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Writing documentation for your house
- iJohnDoe 3y agoI like the site layout, theme, and functionality. Can some please tell me which system it is? Thanks!
- lwhsiao 3y agoOP here. First, thank you! The site is a simple statically generated site (I use Zola [1]). The theme of the site is inspired by Researcher [2], a theme for Jekyll (another static site generator). I've been meaning to open source my version and add it to the official list of Zola themes [3], but just haven't gotten around to it quite yet. I also use openring-rs [4] for the pseudo webring at the bottom of the posts. [1]: https://www.getzola.org/ https://www.getzola.org/ [2]: https://ankitsultana.com/researcher/ https://ankitsultana.com/researcher/ [3]: https://www.getzola.org/themes/ https://www.getzola.org/themes/ [4]: https://github.com/lukehsiao/openring-rs https://github.com/lukehsiao/openring-rs
- walteweiss 3y agoI was about to ask the same, and here is your reply already! Thanks. I would be glad to use your theme whenever it is ready.
- pmags 3y agoThe idea of writing technical documentation for your home seems like excellent advise. I think many people do this in an informal manner. I'm not sure a full blown mkdoc setup is necessary -- of having your "home repair/maintenance" notes in their own subfolder of an Obsidian vault or git repository might be sufficient. In my own experience, having quick access to this info has made troubleshooting easier a number of times recently during some repairs and renovations.
- akira2501 3y agoSeems like the perfect territory for a wiki. "Appliances/Furnace/Yearly Maintenance"
- moduspol 3y agoI keep it in a Google Doc that I print out and have visible on the kitchen counter when I go to sell. Even putting aside the practical value it could provide to the new homeowner, it shows the house has been well-maintained to the potential buyer. It also conveys that there are likely fewer "unknowns" about the house because it implies nothing is being hidden.
- blakesterz 3y agoI've been attempting to do something like this, but realized quite quickly many things need a video. e.g. Writing out how to change the furnace filter just made no sense (the layout of the furnace makes it really tricky) but a 1 minute video just did the trick. I like the structure laid out here, gives me a good idea on how to start on something that would work for me.
- zmmmmm 3y agoIt's the sort of thing I imagine products like the Meta Ray Ban glasses might be good for. Any time you start doing one of those annoying complex maintenance tasks that you forget how to do every time (the other night for me it was dismantling the toilet cistern since it blocks once every couple of years ...), you just click the glasses on and next time you can watch back what you did the first time.
- grepfru_it 3y agoI like this idea even more!
- davesmylie 3y agoI have a gmail account that I cc stuff to - receipts for any major chattels or work, engineering reports, wall cavities before lining (showing cable runs and nog spacing etc). Probably not as usable as this system, but pretty low effort and able to be passed on to the next owner easily if/when we move
- yodon 3y agoMake sure you log in occasionally, or Google will delete the account due to inactivity.
- justinlloyd 3y agoI own an RV. The RV came with two thick manuals, one for the RV chassis, and one for all of the appliances that were factory installed. I am not the first owner of the RV. My brother, a meticulous military man kept the documentation for every appliance and gadget he installed in that RV. And since I took ownership of it, and have I been ever grateful that he documented it, I have done the same too, for the WiFi, for the networking, for the tool shed, for sit-to-stand desks, for the oven, for the plubming, and so forth. And I've applied the same rigorous principle to the house now as well for about the past three years. I kept documentation prior, but nothing so deep until the RV came along. Two thick ring binders, one for the house "chassis" and one for the appliances in the house. Instructions on how to reset the internet, instructions on how to "reboot" the water heater, instructions on how to change the AC filters, the model numbers required for the filters, and why there is no "air return" vents on the AC for the next owner, and also as a reminder to myself. Documentation on the maintenance of having the black water lines replaced after one of them collapsed, how to access the clean out hatch on the black water lines. Where wires in the walls are run too. The circuit breakers are each carefully labelled too. It gets written up in OneNote so it is searchable, and then it gets put in to the three-ring binder, with sections for each area, e.g. garage, master bedroom, kitchen, etc. And lots of paint codes for each individual wall. It doesn't take long if you do it step-by-step rather than try to boil the ocean all at once, and you will be grateful you did it for years to come. And your home, unlike the software developed by your team, doesn't tend to change all that fast.
- supportengineer 3y agoBusiness idea - House Documentation as-a-service. You fill in the blanks online and it generates the PDF for you.
- duck 3y agoThe house we live in now came with a paper version of this from the original owner/builder (along with almost a "dream" book section of where they got some of the ideas from). It was super helpful to have blueprints and things like paint codes, although the last owner had changed a couple rooms and didn't update it. The last owner did add some details on some plants they put in, which has been really valuable as well. My favorite part has been having receipts for lots of little custom things they added.
- justinzollars 3y agoThis is great advice. I have a ton of documents with the home I bought, but I can't seem to find when the roof was replaced. It took me months to discover I had a sprinkler system and I was amazed when I figured out how to use it. Something like this would be very convenient.
- xnx 3y agoThis is extremely organized and admirable. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. A hand scribbled note taped to the appliance or somewhere logical nearby beats no documentation at all.
- m463 3y agothere is high-tech there too. They have cool postit notes now: super-sticky; super-sticky full stick (entire note is sticky) and now postit extreme notes that you can stick to lumber or man-projects or something.
- mhb 3y agoAnd for running the house - Jeffery Epstein's Household Manual: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21128538-gx-606 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21128538-gx-606
- xpe 3y agoYikes. Well played.
- quickthrower2 3y agoSinister source aside... that is very detailed, 1980s vibe, but dated 2005. Talks about telephone directories, and picking up the phone in 3 rings.
