Most households treat home upkeep as a series of surprises. It is not. The AC needs servicing every year and it needs it before summer. The tank needs cleaning. The terrace needs looking at before the rains. Diwali brings a deep clean. Almost nothing on that list is a surprise — it only feels like one because it was never written down.
Writing it down changes two things. You stop paying rush rates for work booked in a panic, and you stop deferring the small jobs that quietly become large ones.
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In this guide
1. Split the year into four buckets, not one lump
A single “home repairs” figure is impossible to plan against because it mixes things with completely different rhythms. Four buckets works far better.
- Recurring and predictable. AC service, water tank cleaning, chimney cleaning, pest control, deep cleaning, water purifier servicing. These happen on a known cadence and can be diarised a year ahead.
- Seasonal and weather-driven. Pre-monsoon waterproofing and drain clearing, pre-summer AC and cooling work, pre-winter geyser checks. Fixed windows, and the work is cheapest and easiest inside them.
- Wear and tear. Taps, washers, locks, hinges, switches, fan bearings, a runner in a drawer. Individually small, constant in aggregate, and best batched into a couple of visits a year.
- Long-cycle, large jobs. Interior painting, terrace waterproofing, rewiring, a bathroom. These come round every several years, and the whole point of budgeting is that they should never arrive as a shock.
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Get free quotes2. Write the list by trade, so you can batch the calls
Sorting by trade rather than by room is what makes a plan cheaper to run, because most of what you pay on a small job is the visit and not the work.
- AC and appliances. Annual AC service before summer, plus a look at the fridge, washing machine and any appliance behaving oddly. This is the largest recurring item in most Delhi homes.
- Plumber. Tank cleaning, dripping taps, slow drains, the geyser check before winter, and any stop valve that will not turn.
- Electrician. A periodic check of the distribution board and earthing, fan and light issues, and any socket that has become loose or warm.
- Cleaning. A deep clean once or twice a year, kitchen and chimney degreasing, sofa and mattress cleaning, and the pre-Diwali round.
- Pest control. A periodic general treatment, timed before the monsoon rather than during an infestation.
- Painting and waterproofing. The long-cycle bucket, plus any spot seepage treatment. Our seasonal maintenance calendar puts all of this on a month-by-month grid.
- Carpenter. The accumulated small list — a sticking door, a loose handle, a sagging shelf — done in one visit rather than six.
3. Know which delays are cheap and which are expensive
Not every deferral costs you. Some cost enormously. The difference is whether the problem sits still or spreads.
- Expensive to delay: any water reaching a wall or ceiling, because damp spreads into plaster, paint and eventually the slab; anything electrical that is warm, scorched or tripping, because that is a safety issue rather than a comfort one; a slow drain before the monsoon; and terrace waterproofing that is already past its life. Our seepage guide and our tip on small repairs worth fixing early cover why these compound.
- Cheap to delay: cosmetic repainting, a dated kitchen, a scratched floor, replacing a fitting that still works. These sit still. Schedule them for a year that suits you.
- Falsely cheap to delay: AC service. Skipping it does not save; it moves the cost to a harder-working machine, higher running cost and a mid-heatwave breakdown when technicians are least available.
4. Book off-peak, and get quotes before you need them
The two habits that make the biggest practical difference to what a year of upkeep costs.
- Book outside the rushes. Everyone in Delhi wants an AC technician in the first heatwave, a waterproofer after the first heavy rain, and a cleaner in the Diwali fortnight. Booking a few weeks earlier means better availability and an unhurried job, for exactly the same work.
- Get quotes when you are not desperate. A quote taken calmly is a different conversation from one taken at nine at night with water coming through a ceiling. Our guide on hiring without being overcharged and our hiring checklist cover how to make quotes comparable.
- Keep a simple record. One note per job: what was done, when, and who did it. It tells you when the next service is due, and it is genuinely useful when you sell or let the flat.
- If you rent, know which side of the line each item sits on. Not every job on this list is yours to budget for — see who pays for repairs, tenant or landlord, and what a society or RWA maintains for the shared items.
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How we put this guide together
This guide is compiled from common Delhi NCR service patterns and reviewed by the XpertWorker team. XpertWorker connects you with independent, local professionals — we never charge you a paisa, and each professional sets their own price and quotes you free.