — sometimes without even changing your spending habits.

What Makes up a Credit Score?
FICO scores are based on specific credit history, with hundreds of inputs used to find your score. There are 5 main parts of your credit score.
Payment History : 35% of your credit score
Payment history measures how you've paid on your debts. Payment history is the largest part of your credit score because if you've recently missed payments your creditors, it's likely those missed payments will continue, and may lead to default. Payment history also measures how "severe" a missed payment has been. An item in collection is worse than an item paid 30 days late.
Tips to improve : Make payments on time, all the time — even items in dispute. Pay the bill and worry about refunds later.
Amounts Owed : 30% of your credit score
Amounts owed measures how "maxed out" you are. Amounts owed is the second-largest part of your credit score because a person that is maxed out has no safety valve in the event of a crisis. Amounts owed is not about the dollar amount you're borrowing — it's about the dollar amount you're borrowing relative to the amount available to you.
Tips to improve : Don't close out "old" credit cards, and don't lower your available credit limits. Having access to credit is good.

Credit History Length: 15% of your credit score
Your credit history is your track record with respect to managing credit. Credit history matters in the FICO model because "experienced users of credit" are viewed differently from new users of credit. Similar to the hiring process for a job, the credit bureaus want to see this isn't your first experience.
Tips to improve : Don't close cards with "history". You need them to show you're experienced with credit.
New Credit : 10% of your credit score
This category accounts for your recent attempts to secure new credit. In general, the more credit for which you've applied, the more damage it will do to your credit score. This is more true for credit cards than for mortgage applications. A consumer in search of new credit cards is presumed to "need" more credit lines.
Tips to improve : When you shop for a mortgage, multiple credit checks can count as a single credit inquiry, protecting your credit score.
Types of Credit : 10% of your credit score
The type of credit you carry matters and not all credit types are the same. Installment loans such as mortgage loans and student loans, for example, are considered "better" than credit cards and charge cards. This is because installments loans eventually pay down to zero. Consumer cards, by contrast, can only go up.
Tips to improve : Don't carry an abundance of store charge cards. Interest rates are high and the FICO model looks unfavorably upon them.