- grepfru_it 3y agoI do this for my rental property. I have a complete guide from onboarding to offboarding tenants. Process guides for 6 month checkups, instruction guides on how to use the alarm system, changing locks and codes, dimensions of all appliance cubbies etc etc etc My wife wants nothing to do with the rental aspect but when she had to handle management for a few weeks she couldn’t stop gushing over my OneNote administrative guide.
- gooseyman 3y agoThis is awesome. Have you ever considered publishing these?
- grepfru_it 3y agoNope. This is what gives me an advantage over my neighbors. IP baby.
- teeray 3y agoSimilar, but I also have a QRH[0] for disasters small and large: Floods, freeze-ups, fuel exhaustion, electrical failure, telecom failures, septic emergencies all the way down to missing tv remotes (there’s a stack of spares and exact instructions to program it for specific TVs). The idea is that I can literally give anyone acting on my behalf access to the utility room, they grab the binder on the wall and mitigate the issue exactly. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_Reference_Handbook https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_Reference_Handbook
- efitz 3y agoFor my last house, I had spent years on smart home automation, I had a binder that contained clear instructions I wrote for everything, and receipts for every upgrade I ever made on the home, warranty docs, QR codes to download smart home apps to control the devices, plot maps, floor plans, a 1-page list of repairmen for everything- you name it. I made short YouTube videos for everything like turning the water on/off, hose bib and sprinkler shutoffs, device pairing, etc. I put dozens of hours into documenting my home, and felt a sense of accomplishment that I was doing a “warm handoff” of the home. The new owner sold the home after two years. From the listing photos she had ripped out most of the smart home stuff and had crappily remodeled (painting river stone hearth, etc). YouTube showed zero hits on it he videos I made. I sincerely doubt that she even bothered to look at the binder I handed over. I will never put that amount of effort into documenting a home again. I know what I’ve done and I keep just enough docs around for my own purposes.
- waveBidder 3y agonothing productive to add, but man that sucks.
- beachy 3y agoI have a home-built system for monitoring the levels in our water tanks (we live on rain water). Of course some people get by with a simple float indicator, but why would I do that when I could be using high accuracy hydrostatic sensors, esp32, influxdb, grafana, spring, keycloak and mysql running in AWS? I certainly wouldn't want to be getting support calls if we were to ever sell, so I would probably remove it myself if that happened.
- edrxty 3y agoWhy would you use AWS for that? That seems like an extremely strange external dependency for a house running on rainwater.
- Sakos 3y agoBecause they can, I guess? There can be fun had in over-engineering personal projects. It can also be educational. It's no more odd than > grafana, spring, keycloak
- zellyn 3y agoAfter years of owning services at work, I started writing runbooks for my house (and our holiday place). This looks a lot more organized and polished, but I can also highly recommend a Google Drive folder consisting of a main Google Doc, and all the various PDF copies of manuals that it links to. I plan on handing the runbooks off when/if we sell…
- donatj 3y agoI live in the house I grew up in. My dad designed the second floor, an addition. He knows the skeleton of this house in a way I never ever will. He lives 50 miles away now, but I still have him as an amazing resource about my house. I wanted to run cat5 to my office on the second floor a number of years ago. "Oh just drill a hole in the floor right here in this corner, there's a void that goes all the way from the second floor to the basement." Sure enough. What I want is the schematics that my dad has in his head.
- rootusrootus 3y agoBest thing I ever did when our house was built was go through the entire house the day before the drywall went up, and take many pictures of everything I could see. So now, when I want to do something, I know exactly what the framing looks like, where the water lines run, drains, electric, everything. It's very handy.
- brk 3y agoAnd with a cheap projector you can shine those pictures on the walls for X-ray vision. BTDT.
- rootusrootus 3y agooooh, now that's an idea I had not thought of. Thanks!
- acherion 3y agoI did the same, before our plasterboard went up, I went around with a video camera and videod everything (borrowed my brother in law's digicam). It has helped heaps!
- bombcar 3y agoIf you don’t want to do it yourself, you can hire a home inspector to do a pre-drywall inspection, and pay extra for full camera documentation. If they’re good, they’ll know what you want and they will also help the builder avoid callbacks. Many things are insanely easy to fix before the drywall is up. I also recommend that you do the same walkthrough, of course.
- dools 3y agoI do this as a maintenance schedule on a Trello board. Each list is an interval (1 day, 7 days, 180 days and so on) and each thing to do is a card. When the due date is marked complete, an automation advanced the due date the correct number of days from today (except in the 1 day list when it advances it 24 hours from the original due date). Then I have another Trello board where I stick documents and reference material.
- phanimahesh 3y agoI'm building a recurring reminder system to scratch my own itch for this, with a checklist centered approach for home maintenance.
- RasmusMerirand 3y agoNo need for that, we built dobu.me for this, currety completely free as we are gathering feedback :)
- chezball 3y agoSo, i sold a house i had in north Seattle after a divorce in 2018. We had bought it in 04, i was working at Microsoft at the time. We raised our son there. I even built a 8’x8’x8’ brick oven for baking pizza and bread (plans from Ovencrafters). I rented an excavator for a week and dug around the entire house and put in 12’ deep footing drains, with clean-out pipes every 20’ down the 100’ to the road. A new 2” pex water main. 1” pvc sprinkler lines buried 3’ deep. I completely gutted and remodeled the basement. I kept a 3” binder with everything in it. Every sprinkler line, footing drain, how my gravity fed recirc system worked, electrical wire, even the pictures of every stage of the six month long brick oven project, including how to move it if needed (10k lbs, but doable with a forklift) When i sold the house, i flew back there just to hand it to the new owner, some nuevo amazon guy. I went through everything with him, and although he listened, there was no interest or appreciation in what i had handed him. Fine. Whatever. I moved back to Seattle a few months ago, and my 17 yo son, who was literally born in that house (on a Murphy Bed i built, also included in the manual (the plans, not that my son was born on it, how weird do you think i am?) went and knocked on the door, and he asked if he could look around (outside). They apparently looked at him as if he was deranged, but said sure. He reported back that they had razed the brick oven, the one thing i thought would out last me in my life. I hoped that one day, maybe some kids would be eating pizza from this oven 100 years from now and no one would know where the oven came from. Yeah, I haven’t had a house since then, but i will do it again, document everything. I will just be pickier about who i sell it to.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- argc 3y agoYeah sounds like the people who bought it suck. Why would you destroy a pizza oven? It would add a ton of value to the house for the right buyer. If you had sold it to me I would have absolutely kept the oven :) Also inspires me to follow a similar path for my house. I think the key is to price the house so only someone who values the work you've done would bother buying it, if you have the time to wait around. And I guess that doesn't guarantee anything.
