How it works
Nobody buys a used car without the history. Your house has none.
A $40,000 car comes with a documented record of every service, every repair, every owner. The largest asset you will ever own comes with a folder of receipts, a twelve-year-old inspection PDF, and whatever the last owner remembered to mention.
We build the record. Every system in your home inventoried and updated the moment we touch it, kept current for as long as you own the house, and transferable to the next owner when you sell.
Documented
Roof, envelope, mechanical, plumbing, electrical, grounds, inventoried by the builder, not a checklist app.
Current
Updated the moment a visit closes. No annual PDF that is stale by March.
Transferable
At sale, the record goes with the house. A documented home is an easier home to sell.
The five things, in full.
Same five things as the front page, in the same order, with what lives under each. The Capture is a morning at your house; the Record is $39 a month after that.
1
Your house answers
Ask it anything. It answers from its own record, and only its own.
On your home page there is a box. Ask your house anything: a smell, a noise, a filter size, what a contractor just told you. It answers from its own record, in the manual's voice, and cites the fact it leaned on. If the record does not say, it says the record does not say.
A contractor says you need a new boiler. The house answers with the boiler's age, its service life, its last service and its open findings, and then: nothing on the record says it is failing; if you want a second look, say so. Anything that touches gas, carbon monoxide, electrical or water gets the safety answer first and points at the emergency page.
It only knows its own house. It cannot see another home, another owner, or anything not on the record. When you tell it you just did something, one tap logs it. When a visit is the honest next step, it offers one; when the question has an answer, it just answers.
Is the boiler due for anything?
Yes, one thing, and it's overdue. Your Lochinvar Knight, serial-dated October 2016, is nine years into a seventeen-year life. The annual combustion service is due, $415–$490. I'd have them tap-test the expansion tank on the same visit.
What size filters do I buy?
Twenty by twenty by one. Koch MultiPleat XL, part number 102-700-008, and two cases are already in the attic, so you likely don't need to buy any. They go in both Comfortmaker handlers, and replacement is due on both.
A contractor says my air handlers need replacing.
Both are Comfortmaker, plate verified, serial-dated to 2016: ten years old against an eighteen-year life, replacement year 2034 for both. Nothing on the record says either one is failing. If you want a second look before you commit, say so.
All three are real answers from one house. Yours will know things about your house that nobody has written down before.
2
The Home Manual
What it knows. Every system in your house, photographed, identified and written down. A book about your home.
It opens like a book because it is one. The first spread says what it is and when to open it: something goes wrong, a contractor is coming, the quarterly list arrives, you are thinking about a project, you are selling. Then a contents page with real page numbers, and a page called Your home that walks the house the way the person who captured it would tell it to a friend.
The systems come in five spaces, the way you think about a house: Comfort, Power & control, Living, Outdoors, Safety. Each opens with a paragraph on how that part of the house is doing, then the equipment, make and model and serial, read off the plate. Looking ahead puts what the house will need on a ten-year timeline with the money beside it. Built to code says which code the house was permitted under and what has changed since, plainly, without a recommendation.
At the back, the public record: what the county, the state and the federal record say about the house, each with its source. The flood zone, the assessor's figures, the deed date, the permit history where the town publishes it. It is the page a buyer's attorney reads first, and it is why the manual is worth more than an inspection.
Every system, documented
Make, model, serial and age, read off the equipment itself, not guessed from the year the house was built.
How well the house is known
Record completeness, at the back of the manual: how much of the house is dated on evidence, so an old home with a complete record beats a new one nobody wrote down.
What is coming, and when
A capital forecast built from what is actually installed. The roof year, the boiler year, the number to set aside.
What it asks of you
A service calendar drawn from your equipment, and an emergency page with every shutoff, panel and disconnect in one place.
3
The Quarterly List
What it tells you to do. Four times a year, what your house needs. Some of it you do; some of it we do; you decide.
Four times a year, one short list built from the equipment actually in your house, not a seasonal checklist. Three buckets: what you can do yourself, and we say where the spares are; what comes with the Record; and what needs a trade, priced as a range off the published rate card with the arithmetic shown. Ranges, never quotes, and never above the high figure without a call first.
You decide. Do it yourself and it goes on the record. Have your own person do it and tell us once, I have someone for this, and we stop offering it. Or add it to a visit. One conversation a quarter about something bigger, a system nearing the end of its life or a project you might want to think about, never two.
You can do these
Filter sizes, canisters, coil rinses. No cost, and we tell you where the spares already are.
We handle these
Included with the visit. Open findings from your manual, closed out.
These need a trade
A range, not an invented number, and never more than the high figure without a call first.
4
We come when you say
You say yes. One tap. We bring the trades, clear the list, and it all goes on the record.
One tap, from any page: Book a visit. Say what it is about, the quarterly list, something specific, a project, and two or three dates. A person confirms the date, and a reminder comes the evening before. Or say Let's talk on something bigger, and someone comes to sit down, not to sell.
A visit is $195, credited in full against $800 or more of trade work on the same visit. The tech arrives with the work order: the items and their estimates, the equipment they touch with its make, model and serial, and the open findings for the house. When the work is done, every job shows the estimate beside what it actually cost, on the record, with the tech's name. Nothing is charged automatically. Nothing happens unless you ask for it.
5
The Record
What it remembers. Every service, every change, every document, forever. Nobody can edit history, including us.
Everything that has ever happened to the house, in order, and never edited. A visit closes, and its work goes on the record with the tech's name and the cost beside the estimate. You change the filters and say so; that goes on too. Nobody can change history, including us. If something is wrong, we add a correction, and the correction is part of the record.
Pick any system and see its whole history: when it was installed and on what evidence, every service, every finding, every photograph. Found the roof invoice in a drawer? Add it from your phone; we file it, and if it dates a system whose date was assumed, the date firms up. Once a year the record writes the year in review.
It travels with the house. When you sell, the buyer gets it, and it is the one document in the transaction nobody wrote to persuade them.
How this is possible now
Three years ago this would have taken a person a week at a desk for every house. Now it takes a morning at the house and an afternoon of review.
Every plate is read by a model that transcribes what's printed and flags what it can't. A dirty digit comes back as a question mark, not a guess. Every sentence of your manual is written from the record — the makes, the dates, the findings — and read by one of us before it goes to you. The house answers your questions from its own record and only its own, and when the record doesn't have the answer, it says so and offers to get it.
Nothing is invented at any step. That's the whole method: the model does the reading and the writing, a person does the checking, and the record is the only source. It's why the manual is worth showing a buyer's inspector, and why the house can be trusted when it tells you something.
The Capture
A morning at the house.
We walk every system, mechanical room to roofline, and read every data plate we can reach: make, model, serial, age. The exterior gets one photograph from the street, which becomes the cover. Nothing is tested, operated or dismantled; what we could not verify is named, not hidden.
The manual is written from that record, read at the desk as you will read it, and sent. That is the whole of item 1, and everything after it starts from there. The Capture is priced by the size of the house; the bands are on the pricing page.
Rates
The same rates for everyone.
Trade work is priced per item, as a range off our rate card, with the arithmetic shown, on every item before you say yes.
The rate card itself lives in your portal, under Settings → Rates, and every priced line on your list links to the row it came from. The arithmetic is on the item, where you are deciding.
See a live house, then see what it costs.
The sample manual is a real house with the identifying details removed. Open it, then see what a Capture costs.