Maintenance Coordination

The building starts cooling at a rate determined by its insulation, air sealing, the outdoor temperature and the wind. A well-built modern house in moderate cold may lose only a few degrees a day. An older house during a −30 °C wind event can approach freezing internally within a day or two.

The consequence is not a cold house — it is frozen plumbing. Once interior temperatures at vulnerable locations reach freezing, supply lines begin to freeze, and the failure typically shows itself when the ice thaws and water starts running.

This is why visit frequency during cold events matters more than visit frequency generally. The difference between finding a heating failure after two days and after two weeks is the difference between a service call and a restoration project.

On a monitored property the sequence is: the failure is found on a visit, documented, you are contacted, and a licensed HVAC contractor is dispatched under whatever authorisation you have set in advance. Setting that authorisation before you leave is what allows it to happen at 8 PM on a Sunday rather than after an email exchange across time zones.

Connected temperature sensors can shorten detection further and are a sensible supplement — though they only tell you something is wrong, and somebody still has to go to the property.

Some things, directly. Most things, by getting the right licensed person there.

Attendants handle non-trade tasks: bulbs, filters, batteries, hardware tightening, weather stripping, basic assembly, moving small furniture, simple device setup and similar work. That covers a genuinely useful share of what an empty house needs.

Alberta treats plumbing, gasfitting and electrical work as compulsory-certification trades, and some things that get casually called handyman work fall on that side of the line — replacing a thermostat with wiring behind it, anything on a water heater or furnace, changing a shower head or tap, resetting a gas appliance, replacing a light fixture. Those go to a licensed contractor.

The workflow for anything beyond an attendant's scope is: document the issue with photographs, report it to you with a recommendation, get your authorisation, engage an appropriately licensed contractor, attend for access, and document completion. VacantHomes coordinates and records the work; it does not perform it, and does not warrant the contractor's work.

It gets documented, classified, and reported to you, and then it stays open until it is actually resolved.

Every issue found is photographed and recorded with what was observed and where, and given a severity: no concern, monitor, attention recommended, or urgent. The severity determines how fast you hear about it — urgent items are communicated immediately through every channel on file, rather than appearing in a report you read on Thursday.

From there: a recommendation is attached, you decide, any work is coordinated with an appropriately licensed contractor under your authorisation, completion is documented with photographs, and a follow-up visit confirms resolution before the issue closes. Nothing is marked resolved because a contractor said so.

For genuinely serious findings — active water, heating failure in cold weather, evidence of forced entry — a defined escalation runs, including protective steps within an attendant's scope where they are safe and authorised, and escalation to your named secondary contacts if you cannot be reached.

For fire, gas odour, medical emergency or a crime in progress, the answer is 911. That is not a property-care matter and a representative on site will call them.

Only within limits you set in writing, in advance.

You choose a standing authorisation level: contact me for everything, or authorise urgent protective work up to a stated amount without waiting for a reply. The reason to set one is straightforward — a leak discovered at 2 AM on a Sunday should not wait for an email across time zones before anyone can act.

Standing authorisation covers urgent protective work only: stopping damage from getting worse. It is not a general spending authority, and it does not cover elective repairs, improvements or anything non-urgent, which always come back to you for a decision.

Every authorised expenditure is documented with the reason, the contractor engaged, the work performed and the invoice, attached to the property record.

You can change or withdraw the authorisation at any time.