- 3y ago
- h2odragon 3y agoAnother good trick is to label each outlet and light switch with the number of the circuit breaker its connected to. Things such as a big label on the valve: "MAIN WATER CUTOFF" are also a good idea. Centralized documentation is great, but who reads manuals?
- nucleardog 3y agoLocality of the information is important. People will see comments in the code. They may even bother to read a README.md dropped in the same folder as the files they’re looking at. They probably won’t look in a docs/ folder in the root and they’re almost definitely not going to go search Confluence. Centralized documentation is great for high level information. “Here’s an overview of the water treatment system.” You know where I wanna see instructions for resetting the alarm after cleaning the filter? Beside the filter. Most of my “home documentation” is sharpied pieces of masking tape stuck around the place.
- bluGill 3y agoDon't waste your time labeling each outlet/switch. While it can be useful at times, most of them will not be used before some other project requires moving the breakers to a different position in the box and then they are worse than nothing: if you trust them you get a shock!
- h2odragon 3y agonah, those projects get secondary, subsidiary boxes off one of the 6-0 feeders.
- bluGill 3y agoYou still need to have room for the breakers that feed those subsidiary boxes. Most breaker panels are only rated for those higher power breakers in a few of the slots (not anywhere), and thus you have to move lower power breakers around to make room for the higher powered ones.
- bmitc 3y agoI have been considering this but haven't arrived at the right platform to use yet. I've considered Notion, Confluence, and other such things. Ideally I want calendar integration where we all know who has what appointment on what day and various other documented things about the house, mainly for our own needs, cat sitters, etc. What tools do people use for this stuff?
- RasmusMerirand 3y agoWe have built out home management platform https://dobu.me https://dobu.me for more of the maintenace handling, but I would really appreciate if you could give it a go and let me know your thoughts :)
- renewiltord 3y agoI just have a Google Doc with all of the stuff in there: - utilities and where they're paid and expected cost - issues if any with common appliances, e.g. - dishwasher occasionally needs to be manually spun with size 7 hex key (placed under) - who I've given keys to - where I pay rent to and when and how much - how to request access to the home lights and voice system I just call it a House Manual and since it's easy to put pictures and stuff into a Google Doc and you can put videos somewhere else. The primary consumer of this is me. My wife just remembers everything.
- alaskamiller 3y agoAirbnb hosts do this. An engineering friend of mine has documented and labeled every aspect of his vacation rental in Hawaii. The only thing is, it's styled the same as the 1980s terminal systems he worked on down to the embossed black tape labels that gets attached to every switch, knob, and dial. Treat your house like a black box.
- dekhn 3y agoJust thinking about those labels made me flash back to the 1980s. I hated the embossed black tape label aesthetic.
- tky 3y agoThe concept is spot on but the implementation seems awfully complex. My strategy that has scaled well over several homes: write install date/vendor/serial on the front of appliance manuals and keep them in a folder. Yes, you can scan them but it’s often easier to look at a paper manual while troubleshooting an appliance. For notes, punchlists, “how I did it” reminders and details, a shared Apple note or Notion page or Google doc is great. Spouse acceptance factor high and participation factor higher.
- weirdkid 3y agoAwesome advice and a great way to prepare for unexpected death or incapacitation (if you are the one in your family who usually handles all this stuff). I only would add that if you do go ahead with this, use tools or a medium that mere mortals are familiar with. Assume the person who needs to read it only knows git as a Larry the Cable Guy reference ("git 'er done!").
- yaky 3y agoExactly my thoughts as well. Labels and stickers in appropriate locations. E.g: my house has junction boxes with circuit labels in marker. Notes for appliance specifics, filter sizes, etc. This way the information can be found at the relevant location, does not get deleted, or goes behind a paywall. Us tech people love to over-complicate things sometimes.
- knallfrosch 3y agoI think this overly technical approach from the OP is terrible for a handover. You're now tied to this exact stack of technologies and after your death, it won't be updated even once. I tape the manual and the transit bolts of a dishwasher to the top of it and that's it. For heating and stuff, a laminated sheet of paper attached to the pipe does the trick. If you love all things digital, create a shared online folder filled with .docx documents. For those you'll find a tool to open and edit them in 40 years time. Sure, for some the creation of the digital stack is the purpose itself. But documentation that lasts decades? I don't believe it.
- walteweiss 3y agoWhy don’t do both? I do both. Long digital documentation and short one printed on a piece of paper attached to the thing.
