Airbnb preventive maintenance: what to check every month
Most of the time, the first person to find out the AC filter is clogged is the guest, at ten at night, when the room won’t cool down. Here is the monthly check we set up with our clients at Upbridge, how to log what breaks between one check and the next, and how you can start this month with a list and a WhatsApp group.
When you hear it from the guest
A guest messages you on a Saturday night to say the AC won’t cool. No technician is going out at that hour, so you find them a fan, apologize, and hope it stays out of the review.
The review is only part of it. Airbnb’s rebooking and refund policy counts it as a travel issue when something shown in the listing is missing or doesn’t work, and the examples it gives are the pool, the hot tub, major appliances, heating and air conditioning. The guest has 72 hours from discovering the problem to tell Airbnb or you, with photos or videos, and depending on how serious it is, Airbnb can refund part or all of the stay, or help them find another place.
Almost everything on that list gives you warning. A filter doesn’t clog overnight, and a pump making a strange noise has usually been making it for weeks. The monthly check is there to catch that before the guest arrives.
What to check every month
The maintenance list we set up in October for one client has eleven points, and it goes to whoever does the maintenance on the 1st of every month. These are the ones that prevent the most trouble, with what to look at in each.
The air conditioning comes first, because in a hot town it’s what guests complain about most. Whoever does the check pulls the filter, washes it, lets it dry properly before putting it back, and runs the unit for a while to make sure it really cools. Our list asks for it every month, and the manual for your unit tells you how often that model needs it. If water drips inside the room, or the outdoor unit has leaves and junk piled around it, that gets written down too.
Then the water heater. Check that the pilot lights, that hot water reaches the upstairs shower and not only the kitchen, and that there’s no water under the tank.
For the gas, Mexico City’s Civil Protection office recommends checking connections and tanks every six months with soapy water, and if bubbles form, there’s a leak. If it smells of gas, nobody touches a light switch. You close the shut-off valve, open doors and windows, and get out of the house before calling 911.
Water leaks you usually hear before you see, like a toilet that keeps refilling on its own or a kitchen tap that drips all night. Whoever checks flushes, waits for the tank to fill and listens for the water to stop running. The shower and the water heater’s valve go in this part too.
The lockbox gets tested with the same code the guest receives in the arrival message, and a photo is taken with it open. If someone changed the code during the week and didn’t update the message, you find out on the 1st instead of the guest finding out at midnight with their bags. If the lock is digital, change the batteries before they die.
The rest goes faster: try the lights, outlets and switches, make sure the washer and the fridge work, and check the window screens, the door and window locks, and the garden.
The last point on our list asks whoever did the check to write down what needs fixing, even if it’s small. That point is worth the most, because that’s where the door that no longer closes properly or the tap that just started dripping shows up, while it’s still a ten-minute fix.
The pool goes every week
With a pool, once a month isn’t enough. The pool has its own list, checked every Monday and only at the properties that have one. Whoever cleans it takes a photo of how they found it, measures chlorine and pH, checks the pump and the filter, and sends another photo of how it was left.
For the numbers, the US CDC recommends at least 1 ppm of free chlorine and a pH between 7.0 and 7.8 for home pools, and testing twice a day while the pool is in use. Nobody tests twice a day at a rental. The practical version is to keep test strips in the storage room and ask the cleaner to test at every checkout, on top of Monday.
How to log what breaks
What breaks between one check and the next is the hardest thing to keep track of. A photo comes in on WhatsApp, someone replies that they’ll look at it, and three weeks later nobody remembers whether it got fixed. So every fault gets logged on its own, with the property, the photo, who reported it, how urgent it is and where it stands: open, scheduled or resolved.
A spreadsheet with one row per fault does the job, as long as someone fills it in the same day.
Once faults are written down, you see things that memory loses. A manager we spoke with told us about an AC unit that acts up every few months. With every repair logged, the owner can see how many times it has been fixed and decide whether to keep paying for repairs or buy a new one. And when the owner asks what got fixed at their place this month, the answer is already in the sheet. We cover that in our article on owner reports.
How Cleo runs it on WhatsApp
At Upbridge this is run by Cleo, our AI operations assistant. On the 1st she sends the month’s check to whoever does the maintenance, on WhatsApp, with the property that’s theirs. He opens the list from that chat and sends the photos right there, without downloading any app.
Whatever breaks between checks goes through the same chat. The photo of the stopped pump reaches you, you pass it to Cleo, and she messages whoever does the maintenance and logs the fault as an issue for that property.
The pool pump at Casa Palma stopped, here’s the photo María sent me
I’ve messaged Javier so he can go and check it.
I’ve also logged it as an urgent issue for Casa Palma.
Each list has its own schedule. It can run every so many days, weeks or months, after every checkout, or on the days the property has no bookings, and if the check lands on a day with a guest in the house, it can move on its own. Before placing an order or proposing something to the owner, Cleo asks you and waits for your yes.
How to start this month, with no tool at all
Write your list from the points above and take out what your property doesn’t have. If you have a water cistern or a generator, add them. Give it a fixed date, the 1st for example, and ask for a photo of the AC, the water heater and the lockbox open. Have the photos land in one WhatsApp group per property.
For what breaks in between, open the sheet with one row per fault and fill it in the same day. You’ll hear about a lot less from guests. When the sheet gets too much to keep by hand, the page below covers what comes next.
Want the guide for one of your properties?
We build the guest guide for you, for free, for as many properties as you want. Send us your listing link and we start from there. And if you want to see what reaches whoever does your maintenance, the page is right below.
How often should an Airbnb pool be serviced?
On the list we set up, every Monday, and only at the properties with a pool. The CDC recommends testing chlorine and pH twice a day while it’s in use, so between visits it helps if the cleaner also tests at every checkout.
What do I do if a guest tells me something doesn’t work?
Answer fast, ask for a photo and send someone as soon as you can. Airbnb asks guests to report within 72 hours of finding the problem, to Airbnb or to you. If they wrote to you first, you can still fix it before it turns into a refund. And log the fault that same day, even if it’s already sorted.
Does the maintenance person have to download an app?
No. Cleo messages them on WhatsApp with the property that’s theirs, and from that chat they open the list and send the photos, same as the cleaner.
Sources
He wrote and checked this page. Every source is public and linked above.