You get the keys, a folder of disclosures, and a firm handshake. What you don’t get is the owner’s manual, because houses don’t come with one. The previous owner knew which breaker ran the garage and that the basement stairs light needs a firm push. You get to learn all of that the hard way.
Most of what goes wrong in a first year of ownership isn’t dramatic. It’s small, ignorable stuff that quietly turns into big stuff. So here’s the roadmap we wish more people got at the closing table, tuned for how homes actually age in New Hampshire.
The first week: find the off switches
Before anything else, learn where your house shuts off.
- Main water shutoff. Usually where the supply enters the basement, often near the meter. Tag it. The night a supply line lets go is the worst possible time to be hunting for it with a flashlight.
- Main electrical panel. Open it, read the labels, and fix the ones that are wrong or blank. If you see a panel branded Federal Pacific, Zinsco, or Sylvania, put “have an electrician evaluate this” near the top of your list. Those brands have a documented history of breakers that don’t trip reliably.
- Individual water valves under sinks and behind toilets. Give each a gentle turn so it isn’t seized when you need it.
- Fuel shutoff for your furnace or boiler, plus the emergency switch (often a red plate at the top of the basement stairs).
While you’re at it, change the locks and test every smoke and carbon monoxide detector. In an older New England house with an oil or propane burner in the basement, working CO detectors are not optional.
The first month: baseline the big systems
Now find out what you actually bought.
Heating and cooling. Change the furnace filter and note the size on your phone. A clogged filter is the single most common reason a system works too hard and dies early. If the system wasn’t serviced before the sale, book a tune-up before the first hard freeze.
Water heater. Find the manufacture date on the label (it’s usually encoded in the serial number). A standard tank heater lasts 8 to 12 years. If yours is pushing ten, you’re on borrowed time and should budget for a replacement rather than get surprised by a flooded basement. We wrote a short guide to the warning signs a water heater gives before it fails.
Gutters and grading. Walk the perimeter after a heavy rain. Water should run away from the foundation, not pool against it. Most wet-basement problems in this region start as a downspout dumping two feet from the wall.
Radon. This one is easy to skip and shouldn’t be. Roughly a third of tested New Hampshire homes come back above the EPA’s action level, because the granite our state is named for produces the gas. A test kit is cheap and the state offers them. Here’s what radon means for a Granite State home.
Then let the seasons run the schedule
New Hampshire gives you four very different jobs a year.
Fall (before the first freeze). Clean gutters, drain and shut off exterior spigots, seal drafts, and get the heating system checked. This is the highest-leverage weekend of the year. Our autumn checklist for Derry-area homeowners covers it step by step.
Winter. Watch for ice dams along the eaves after snow. Keep an eye on the attic: a warm, poorly ventilated attic melts snow that refreezes at the gutter line and forces water back under the shingles. If you see icicles the size of the house, that’s a symptom, not decoration.
Spring (mud season). Walk the foundation, check the sump pump, look for winter’s damage to shingles and flashing, and re-check that grading. Frost heaves move things. Doors that suddenly stick are often the house telling you something shifted.
Summer. The dry, warm stretch is the time for exterior paint, caulk, deck maintenance, and any work that needs the ground to not be frozen. It’s also when to knock out the cheap protective stuff. A caulk-and-weatherstripping afternoon here saves you on the heating bill in January.
Budget like the house is going to need things, because it will
A useful planning number: set aside somewhere between 1% and 4% of your home’s value each year for upkeep, leaning toward the higher end for older homes and our harsh winters. On a $400,000 house that’s $4,000 to $16,000 a year. That sounds like a lot until you price a single roof or a burst-pipe cleanup. Recent data pegs the average household at around $2,458 in routine maintenance plus another $2,321 in emergency repairs annually, and the whole point of a plan is to shift dollars out of that second bucket. We broke the math down in the 1% rule, explained for New England.
You don’t have to do all of it yourself
Some of this is a Saturday with a caulk gun. Some of it is a ladder you shouldn’t be on and a panel you shouldn’t be opening. Knowing the difference is most of the skill.
At Dovetails Home Services, a lot of what we do is exactly this: the recurring, unglamorous maintenance that keeps a New Hampshire home out of the emergency-repair column. If you’d rather hand the seasonal list to someone who does it for a living, take a look at what we handle or get in touch and we’ll build a plan around your house.
Sources
- Reviews.com and ConsumerAffairs, home maintenance cost breakdowns (1% to 4% guidance; average routine and emergency spend figures), 2025–2026.
- New Hampshire Bulletin and NH Department of Environmental Services, radon prevalence in New Hampshire homes.
- Manufacturer service literature (Rheem, A.O. Smith) on water heater lifespan.
Rather hand the whole list off?Book a visit and we'll take it from there.