- Brajeshwar 3y agoWow! I love this. I’m going to copy the hell out of this. I’m a proud “organized person” and have documentation for family and relatives. I’ve got the “Inventory” for most major appliances and long-term items in the house. On my wife’s side, they are a massive Indian family with 20+ cousins across each generation living in large mansions spanning a tiny community. Most of the time, the wife or I would call from across the country to ask where “that was kept,” which services go where, and which cable (I labeled most of them) to look for when the Internet goes down. The in-laws would keep a list of what to set up, fix, and organize when I visit next. I’m not in favor of using any software or tools for these. I want to stay with OpenFormats, plain-text, PDFs, etc, organized in files. Since the pandemic, I have been slowly documenting and collecting the medical records of my immediate family. This has helped a lot when the father-in-law had to go through an extensive heart-related treatment last year. Thanks for doing this. This is a big inspiration, though a tad more micro and technical than I wanted. I suggest others who haven’t started something — stay simple and keep it to files — something that would have worked 20 years ago and will likely work in the next 50 years. If you use a tool, it should be like a varnish on top; the contents should work on its own.
- tomcam 3y ago> On my wife’s side, they are a massive Indian family with 20+ cousins across each generation living in large mansions spanning a tiny community. Well I want to see the Bollywood musical about that family, preferably with a triumphant return of Priyanka Chopra, and music by Devi Sri Prasad.
- Brajeshwar 3y agoLOL! It is indeed a masala of everything. ;-) Once, the Father-in-law had to be told to stop his speech mid-way the 30-min mark at a family gathering. Yes, the family often had to organize big meetups and the elders had to give speeches. This is a family spread across countries, embracing multiple religions, languages, and beliefs - so speech-lot-happens-a-lot.
- jairuhme 3y agoI see a few comments describing how their documentation that they handed over went without love. I'll add a different perspective. I bought a fixer upper (really just needed a face lift) from a couple who's parents lived there but passed away. The only thing left behind was a plastic bag of appliance manuals, some old receipts, and most importantly, a sheet of paper with dates, when things were updated, and how much it cost. This has been extremely valuable to me, allowing me to take the guesswork out of figuring out how old my A/C or furnace is, when the basement was remodeled, or how much carpet was ordered for the spare bedroom. This was a blessing to have as a first time homeowner and I am very grateful to have had that handed down.
- dekhn 3y agoWe got the same when my parents moved into their current house (about 35 years ago). I thought it was a very grown-up thing- not just appliance manuals, but actual hand-written explanations of where all the important things were and details on the history of the house. It felt uncommon and special but I guess it isn't!
- bombcar 3y agoI don’t bother writing documentation, I write on the pipes and walls and equipment. My furnace has the install date in sharpie on it, along with maintenance dates. The main sewer line has the last time it was cleared, who cleared it, and where the blockage was. An industrial label printer makes these easy.
- nucleardog 3y ago> An industrial label printer makes these easy. So does a sharpie. This is my preferred method. "Permanent" things go on the thing with sharpie. Other stuff gets sharpied on some masking tape and stuck on. If my furnace ever walks off and takes the install date with it... chances are the install date's no longer relevant. Otherwise the documentation for my furnace is... on the furnace.
- mtrower 3y ago
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoI think it is a great startup to provide a repository that pulls from public records as well as any private details you provide and centralizes this information. For example, your HVAC, water heater, central circuitboard, and central air system can have maintenance schedules and technical info, but that can be hard to know, because all you usually have is a model number. Likewise with the coming home solar revolution and home storage systems, there will be other major systems that will be long lasting and major cornerstones of your house. Also, your utlities can provide info. All of it can be centralized into a dashboard. What I want to avoid though is the geewhiz smarthome. Sure it can integrate with that eventually, but I think people would like better info about a basic dumb home. Maybe provide a service where someone comes (or they send you a kit) to scan the house with those things that can see through drywall, scan for heat maps/leaks, or just scan the shape of each room and form a map of the house. Of course this provides opportunities for upsales and the like.
- mrmlz 3y agohttps://www.homer.co/ https://www.homer.co/ Pulls data from Swedish public records - not sure how it handles other countries.
- aunwick 3y ago[flagged]
- nemo44x 3y agoI made a manual for my house and have been fortunate to meet previous owners. My house hasn’t changed hands often but it’s old so naturally a variety of things have been done. Myself, I’ve made massive changes. The future owners will have a manual detailing everything worth knowing as I judge it.
- hotsauceror 3y agoI buy a small moleskine notebook for every house we've bought, that becomes the 'house book'. Major appliance purchases, dates and serial numbers. A 'local' copy of the circuit breakers. Renovations with dates, costs. Room diagrams with measurements. But also things like the paint codes and finishes for every room, trim, ceilings, etc. That really comes in handy when you have to do a drywall repair or something and the only can you have left, the paint has slopped over the label. I also had a separate notebook for The Move and The Purchase. It had all the contacts - mortgage lending officer, realtors, inspectors; appointments, vendors, dates of major events; move-in punch list, move-out punch list, inventory with what to keep, what to toss, what to donate. Expenditures, documents to drop off at which municipal offices along with addresses and phone numbers. It's really empowering to have all that information literally at your fingertips.
- mikepurvis 3y ago> the paint codes and finishes for every room, trim, ceilings Paint codes alone are so worthwhile. My current house has three light greys in it that are all subtly different and when I moved in there was just one grey paint can in the basement with no indication which one of them it was.
- grogenaut 3y agocan you not just take a paint chip to sherwan williams or equivalent and have them match it? That's what we did when we repainted our house just to make sure and we had done the previous paint as well.
- mrmlz 3y agoThe O.G paint-code can be hard to find if its been awhile and exposed to the elements etc.
- saalweachter 3y agoA big step for me was just figuring out which hardware store the previous owner frequented. Each major line of paints has slightly different colors, so figuring out of it was Sherwin Williams, Behr, Valspar, etc let me identify the right color collection and narrow things down enough for me to guess what he was using.
