# A house manual — systems, warranties and the maintenance calendar Recipe No. 31, Home and family. From The know.sh Cookbook: https://know.sh/cookbook/house-manual - For: the owner of a 1964 ranch house who is tired of finding the water shut-off with a torch at two in the morning - You bring: a torch, your phone’s camera, the folder of manuals and receipts the last owners left, the AI assistant you already use, and a Saturday in the basement - You get: a document per system with every appliance’s model, serial number, warranty and service history, a maintenance calendar with its sources, and a link for the house-sitter - Time: a Saturday to walk the house, an evening to check what your assistant builds, then a line after every repair - Keep it: private while you work; share one document by a read-only link A house built in 1964 has had sixty years of owners, each of whom fixed something and told no one. The main water valve is behind the laundry sink, the gas shut-off is on the far side of the furnace, and the breaker labelled "kitchen" also runs the bathroom. You find these things out in an emergency, which is the worst time. This recipe writes the manual down, one document per system: plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling, roof and gutters, appliances. Each thing that can fail gets a finding with its model and serial numbers, warranty terms, service history and where its shut-off is. Your assistant builds the pages from your photos of the rating plates and researches a maintenance schedule from manufacturers' manuals and extension-service guides; you check it all and turn the schedule into a calendar. A separate document, *Minding the house*, goes to the house-sitter as a link, with the sensitive findings left out. The manuals, receipts and photos stay in the folder and on your phone. Door, alarm and garage codes stay out of know.sh altogether. ## What you will use - **Shelf**: A shelf named after the house, *12 Linden Court*, with the year it was built and what has been replaced. - **Research document**: One document per system, plus a *Maintenance calendar* and a *Minding the house* document for sitters and tenants. - **Finding**: A finding per appliance, fixture or shut-off; the shut-offs marked **Key**; known weak spots filed as *Risk*. - **Your AI assistant**: Reads your photos of the rating plates, builds a finding per appliance, and researches a maintenance schedule with its sources. - **The editor**: Where you check every model and serial number against the photo and write the shut-offs in your own words. - **Look up**: At two in the morning, ⌘K and "shut-off" finds the right page before the water reaches the carpet. - **Revisions**: Each finding’s history is its service record: what the plumber changed and when. - **Public link**: A link to *Minding the house* for a sitter or tenant, with a password, an expiry and private findings left out. ## Method ### 1. Walk the house and photograph every plate Start in the basement with a torch and your phone. For each system, find every box with a label on it: the furnace, the water heater, the electrical panel, the sump pump, the air conditioner outside. Photograph each rating plate, then the warranty cards and receipts in the folder. Give the photos to whichever assistant you use, in the assistant itself, since know.sh has no upload. Ask it to build a shelf named after the house, a document per system, *Plumbing*, *Electrical*, *Heating and cooling*, *Roof and gutters*, *Appliances*, and a finding per appliance titled by what it is and when it went in: "Water heater — 40-gallon gas, installed 2021". ### 2. Check every appliance in the editor Ask for the same five headings in every finding, then check them yourself: - **Where it is**, and how to reach it. - **Model and serial**, read from the plate. - **Warranty**: what it covers, until when, whether it needed registering, and where the paperwork is. - **Service history**, one dated line per visit. - **Manual**, the manufacturer's page for the model as a source link. Open each document and press **Edit**. A worn plate is easy to misread, so compare every model and serial number with the photo. In each overview, say what is original to 1964 and what has been replaced. ### 3. Find the shut-offs before you need them Give every shut-off its own finding, marked **Key** and titled the same way, "Shut-off — water main", so that Look up finds them all with one word. Cover the water main, the valves under each sink and toilet, the gas valves at the furnace and the water heater, and the main breaker. Describe each as you would to a stranger: "Brass gate valve on the north wall behind the laundry sink. Turn clockwise; it is stiff." Test the water valves while you are there. Write down which breaker does what, as a list, and find out which labels lie. **Highlight** the line that matters most in each, so it is easy to spot when you open the finding. ### 4. Ask your assistant to research the maintenance schedule Ask your assistant to research a maintenance schedule for your actual systems and climate on the web, and file it as a new document on the shelf, a finding per system, each interval with its source links. Ask for the manufacturers' manuals first and a state extension service, such as the University of