On the Level

Training Your Tenant Pays Off

by Terry F. Meany

Thomas Gray, a writer few have ever known, wrote, “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise.” Obviously, he never had renters. The last thing you want is an ignorant tenant whose concept of home maintenance is to always call you, even if the tenant caused the problem.

By law, you have to provide a clean, habitable and secure rental. Your tenants are required to take reasonable care of their units and keep them clean and undamaged. They are responsible for any damage resulting from their own negligence. Often negligence is another word for ignorance. If you have never owned your own home or learned how to maintain one while growing up, you do not understand that breakers trip when you plug a heater, hairdryer and CD player simultaneously into the bathroom outlet, and sinks clog when you wash grated carrots down the drain.

Tenants, especially younger ones, are kind of baby adults. They often do not know much about how a house or building works or what repairs cost. Yes, I know this is a generalized statement, but I will live with my biases. Even if you are not legally required to unclog toilets or replace blown fuses, you will be called. You will even be called if a tenant forgets the front door key and then expects you to show up for free.

Training and Education Steps for a New Tenant
With a little training and education, you might get fewer calls, so make sure you initially spend enough time showing your new tenant through the apartment and completely explaining every detail, even the obvious. First, explain that you definitely require a shower curtain. Beforehand, spend a little extra on a shower rod with flanges that screw to the walls instead of a tension-mounted rod, so there is no excuse for your tenant later claiming the curtain could not stay on the rod.

Second, stop and open up the fuse box or electrical panel and clearly explain how many appliances, lights and toys can be plugged into each circuit. Also, make sure the panel door has a map of the circuits and the rooms they serve. Show the tenant how the breakers trip and are reset, as well as the proper way to replace a fuse. Be very clear that fuses are to be replaced with the same amperage fuse, not one of greater amperage. Clever tenants who keep blowing fuses figure they can replace a 15-amp with a 20-amp, a terrific way to fry your wiring.

Your third lesson is to show the tenant how to use a plunger. It might seem self-evident but assume nothing. For the price of a meal at McDonald’s, you can supply the tenant with a basic plunger (it is always deductible from the damage deposit if it disappears). For a few bucks more, you can get a more powerful model with an extended or reverse cup that can fold in and be used on clogged sink drains, so it can be used on both the sink basins and toilets.

The fourth point to make concerns credit card keys, which are plastic emergency keys for automobiles and door locks. Cut into a credit card size piece of DuPont Delrin II plastic, credit card keys fit comfortably inside a wallet. These keys are not made for repeated use. They should be part of your initial key distribution to the tenant, with the understanding that they are to be treated as responsibly as standard keys and only used for emergencies. For more information, go to www.hillmangroup.com/ekey.htm. Many northern California AAA offices already make free automobile credit card keys for members.

Your fifth explanation should focus on how the thermostat functions. Each one is different, and the newer ones with setback controls can be confusing. Give the tenant a copy of the owner’s manual—but not the original—which inevitably will get lost.

Moving on to the heating system, your sixth point, explain how to shut off the pilot light and how to relight it, if you have gas appliances. The tenant needs to see this, especially if it is not all that clear cut or you have older appliances. Suggest that the tenant buy a Bic Sure Start Utility lighter and skip the matches.

Seventh, make sure you review house cleaning. The tile locker room floor at my gym was permanently stained when the janitorial service allowed the wrong cleaner to sit for too long. The stains were etched into the tile and impossible to remove, short of replacing the tile. Give your tenant a list of approved cleaners and outlawed ones as well. Carpets will get stained from occasional spills and the wrong cleaners can make things worse. (For carpet cleaning advice, see www.pitcherbrothers.com and click on carpet care).

Last, if your bathrooms and kitchen have fans, explain that the fans must be regularly used. This cuts down on mold and mildew and extends your paint jobs. In fact, you can connect your bathroom light and fan to one switch so the fan goes on every time the light is turned on. There is nothing wrong with this occasional dictatorial wiring practice.