- bloomingeek 3y agoI've always done this for my cars\trucks, every oil and filter change, tires and other assorted parts. Since I never trade in my vehicles and keep them at least ten or more years, the list can get long. (I give the vehicle away when I want to upgrade.) On appliances for the home, I always keep the owners manuals and make notes in them as needed. (Sadly, some newer appliances don't have paper manuals any longer.) The only flaw in my system is I tend to use a kind of short-hand in my record keeping. Thus, when I gave my Mazda 5 minivan to my daughter and son-in-law, I had to explained a few things. :-) A word of caution: Never give away a vehicle that isn't in safe working operation! I put a lot of money in the above Mazda to keep it safe for myself. I would still be driving it, I just needed a truck.
- superultra 3y agoThis didn’t happen to me but to a friend. She lives in an old home and has a neverending list of projects, many of which she took up during the pandemic. She would often livestream her rehab at nights just to connect to people as she worked. One night she was streaming the teardown of a bathroom wall. There, in between the walls, was a clipboard with some notes. She slowly took the clipboard up and started reading. Of course we couldn’t see what she was reading, but she started to cry and sniffle. The clipboard had a list of wiring and installations. Had been written in the 70s. But the front page was a note, she told as she started crying, that said that rehabbing is hard and sometimes lonely work. But to keep at it because one day it’s worth it! That moment arrived at a particularly lonely part of the pandemic for her and those of us watching. Whoever wrote that note and left that documentation from 50 or so years ago of course had no idea how it would find the reader(s) but could there have been a more perfect, beautiful moment than the moment my friend found it in the wall?
- kaycebasques 3y agoMy uncle lives in an old house in Lodi. He took down some kitchen walls for a major remodel. Somehow, a bunch of letters from the 1920s had slipped between the cracks and got stuck in the wall. It was a bunch of heartwarming, innocent correspondence between the family members now living in California and the ones who stayed back in Oklahoma (or somewhere like that). Uncle chokes up every time he reads those letters.
- mtillman 3y agoOP mentions using robots.txt to avoid crawling but even google ignores this now correct? 1. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-robots-txt-noindex/314961/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-robots-txt-noinde...
- lwhsiao 3y agoOP here. I'm not sure about the details in your link, but basically my understanding lines up with [1]; robots.txt isn't guaranteed to be respected, but generally is. FWIW, what I specifically have in robots.txt is User-agent: * Disallow: / which seems to work well for me so far (i.e., I do not find my house documentation site on any search engine). [1]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots/intro#understand-the-limitations-of-a-robots.txt-file https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/...
- saalweachter 3y agoIf I understand the details of the link, it was a particular feature of robots.txt that was considered undocumented/unsupported that Google dropped support for. I think the point of it was that you could tell Google to crawl some pages (for links) but not index them?
- avikalp 3y agoWow, I had been thinking about this for so long! I have had the same problems and was thinking of solutions on the same line. Although, even as a developer, I am not a big fan of how much time and energy we need to spend maintaining documentation. So while I build something to work towards automating documentation in software (with my effort at vibinex.com), I have also been thinking about home documentation automation.
- RasmusMerirand 3y agoWhat thoughts have you had?
- avikalp 3y agoOne was related to smart cupboards (fitted with weight sensors and cameras) that can automatically account for every item you put in or withdraw from it. Another one was related to furniture modifications so that it efficiently utilizes space according to the need (similar to many modular furniture concepts). One of these ideas, I have documented here: https://avikalpg.github.io/blog/articles/20210923_proj_dual_treadmill_sofa.html https://avikalpg.github.io/blog/articles/20210923_proj_dual_... Simpler ideas were the same as the original post: an app for everyone in the house to keep track of inventory or chores. I was thinking more about chores because someone might have done a chore I am unaware of - so I might either make duplicate efforts or procrastinate. But this is not a great idea because 70% of this can be solved using a WhatsApp group and asking everyone to update it whenever they pick or complete any chore.
- cyberax 3y agoThe best advice for me was: get a label maker. Centralized documentation is great, smart home stuff is usually not a big deal to factory reset in the worst case. But tracing all the Cat5 cables, and security sensors (if you have a hardwired security) is a PITA. And you WILL need to tinker with them eventually.
- guidoism 3y agoThis is exactly what I do. I call it my “Homeowner’s Operating Manual” and it’s based on the idea of an individual aircraft’s POH. It’s all there. Everything I’ve done to the house.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y agoAt the risk of giving landlords too many ideas, I think it would be great if landlords provided documentation to tenants as well. There's a lot of maintenance that tenants would frankly be more than happy to carry out, but don't because they don't know what to do, and they don't want to be blamed by their landlord if they stuff it up. Many things I see landlords complain about seem like they could be fixed by simply providing clear advice for tenants. But again, most landlords have pretty warped ideas about wear and tear and what their legal and/or ethical obligations are twloward tenants. Most landlords would probably take this advice and run with expecting their tenants to do constant unpaid maintenance. So I dunno what the solution is there.
- zubairq 3y agoThis is a good idea, and something that I need, although I think I will just go for a google doc to document my house since it needs to be edited by non techies too
- laowantong 3y agoAs an Airbnb host, I have done this sort of thing for my guests and my own usage, but with a "flat" structure: a simple, searchable inventory (https://maisonrougevernet.fr/inventaire https://maisonrougevernet.fr/inventaire) which doubles as technical documentation for some items (with optionally links to PDFs, videos, etc.).
- gniv 3y agoWow, I like that page. How do you maintain that table?
- otikik 3y agoThis amount of organization feels alien to me. The title of the article might as well have been “how to fly by moving your ears really fast”
- pelasaco 3y agoSo good, I would love to do it, but I guess I wouldn't have the necessary discipline. I will add it to the todo list
- 28304283409234 3y agoDid this last summer. Started as docs for friends taking care of the house for a couple of weeks. Used the multi-language feature of some Hugo theme to switch between ‘guest’ and ‘inhabitant’ docs. Was great when my youngest wanted to make her first coffee herself. “Open your phone and go to home.family.tld and click on howtos!”