Minnesota's, second. This needs an assistant with web search; Claude and ChatGPT have it, and many local set-ups do not. Read it as a first draft. Open the sources, and where a blog disagrees with the manufacturer's manual for your model, the manual wins. A general schedule does not know your furnace. ### 5. Turn it into a calendar Make a *Maintenance calendar* document with a finding per season: *Spring*, *Summer*, *Autumn*, *Winter*. Each line is a task and the finding it belongs to: "Test the sump pump by filling the pit (*Plumbing*, 5)". Ask your assistant to write the links, so each task opens the appliance it is about. know.sh sends no reminders. Put the four seasonal dates in your phone's calendar with a link to the right finding, and on the day, work down the list on the iOS app, which is in TestFlight beta, standing in the basement. ### 6. Add a line after every repair When the plumber or the furnace technician leaves, add a dated line under **Service history**: who came, what they found, what they replaced, and the cost if you want it. The invoice goes in the folder. Every finding keeps its own **Revisions**, so you can see when each line was added. When you sell the house, the service history is the most convincing thing you can show a buyer. ### 7. Make the sitter’s link Make a document called *Minding the house*: the shut-offs, the furnace's quirks, the sump pump alarm, bins and snow, and who to call. Press **Share**, add a password, and set the expiry for the day after you get home. Copy the link when it appears; it is shown only once. Leave out the findings a sitter does not need, such as your travel dates or the note about the spare key, from each finding's page. A document has one link at a time, so a tenant next spring means replacing it, and a replaced link resets its exclusions: set them again. ## Prompts to try Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Search the web for a maintenance schedule for a 1964 ranch house in Minnesota with a gas forced-air furnace, central air, a 40-gallon gas water heater, a sump pump and an asphalt-shingle roof. One finding per system, each task with how often and its source. Prefer the manufacturers’ manuals and University of Minnesota Extension, and say where sources disagree. File it in know.sh as a new document on my *12 Linden Court* shelf. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, read every finding on my *12 Linden Court* shelf and list each warranty: what it covers, when it ends, whether it needed registering, and where the paperwork is. Put them in order of end date in a new finding called “Warranties by end date”, and name any finding that mentions a warranty but gives no end date. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, read the *Minding the house* document on my *12 Linden Court* shelf and tell me every line that would help a stranger get in or know when the house is empty: codes, where keys are, travel dates, the alarm. Give the finding number for each. Do not change anything. ## Variations - Selling the house? Share each system document with the private findings left out, and give the buyer the links at closing. The service history is the part they will read. - For a rental, keep a *For tenants* document instead of *Minding the house*: appliances, bins, and whom to call for repairs, with the link replaced at each change of tenant. - Planning a renovation? Keep the decisions and the bids in a [build book](/cookbook/build-book), and link each decision to the system finding it changes. - Add the yard: a [garden journal](/cookbook/garden-journal) for the beds, and a finding in *Plumbing* for the irrigation valves and when they drain for winter. ## Where it falls short - know.sh holds words, not photos. Your assistant can read a photo you give it, but the rating plates, the panel and the valve stay in your phone’s albums; name the album in each finding. - Web research needs an assistant with web search, and a local model through Ollama calls know.sh’s tools less reliably; check what any assistant files, and use Revisions to undo it. - know.sh sends no reminders. The maintenance calendar is only as good as the dates you put in your own calendar. - A document has one link at a time, so a sitter and a tenant cannot hold different versions of the same document at once. ## A note on codes, keys and an old house Never put alarm, door, garage or lockbox codes, Wi-Fi passwords or safe combinations in know.sh, private or not. Tell the sitter in person or by phone. Keep your travel dates and the whereabouts of spare keys off any link: a link can be forwarded, and together they say when a house is empty and how to get in. A house of the 1960s may have lead paint and materials containing asbestos, such as some floor tiles, pipe insulation and textured ceilings. Have them tested before you sand, cut or drill. In the US, contractors who disturb paint in a home built before 1978 must be certified under the EPA's lead-safe rule. Gas and electrical work belongs to licensed tradespeople, with permits where your town requires them. A researched schedule is general and can be wrong; your equipment's manual and a qualified technician come first. Indexed under: House manuals, Shut-offs, Warranties, Maintenance schedules, Service history, House-sitters, Lead paint.