If you listened to everyone who said “do this because it will increase your home’s resale value,” you’d never stop spending money on your home. And you wouldn’t even come close to recouping your total investment.

Which is to say, adding to your home’s resale value, while generally a good idea, should rarely if ever be your sole reason for making certain improvements.

Let’s say, for example, that you live in a neighborhood where no one’s even heard of tankless water heaters. If in fact that were the case, then by all means add the tankless water heater if you think it’s a the best way to provide for your family’s hot water needs now and going forward, assuming you’re not planning to move any time soon. Down the road, the value of that tankless water heater to potential buyers will determine itself.

Here’s another way to look at enhancing your home’s resale value. Our best advice? Here you go

• Prioritize your home improvement needs
• Establish a budget
• Set a timetable
• Get at least 3 estimates on each project on your list

Most importantly, don’t make resale value your primary reason for choosing one project over another. Your home is meant to be enjoyed, so make those improvements mostly likely to enhance your quality of life AND your family’s safety.

At the same time, we need to answer the question we posed at the top of this blog, i.e., “what contributes most to home resale value?”

While there are a lot of opinions out there, we like the list provided on the American Home Shield website:

• Install a steel door
• Update your kitchen
• Create a new bedroom
• Add a deck
• Redo a bath

Click here to read more on the subject.

At the same time, please keep in mind that Boden Plumbing offers several ways to help add value to your home along with greater indoor comfort and convenience for your entire family. Our many residential services include:

• Kitchen and bath upgrades
• Replacement water heaters
• High efficiency home heating and cooling systems
• Various solutions to help improve the quality of your indoor air

Contact us today for more information, or to schedule an in-home quote.

The way you’ve grown accustomed to buying water heaters is all about to change, and we’re doing our best to get the word out to all our customers and the many other homeowners throughout the area.

Bottom line, electric and gas storage tank water heaters – as you now know them – can no longer be manufactured as April 16, 2015. And that’s according to the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act, or NAECA. Trust us; if you haven’t already heard about this, it’s going to become common knowledge before too much time passes by.

Here are the gist of the changes, and how they might impact you:

• New style water heaters under 55 gallons in storage capacity will be about 2” taller and 2” wider to accommodate the added insulation required so they can meet the new energy efficiency standards. So if, for example, you wait until current supplies of conventional storage tank water heaters are all gone, you may be forced to buy a new style replacement system with less storage capacity than you have now.

• When it comes to water heaters greater than 55 gallons in storage capacity, the changes are going to be even more profound. Not only will newly manufactured systems be bigger, they’re going to be completely different types of water heaters. Gas storage tank water heaters are being replaced by gas condensing water heaters, and electric storage tank models are being replaced by electric hybrid water heaters.

While new style water heaters will be up to 30% more energy efficient than their predecessors, they’re also going to be about 35% more costly.

Our advice? If you’ve even been thinking about replacing your water heater, contact Boden Plumbing Heating & Air today while we still have plenty of conventional electric and gas storage tank water heaters on hand in all sizes. But remember: once they’re gone, they’re gone.