- lynx23 3y agoRegarding documentation of physical objects... I am blind. For some time in my life, I was able to remember the layout of various devices in my household. I mean, which button does what, and which jack is for what... But after a while, and especially when I started to pick up a eurorack habit, I realized I need to document front/back panels of devices I don't use on a daily basis regularily. All the layout tools I looked at were totally useless to me, since they assume (understandably) that drawing graphics is the way to go. However, as a Braille user, I'd much rather prefer something that can output ASCII in such a way that the 2D relations between items is at least vaguely preserved. Also, it would be great if the data entered were somehow searchable. I never found anything remotely resembling what I need, so I went for hand-crafted .txt files for now. It works, but it is unsatisfactory. I'd much rather specify the position and function of panel items in some kind of DSL, and have the necessary 2d layout ASCII diagrams and legend generated automatically. Does anyone know of some tools I might have missed whiich could help with this? I was tempted to invent my own DSL, but that felt like reinventing some wheel that must be lying around somewhere...
- jeron 3y agoThis guy worked for 2.5 years and already bought a house in the Bay Area Granted, he has a PhD, but must be nice…
- lwhsiao 3y agoOP here, I, like many, cannot afford a home in the Bay. After our first kiddo, we moved closer to family in a much more affordable area and I work remotely now. My mortgage is less than the rent of our previous 1 bedroom apartment in Sunnyvale!
- kaffeeringe 3y agoSometimes a friend or my in-laws live in our appartment to watch our cat. I drew some how-tos. For feeding our cat, cleaning the litterbox. But also how to use the remotes to turn lights on and off.
- rtpg 3y agoSince the just script has a virtualenv incantation, I will once again recommend direnv to any Pythonistas out there. Stick "layout python" at the top, have your python stuff be managed for you (modulo having to be within the directory or subdirectory of the project). It's so nice and helps me to avoid so many problems.
- globular-toast 3y agoDirenv is my favourite tool I've discovered this year. Apart from Python I also use it for k8s config. You can store your cluster creds and namespace etc with the project so kubectl just works for each project.
- lawgimenez 3y agoAs a new homeowner myself, this is a neat idea! I have a lot of notes of my house, etc but they are scattered everywhere in my almost 2k+ Apple notes, calendar (for logging) and Day One (for additional logging). I need a system.
- RasmusMerirand 3y agoWe created a home management platform https://dobu.me https://dobu.me just for this, I would really appreciate if you could give it a go and let me know your thoughts :)
- lawgimenez 3y agoIt’s not even opening.
- sghiassy 3y agoGood idea The cynic in me, says entropy will destroy your house and your documentation … but I also read a touching comment on this thread to the contrary, so what do I know :)
- datadrivenangel 3y agoAll we can do is rage against the dying of the light and decrease entropy locally to try and maintain our house and documentation.
- UberFly 3y agoText files printed out in an easy to access location. Don't complicate the lives of those coming after you.
- jwmoz 3y agoFirst known case of over-engineering for house documentation.
- littlelady 3y agoI do this already. We have a binder that contains all of the projects that we have done since moving into our home sorted by area and then by year. I wouldn't do it digitally, because I also keep paint samples and notes that I've taken during the work in the binder. If I had to re-enter those notes I don't know that they would happen.
- squirrel23 3y agoThe idea of writing up a documentation for your house is the most engineering thing I ever heard lol. On a side note, really good read :)
- 6510 3y agoFun fact: Having great logs for a boat adds a lot of value to it. The value of a house in contrast is determined by people who know nothing about houses. They wouldn't see the value of it. A buyer might get it tho. While organizing the documentation is very nice your future self should be able to find what they are looking for if there is just a log/journal. I don't think it needs to be very organized unless it is consulted frequently.
- splitbrain 3y agoAs a first time home owner I fully agree. I set up a wiki and document everything. It's roughly organized by room. General Utilities have their own pages. Drawings, Photos, Invoices all get uploaded there. My wife writes down where which plants got planted in the garden and how they need to maintained. My hope is that this not only helps us when trying to remember where we put those cables or when an inspection is due but will also make selling in the far future a bit easier. And of course future owners will hopefully thank us.
- walteweiss 3y agoHonestly, I thought I’m the only one who does that up until today!
- RasmusMerirand 3y agoOur startup https://dobu.me https://dobu.me is solving just this problem. We are testing our product for free and currently you can upload your home documentation - with AI we will create products out of them and if something needs regular maintenance we automatically remind you. Plus we have an AI chat so you can "talk" with your home. We based in Estonia and soon new real estate developments here will come with our platform instead of the paper documentation. We are currently looking into the US market and if you have any ideas or feedback, email me at: rasmus@dobu.ee
- 392 3y agohttps://dobu.ee https://dobu.ee
- 23B1 3y agoWe just keep everything in a big binder and have a dedicated email address for the house. When we sell, we'll just hand the whole thing over. No need to overthink ig.
- znpy 3y agoI do this, but I run a private instance in MediaWiki which is only reachable either from the home network or via the VPN. The nice thing about this setup is that editing is pleasant (and fast in iteration), I can use categories to group pages together and I can use some interesting plugins, like the one to embed PDF files into wiki pages. The latter (embedding PDF files into wiki pages) is particularly useful because I can browse appliances manuals directly from the wiki page itself or download them if necessary, and I have a "Manuals" category where i can find all the manuals I have collected so far.
- WillAdams 3y agoThe best suggestion I've seen on this is to set up an e-mail address for the house and to then use it for signing up for registering appliances and so forth.
