On the level

by Terry Meany

Some years back, my father did his medical residency in San Francisco. When he finished, he moved back to Ohio, where he later opened his practice. As a young adult, I asked him why he returned to the Midwest. He responded that for days on end during a Bay Area winter, the outside thermometer at the hospital never changed and he had suggested to one of the nurses they might as well throw it away. He wanted a change of seasons, so it was back to Cleveland.

Unlike my father, I’d love to move around the world, staying with the sun. I can do without the time changes and the early darkness and the cold, but my door is not getting beaten down by publishers the world round to come and write for them, so I stay put.

Dark, Wet Places
Bathroom tile is a marvelous material: hard, easy to clean, essentially lasting forever. It’s also a terrible material: the grout needs to be cleaned, sealed and occasionally replaced. If you don’t like the tile color or pattern, replacement is a major job. Taste in tile isn’t especially relevant in a rental, but maintenance is.

Depending on your tenant’s housecleaning skills and the age of the grout, you will have to regrout periodically. It’s more an exercise in tedium than expertise, but if it’s ignored, water can leak behind the tiles and cause plenty of damage. How do you know it’s time to regrout? Cracks are one sign, as is grout that simply cannot be cleaned no matter how much bleach, cleanser, tile cleaners or hydrogen peroxide you use.

Unless the grout is in really bad shape, you only need to remove the surface layer with any of a variety of tools: utility knife, grout saw or rotary tools designed for grout removal. Ask your tenant to refrain from taking a morning shower so the grout is reasonably dry when you start the job. Use a grout with silicone or, if you believe in overkill, epoxy. Apply a silicone sealer after an appropriate curing time, around two weeks depending on the grout. Matching the grout color can be a problem—not all white grout is the same white as the grout you buy at the local hardware store. Larger suppliers, such as Lowe’s, have color charts available for closer matching.

Grout normally requires a 24-hour curing time before it can get wet again. To be safe, tape plastic all over the tile walls down to the tub and around the showerhead. Remove the plastic the next day, wipe off any remaining residue and polish up the tile. It will be years before you have to do this job again.

Safety and Security
Do your tenants know where the water, gas and electrical shutoffs are in their buildings? Many people don’t quite know how their homes get powered, heated or provided with potable water. They just know, like the mail, it all sort of shows up. In case of emergencies, your tenants need to know how to shut off all these normal conveniences, which can turn deadly when a pipe breaks, a gas fitting no longer quite fits or an electrical fire starts. Do the tour with your tenants. Show everyone how to control their own units, even the shutoffs under the sinks and for the toilets. It’s amazing how many people will allow a leak to continue flooding because they don’t know how to shut the water off.

Older buildings might not have gas shutoffs for individual appliances, but will have shutoffs for each unit, if separately metered. As much as you don’t want tenants messing with the gas lines—and this probably means a talk with your attorney about whether you ever want them near a gas shutoff in the event they smell gas—they should at least know how to turn off the stove if the valve is in the kitchen.

Electricity is simpler. It would be highly unusual to ever turn off all the power to a unit, but a tenant should know how to shut off individual circuits. A smoldering appliance doesn’t produce the clearest thinking, but knowing to shut off the power is a good start. If your unit has a fuse box, make it clear in no uncertain terms to never, ever replace a fuse with one of higher amperage. This is a sure fire—no pun intended—formula for disaster if someone overloads the circuit.

Now that you’ve made the inside of the units a bit safer, focus on the outside. A lot is expected of entry door locks. They’re simple mechanisms, but keys with different amounts of wear go in and out of them all day, some turned with more care than others. Eventually, locks rebel and stick or break, but a few squirts of powdered graphite every couple of months does wonders. It’s tempting to use WD-40 or spray silicone (and I’ve done it myself when that’s all I had on hand), but these products have a tendency to attract and hold dust and dirt. Eventually, that can make things worse. Powdered graphite lubricates without leaving a sticky residue, so it attracts nothing. While you’re doing the entry door, hit the unit doors as well. It’s a cheap investment, especially considering locksmiths’ rates.

I’m a big believer in outdoor lighting, especially this time of year. It offers safety, security and a certain civility to all those passing by, not just your tenants. A lighted building says, “Welcome.”

The variety of decorative outdoor lighting fixtures runs from nautical to art deco to faux colonial. No-nonsense security lighting with motion detectors and timers cover alleys, garages and basement entrances. What’s the key to decorative fixtures? Find ones that are sturdy and accommodate light bulb changing. Some are so flimsy you can barely replace the nuts when reinstalling the tops.

Some would argue that superfluous outdoor lighting wastes energy and adds to nighttime light pollution. Fair enough, but it depends on what and where you install your fixtures and the type of bulbs you use. A 13- to 15-watt compact fluorescent bulb, for instance, offers approximately the same light output as a 60-watt incandescent bulb along with a longer life span. Vendors and manufacturers are gradually waking up to light pollution; www.starrynightlights.com offers quite a bit of information on the subject.

Installation depends on your current electrical set-up. An existing circuit might be tapped or a new one run from the panel. Outdoor lighting won’t increase your rents or upgrade your tenants, but it’s one improvement that lasts, is appreciated and provides a margin of well-being.

Keeping the Records Straight
Want to simplify tenant maintenance requests? Provide preprinted, addressed forms on cardstock—an 8.5”-by-11” sheet can be cut into two, three or four cards for a few cents each—so they can be mailed or dropped off. Write up a document with spaces for name, address, apartment number, nature of the problem, degree of importance, signature and whatever else you deem appropriate. Leave some with each tenant. No more scraps of paper or Post-Its—just nice, uniform cards that you can easily file.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or SF Apartment Magazine. Terry 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, now in its second edition from Lyons Press. He is cost conscious but not cheap, and he knows deferred maintenance always costs more in the end. He can be reached at tfmeany@msn.com. Copyright © 2007 by SF Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.