The House Year

From a licensed general contractor

The plan your house should have come with.

Answer twelve tap-through questions about your house. Out comes a twelve-month plan built for it — what to do, when, what skipping it costs, and whether to do it yourself or hire it out.

You don't have to become a house expert. We're the expert. You just have to show up when we call.
Coming soon to iOS & AndroidSee what's on a card
January through July, banked. The ring fills in as the year does — by December, a well-kept house is a full Spruce circle.
Every US county
Frost dates, radon zones, termite pressure — your ZIP sets your plan.
47 cards and counting
Written by a licensed GC, on its way to 120+.
Two pushes a week, max
A hard cap. If your phone buzzes, it matters.
Both paths, every card
DIY steps and hire-it-out pricing get equal billing.

How it works

Three steps, and one of them is just answering the door.

  1. Answer twelve questions.

    ZIP code, year built, heat, water, roof, water heater — all tap-to-answer, under five minutes. Don't know your roof's age? Fine. "Don't know" becomes a gentle first-month task: here's how to tell from the ground.

  2. Get your house's year.

    We cross your answers with your county's data and build a twelve-month plan for that house. A 1998 crawlspace place on well water gets a different year than a 2019 slab build on city water.

    Zone 7b~90 freeze daysModerate termite pressure

  3. Show up when we call.

    One monthly digest, plus weather-triggered alerts when the sky changes the schedule. Never more than two notifications a week — if we ping you, it matters.

    The House Yearnow

    First freeze forecast Thursday — tonight's the night to disconnect your hoses.

The task card

Every task, told straight.

Here's a real card from the library — "Flush your water heater," rendered for the same house on the wheel up top: 1998, crawlspace, well water, Davidson County.

OctoberAnnual · tank water heaters

Flush your water heater

Why it matters for your house

Every water heater tank slowly collects sediment — minerals that drop out of the water and settle on the bottom. You're on well water, so this happens roughly twice as fast as it does on city water. This task is not optional for your house. That sediment layer is the single biggest reason tanks die at year 8 instead of year 14.

Cost of neglect

$800–$1,800

Sediment builds a crust on the bottom of the tank. The burner overheats the steel through it, the tank fails years early, and you're buying a $1,800 replacement instead of doing a 45-minute chore.

Do it yourself

45 minutes · difficulty 2 of 5

Garden hose, flathead screwdriver, work gloves.

  1. Kill the heat — "vacation" mode on gas, breaker off on electric.
  2. Hose on the drain valve, run it to a floor drain or outside.
  3. Drain until the water runs clear — usually 10 to 20 minutes.

…plus the three finishing steps, in the app.

Watch for: if the drain valve is plastic and won't open, don't force it — that's the moment this becomes a hire-out.

Hire it out

$120–$225

Fair range for a flush-and-inspect. The app tunes it to your county's labor costs.

Ask the tech:

  • "Will you check the anode rod while you're in there, and what condition is it in?"
  • "How much sediment came out? A photo is normal to ask for."
  • "What's the manufacture date on this tank?"

Red flags you're being upsold

  • They recommend replacing a tank under 8 years old without showing you a leak or a rusted fitting.
  • A "flush" that takes under 10 minutes — that's a rinse, not a flush.
  • They quote a whole-house water treatment system during a $150 service call.

Second opinion time: any replacement quote over $2,000, or any "it could burst any day" urgency on a tank that isn't leaking.

The GC's call

DIY this — it's genuinely a garden hose and a valve. Hire it only if the drain valve is stuck or plastic.

Every card in the library reads like this — written by a licensed general contractor, and rendered differently for every house.

Ask for photos of anything they say needs repair. A good crew hands them over without being asked. A crew that "found" $3,000 of fascia rot but can't show you a picture found their boat payment, not rot.— from "Clean gutters and check downspout flow"

Locale intelligence

Same task. Different house. Different card.

Cards are written once, with slots for the things that make your house yours. Your house profile and your county's data fill them in. Here's the gutter card's "why it matters" for three different houses.

The basement house

"With a basement, that's the classic path to a wet basement — most 'basement leaks' are actually gutter and grading problems that never needed a waterproofing company."

The crawlspace house

"With a crawlspace, overflow keeps the soil under your house wet — that's the moisture that feeds mold and rot from below."

The slab house

"On a slab, chronic overflow erodes the soil at the edge and can undermine the pad itself over time."

Timing shifts too: the gutter card fires in May and November by default, and a heavy-rain trigger can move it up — the calendar isn't the only clock. Underneath it all sits county-level data for the whole US: USDA zones, NOAA frost dates, EPA radon zones, termite pressure, FEMA wind maps.

Pricing

Priced like insurance, not like an app.

Because that's what it is: $24 against four-figure failure modes. Annual only, on purpose — the product is a year.

The House Year

$24/year

  • Your full twelve-month plan, rebuilt whenever your house profile changes
  • Every task card — 47 today, growing to 120+
  • Weather-triggered alerts for your county
  • DIY and hire-it-out paths, with fair local pricing, on every card
  • Never more than two pushes a week

One dodged upsell pays for years of this.

Kick the tires

$0

  • The twelve questions and your full Reveal
  • Your current month, live
  • Three full task cards
  • No clock on it, no credit card required

Enough to see whether we know your house. We think that's fair.

If your year didn't pay for itself by December, don't renew. That's the deal.

Built your house with Build-Your-House.com? You already have the data we need down to the studs — your first year is $15.

You don't have to become a house expert. We're the expert. You just have to show up when we call.

Coming soon to iOS & Android

Questions? contact@thehouseyear.com