- vazkus 3y agoI did exactly this when I bought my house in 2018. It's @gmail and I'm using the drive for storing photos and notes from my DIY projects or contractor work, whatever documentation have on appliances, etc. If I ever sell my house, I'll just pass the password for the email account.
- alfnor 3y agoI would set up a wiki but also make regular printed backups: on-site for when the electricity is out, and off-site in case of fire.
- bergie 3y agoWe have a website documenting our boat, including systems and checklists for common operations. When we get sailing guests, it is easy to send them a link. https://handbook.lille-oe.de/ https://handbook.lille-oe.de/ That said, there are some good additional ideas in the post and this thread that we’ll have to consider incorporating.
- JZL003 3y agoThis is not the same, and might not get house-mate approval, but I like writing little notes in-situ where I need them. For laundry, little checklists of things I forget to wash (bathroom rugs smh), how long each cycle takes. Houseplants can keep when they were last watered nearby. Only works for high-use areas but still useful
- alkonaut 3y agoThe thing about docs is that it's tempting to write it and then forget it. And the only thing worse than no docs is outdated docs. Just like my password manager consists of 50/50 passwords I have since updated but not re-entered into the password manager (thus making it frustrating and useless) any big pile of docs will quickly become outdated and then first frustrating, finally useless. This isn't a one off weekend project to "document your home". It's a commitment that lasts as long as you live there. Unless you want to know the model of your last dishwasher, you need to wonder if you really have a passion for this project.
- butz 3y agoI've created github page for my house. Waiting for PRs now.
- incomingpain 3y agoWhen I bought my house recently. I documented everything! I had everything in this blog! It was great, found an open source app to organize it. Very wiki-like. I was so impressed with my accomplishment. Then I'm not sure what happened. The database wouldn't open anymore. None of my backups would work neither. Super confusing. 100% sure those backups ought to open but super wierd. Worse yet, it should have been plain text disk storage... it wasnt anymore? There isn't any encryption or passwords for this simple app. My tip: Make sure you use an app your familiar with.
- zie 3y agoI start a fossil project for every house I work on (fossil-scm.org) I tend to use the Wiki function and set it up at some website somewhere, so I can refer to it while @ hardware stores, etc. I always hand a copy off to whoever ends up owning the house, I doubt they ever use it, but it's handy while I am doing it to keep track of stuff. I do it for me. If it's useful for others, that's for them to determine.
- MarkusWandel 3y agoOne thing that won't work is the "what exactly is the paint" thing. Even if the paint is still made, and the colour code is still valid... the paint won't match it. Paint fades over time. So you might as well just take a chip of it to the paint store for matching, and resign yourself to having to repaint one "surface" (to the nearest corners). As for hidden "time capsules" - I actually left one of those as a kid in a house that was being built at the time. About 45 years later, with me long moved to another continent, that wall was being modified and they found the note behind the paneling and sent me a photo of it. I hadn't remembered leaving it there.
- jonah 3y agoWe have an architecturally significant, historic house (built in the 1930s) for our office. I was tasked with replacing the Eero WiFi mesh with something that actually worked. We needed APs both upstairs and downstairs to provide sufficient coverage - especially through the lath-and-plaster walls. It was _really_ frustrating for a couple reasons - first, the original design left no open risers to run cabling between the floors and even thought there was a nice 3' tall attic between the ceiling and flat roof, there is no access to it save a 1x2' port in a closet which is blocked by framing members and retrofit HVAC ducting. Secondly, over the years, multiple generations of cabling had been installed allover the building - several sets of coax - presumably for TV as well as CCTV, and bundles and at least 5 different generations of CAT-5e and CAT-6 had been run from the equipment closet across the house through the crawlspace and up through the walls to the second floor and attic. In all cases, the bundles of cables had been clipped off and shoved back through the floor or the cables were cut off, their wall boxes removed, and the holes plastered over leaving it all essentially useless. It made the interior nice and slick, but completely wasted all the effort of the generations of previous installers and perfectly good cabling. Why couldn't they have just left everything in place and used block-off plates, or plastered over but left the wiring un-cut and documented the spots where the cables were. Or something, anything. I was able to tone out a cable that I could reach from the ceiling access port and another in the crawlspace, re-terminate them and poke the other ends back up through the floor in the equipment closet and get a couple APs installed, but what a PITA. /rant
- AlbertCory 3y agoThis is a great idea for all kinds of reasons, including setting your cost basis when you finally sell the house. I did some of this for my house sitters, since they need it.
- t0mas88 3y agoMany stories from people creating documentation only for it to get thrown away. Let me share an opposite one: I bought a house that was empty after divorce, both had moved out some months before. We mostly dealt with the agent, only saw one of the previous owners for a very short time at the signing meeting with the notary. Then in the house we found a "congratulations on your new place" card, a bottle of sparkling wine, and a binder with everything about the house. Building plans, updated plans for changes made, exactly where every cable and connection was, and manuals, invoices and warranty certificates for equipment in the house. And a hand drawn map of the garden with what type of plant was where, and links to plant care instructions for some of the more exotic plants. Super nice of the previous owner to arrange these things, and I'm still thankful every time I need to get a cable somewhere or do some small construction things. Having detailed and accurate plans and overviews saves a lot of time.
- ff317 3y agoI bought a new-construction place, and I was around during the process. After they were done with all the plumbing/wiring/etc, but before they filled in the insulation and sheetrock, I walked the whole house and took cellphone pictures of every bare wall to show where all the pipes and wires are run, and then labelled it all up by room. I plan to hand those off if I ever sell the place! I don't know why builders don't just deliver such a set of photos to everyone by default, it's been super handy!
- Mtinie 3y agoI agree it’s very handy. To provide one answer to the question in your final sentence: “Closed walls hide many sins.”
- danofsteel32 3y agoI am a custom home builder and we do this. It’s very handy when the drywallers cover up an outlet or switch.