For a small investment of your time up front, you can keep your tenant independent except for more critical maintenance problems. In addition to walking her or him through and verbally explaining the ins and outs of this new home, provide a paper copy for the tenant’s future reference. Write it up once, and then you can make printouts forever.

Noisemaking at Your Rental
Barking dogs, leaf blowers, stereos and tap dancers all have one thing in common: they are noisemakers in and around your rental property. Noise, of course, is subjective. I once slept through a siren from a fire truck outside my bedroom window, but I could regularly hear the 7:00 a.m. Sunday paper landing at the other end of the house. As a landlord, you have little control over outside sound sources and many inside sources as well, but you can make some adjustments to your property if noise transference is costing you in terms of tenant turnover.
Begin by understanding the limitations of cutting down the noise in an older building. You will never eliminate all noise bleed from one floor of a building to another, unless all your tenants are full-time mimes who tiptoe around in stocking feet. You can reduce noise in floor/ceiling structures and in common walls, but to do so is a major project.

Two kinds of noise are present in buildings: impact (footsteps) and airborne (talking and music). Noise can travel along continuous, connected structural elements of a building (floor joists, for instance). By breaking this continuity with a suspended ceiling or floating floor, you reduce the noise transference by severing the path of sound vibrations. The lower frequencies with their longer wavelengths are harder to block than the higher frequencies of voices.

Airborne noise travels through walls as well, regardless whether you have plaster or drywall. As sounds cause one side of a wall to vibrate, the energy passes through via the studs until the other side of the wall vibrates. Simply adding more drywall will not accomplish much, although the added density helps some. A more involved process calls for first covering old plaster or existing drywall with a synthetic soundproofing acoustical mat. Next, resilient metal channels are attached at right angles to the wall studs. A new layer of drywall is then attached to the channels.

Resilient metal channels reduce the direct contact of new drywall to the wall studs, thus dissipating any noise that transfers through the wall. There is a science to reducing sound transference; however, most apartment Jack-and-Jill-of-all-trades are unfamiliar with this science. The choice of materials and their installation is critical to getting the best results possible. Even the length of screws used to attach the resilient metal channels can affect the outcome (longer screws will pull the channels closer, resulting in more noise coming through the wall).
Installing channels and another layer of drywall add about an inch to your wall thickness or remove an inch from the height of your ceiling. All baseboards and trim have to be removed, adjusted and reinstalled around this change in dimensions.

So you did not plan on rebuilding your walls or ceiling? Most owners do not do so unless they are doing a major rehab job. There are some gadgets that can give your tenants some relief and, although you have no responsibility to provide them, you might offer to share the cost if it keeps a tenant happy and the unit occupied. These gadgets include:

white noise machines (prices start around $50) provide random patterns of sound that mask several decibels above the level of conversational speech. But they do not block out loud noises unless combined with foam ear plugs—the combination serving as a great sleep aid;
white noise CDs are an even better route (approximately $10 to $15 each) and available in a variety of sound effects (everything from waterfalls and babbling brooks to dishwashers and air conditioners) so that a tenant can set them at a loud enough volume to block out louder noises, presumably without becoming a source of noise for others;
a standard room fan set at high speed provides plenty of white noise;
headphones for a tenant who really likes music and is keeping the sound at a legal volume, yet it still disrupts another tenant; and
a thick carpet and a thick pad mitigate sounds between floors and add some insulation value.

In addition, you have a very powerful and persuasive tool at your service: a printed lease. Clear, well-written restrictions and terms ensure tenants the peaceful enjoyment of their homes and spell out what they need to do to maintain this enjoyment for their neighbors. Be as specific as you need to be. A tenant who works the swing shift might not see a problem with running a vacuum cleaner at odd hours, but surrounding neighbors will. Good, clear advance communication is the key.

And you do not even have to be loud about it.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of SFAA or the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. Terry F. Meany is a former contractor and landlord. He is now a full-time writer and author of Working Windows: A Guide to the Repair and Restoration of Wood Windows, published by Lyons Press. He is cost conscious but not cheap and knows deferred maintenance always costs more in the end. He can be reached at tfmeany@msn.com. Copyright © 2005 by the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.