Your house is fifteen years old. What is already worth checking?

There is a reasonable assumption that a house built this century does not need thinking about. The plumbing is modern, everything is to current standards, and nothing in it is old enough to be near the end of anything.

Mostly that is true, and this is not an argument otherwise. But a newer house has its own short list, it is a different list from an older one, and out here the climate shortens some of it. Estates like Jordan Springs, built from 2011 on the old ADI site, along with Caddens, Claremont Meadows and Glenmore Park, are now old enough that the first items on that list have arrived.

The short answer

In a newer house the things worth attention are the ones with short service lives rather than the pipework: flexible hoses, the hot water system and its relief valve, and anything the heat works hard. Extreme heat out here shortens several of those, so the general maintenance advice written for average conditions is a floor rather than a plan.

1. Replace flexible hoses if you cannot remember them being changed
2. Find the compliance plate on the hot water unit and note its real age
3. Check the relief valve behaviour, particularly after a hot stretch
4. Make sure the split system condensate line drains freely
5. Know where your water and gas isolation points are before you need them

On this page

1. The short-life items
2. The one to do now
3. What the heat adds
4. Before you extend
5. Know your isolation points
6. When something goes wrong

1. The items with short lives, which are not the pipes

In a house of this age, the buried and in-wall pipework is generally the least of anybody's concerns. What has a genuinely short life is the accessible fittings and the appliances, and those are on their own schedule regardless of how new the house is.

• Flexible hoses. The braided lines under sinks and basins. They are the shortest-lived thing in the house and the most damaging when they fail.
• The hot water system. Fifteen years is a real age for one. Read the plate rather than assuming it is as old as the house.
• The relief valve on it. A consumable safety component, and one this climate works hard.
• Tap cartridges and washers. Ordinary wear, and cheap while they are just wear.
• The split system condensate line. Not plumbing in the traditional sense, and reliably a summer problem when it blocks.

None of that is a defect. It is the ordinary maintenance profile of a modern house, and knowing it exists is most of the benefit.

2. The one item worth doing this month

Flexible hoses. If you cannot remember them being replaced, they are old enough to replace.

They fail without warning, wide open, at mains pressure, usually inside a cupboard nobody looks in. In a house where everyone is out during the day, one can run for hours before anybody knows. It is the most damaging thing that routinely happens in residential property and it is among the cheapest to prevent.

While you are under there, find the isolation valves and check they actually turn. A valve that has never been operated in fifteen years is not guaranteed to work at the moment you urgently need it to.

3. What this climate adds to the list

This is where a general maintenance article stops being enough. Equipment out here is not operating in average conditions, and several things on the list above age faster because of it.

• Hot water systems in hot spaces. A roof space or an unshaded external wall reaches temperatures well above the outside air, and a unit living there is worked harder than the general service-life figures assume.
• Anodes. Faster consumption means the check is worth doing earlier, and an anode is a fraction of the cost of the tank it protects.
• Relief valves. More heat means more expansion to release, so a valve here does more work over its life.
• Long plastic runs. PEX and poly expand and contract with temperature. On a long run in a hot roof space that is real movement, repeated daily through a heatwave.

The practical version of all that: bring the timing forward rather than waiting for the interval a national maintenance guide suggests.

4. Before you add a bathroom, a pool or a granny flat

Newer estate blocks tend to be efficiently laid out, which is another way of saying there is less spare space and the drainage route is less forgiving than on an older, larger block.

1. Find out where the sewer and stormwater actually run before the design is fixed. A sewer service diagram plus a locate answers it.
2. Establish whether a new fixture can connect into an existing route rather than needing a new one across the block.
3. Check whether anything you are planning would sit over a drainage run, because that defers the cost of any future repair rather than avoiding it.
4. Raise hot water capacity early if the household is growing. Adding a bathroom to a system sized for the original house is a common and avoidable disappointment.
5. Ask about the stormwater arrangements for the property specifically, since Council is the authority and estates can have particular requirements.

5. Know your isolation points today

This takes five minutes and it is the single highest-value thing on this page after the hoses.

• The main water isolation at the meter, and whether it turns freely.
• The individual isolation valves under sinks and behind the toilet.
• The gas isolation at the meter and at each appliance.
• The isolation and the circuit for the hot water system.
• Where the stormwater pits are on the block.

Find them on an ordinary afternoon rather than in the dark with water coming out of something. It is the difference between an incident and a disaster, and it costs nothing but the walk.

6. When something does go wrong in a newer house

Two things worth knowing. The first is that a fault in a newer house is not automatically a defect claim, and it is not automatically not one either. Anything about building warranties or a builder's obligations is outside our field, and it is worth asking somebody whose field it is before assuming either way.

The second is that documentation matters more than people expect. Compliance certificates for gas work, records of what was installed, and any camera footage of the drainage all belong with the house papers. In a newer house that record can still be complete, which is an advantage older properties simply do not have.

Keeping it complete from here is free, and it is worth a great deal to whoever owns the place next.

The short version

• A newer house has a short list, and it is fittings and appliances rather than pipework.
• Flexible hoses are the urgent item. If you cannot remember changing them, change them.
• Read the compliance plate on the hot water unit rather than assuming it matches the house.
• This climate shortens anode life, works relief valves harder and moves long plastic runs.
• Locate the drainage before adding a bathroom, a pool or a granny flat.
• Find every water and gas isolation point on an ordinary afternoon, not in the dark.