- spikej 3y agoSomeone gave me an added tip to include a tape measure in the shots so you can more easily line up where things are after the wall's closed.
- paulgerhardt 3y agoWhen I built my house, I took a Matterport scan before the drywall was put in, and again after. Best decision I ever made. It's like X-ray vision for walls. It's handy to know where wiring runs are, how many studs are between windows when mounting tv's, and a dozen other electrical, ac, or plumbing issues. I used it once a week initially and probably once every two months now that we're settled. Also recommend a Dymo Rhino 5200 cable label maker with heat shrink tubing. I print the label on some heat shrink, attach it to a wire, and never wonder where anything goes again. Great for vehicle wiring harnesses too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LcUQeTzIo4&t=66s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LcUQeTzIo4&t=66s But I'd recommend the 5200: https://www.amazon.com/DYMO-Industrial-RHINO-Label-1755749/dp/B002M1DEM6/ https://www.amazon.com/DYMO-Industrial-RHINO-Label-1755749/d... - non-affiliate link.
- graton 3y agoWhen you post an affiliate link it would be nice if you stated so. This has the affiliate tag of: pmg097-20 Without any affiliate link it is: https://www.amazon.com/DYMO-Authentic-Industrial-RhinoPro-18057/dp/B000ANDTLO https://www.amazon.com/DYMO-Authentic-Industrial-RhinoPro-18...
- paulgerhardt 3y agoSorry, here's the source on the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LcUQeTzIo4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LcUQeTzIo4
- abanayev 3y agoInteresting - why do you say it would be nice if the posted stated that it was an affiliate link? Do you feel it takes away an option from you or reduces the link's value?
- graton 3y agoIt reduces the link value to me since now the poster is financially motivated to post it. So do I trust that it really is a good product or is the poster just posting an affiliate link so that they can earn money or is it somewhere in-between.
- crispyambulance 3y agoThis is VERY a good idea. I have a steam-based heat and didn't understand, when I first moved in, what was required in terms of maintenance. You MUST flush the boiler at least every season and preferably once a month. 5 years later I needed a boiler replacement-- just shear ignorance on my part.
- bjt12345 3y agoGood idea.
- dbg31415 3y agoReally good to do this! I recently had drama with a contractor... it went into mediation, and the contractor was able to say, "How do we know this damage wasn't caused before we got there?" Contractors are shady, and likely that wouldn't change, but I wish I had more photos of my house before the flood. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/anyone-have-connections-usaa-damen-gilland-rq2uc/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/anyone-have-connections-usaa-...
- ragebol 3y agoI can also recommend to make a log of any setting changes you make on (dumb) devices, like the heating system.
- brunorsini 3y agoI do it in Notion, and it's shared with everyone who either lives or hangs out in here a lot. Biggest advantage is that Notion is pretty good with multimedia content — embedded photos / videos / PDFs, gallery view for databases... And the best documentation for a home is often just pictures and videos. - Here's how the sauna guy wired the equipment - This is what the old room looked like before we changed the walls - These are the xmas ornaments we're storing in the garage, etc PS: I love Obsidian but use it mostly in single-player mode
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoOver the last years I’ve mortgaged and maintained and sold 4 homes and in only one did anyone do any kind of documentation on the electrical that was functionally useful. Home inspectors aren’t it either, as they don’t really give any idea of “technical debt” that isn’t glaringly obvious in my experience. I’d pay good money for a static analysis of my home
- rossdavidh 3y agoYikes. My daughter, now age 18 and in college, is going to inherit our house in a few years, when we move out. Why have I not done this? [clears schedule for weekend to get on this]
- jmburke75 3y agoAs an IT professional for most of my life, I am very familiar with documentation and the benefits thereof. However, I never had given this idea any thought. What a great idea! This would have solved so many questions for me when I bought my first home. Would have also been helpful when selling my first home. I will probably create this as a wiki or github for my home with markdown files. Thanks for the inspiration. Cheers!
- stcredzero 3y agoAs a project on my to-do list, I have a task to write out instructions for running the house if the power goes out, then print them out and put them in a binder. Depending on how long the power goes out, things get more involved. For example, the fridge will continue to run on its UPS for another 18 hours. After that, items to be saved need to be moved to a portable fridge and plugged into the 12 volt outlet of the electric car.
- imacomputertoo 3y agoI really like some aspects of this, but I don't understand the incentives. If I own a home, I want to know everything about it. However, if I'm selling a home, I don't want the buyers to know everything about it. I also don't want the sellers to learn something about it, that might be considered as having some bearing on the value of the house. In other words, I don't want to get caught knowing something that I should have disclosed but didn't. So as a home owner and potential seller someday, it's better not to make a record of everything because that could hurt me when I sell. It also doesn't benefit me at all to have helped the new owner. This all might sound very cynical, but it really does seem like incentive misalignment. I'm an ideal world, every home would have a permanent, up to date, digital record of all the relevant home info. Building planes, modifications, maintenance records, paint and shingle colors, wire and plumbing placement, maybe even a 3d model of the home with structure, plumbing and wiring info. Unfortunately, I don't see how a homeowner would be better off giving that info to the next owner.
- kkfx 3y agoSince I'm in a new home, partially self made (electricity, with p.v., part of the hot water and self-consumption related automation) yes, I've thought much, but so far did not do much on that topic. If I'll die unexpectedly or fell ill seriously my family do not know how to handle Home Assistant and many parts of the home automation, even if it's not something exceptional an average electrician really likely can't as well understand how things works because... Automation is software and most only know pre-cooked tools by some well known brands... However even if I'll document anything a day I'm not sure who can profit from such docs, essentially nobody would keep up a homeserver for third parties, at least not at a reasonable price...