Luke Hsiao: “Have you considered writing technical documentation for your house? As a first time homeowner, there have been numerous times where I wish I had some documentation to reference for a whole slew of scenarios. As an engineer, I write documentation all the time to answer these questions and build up a knowledge base other team members can refer to. I think this should apply to housing. Motivation –  As a first time homeowner, I have had so many questions about our house. Some real examples:

• When was this carpet installed?
• How do I turn off the water mains?
• How is the irrigation system set up in this house?
• Where are all the sprinkler heads?
• What’s the model of my dishwasher again? I need the user manual.
• Why is the water pressure so high?
• What company is in charge of my sewage?
• What electrical circuits are in the house?
• Are there networking cable runs?
• What color exactly is this paint?

Unfortunately, for most of these questions, I either had no answer, or I needed to go investigate and/or reverse-engineer directly. As I gathered up these questions, I realized that when it comes to my house, what I actually wanted was a user manual of sorts. I wanted good technical documentation, much like good software provides. So, as we’ve lived here, I’ve started to create just that.”