Maintenance Frequency Calculator for the UAE

Most maintenance schedules online are written for temperate climates. Applied here they leave things running far past the point they should have been looked at.

Dust is the first reason. Fine desert dust is in the air constantly and it is finer than ordinary household dust, so it gets through filters and settles on coils.

Heat is the second. Equipment runs longer and harder here, which is simply more wear per year than the same equipment would see elsewhere.

Humidity is the third, and it is the one people forget. Coastal humidity means condensation, damp and mould in places that would stay dry in a drier climate.

Together they mean an air conditioner here does several years of temperate climate work in one, and a schedule written for London is not a schedule for Dubai.

In order of what goes wrong when they are skipped.

The calendar matters here in a way it does not in a mild climate, and using it saves both money and trouble.

Get the air conditioning serviced before the hot season starts, not during it. In March a technician is available and unhurried. In July everybody is booked and the job is urgent.

Do exterior work in the cooler months. Painting, roof checks and anything outdoors is faster, better and safer between November and March.

Deal with drains before the humid months, because that is when smells from a partly blocked line become obvious.

And check the water heater before winter, because that is the only time of year it does real work here.

A maintenance calendar that ignores the seasons is one that books everything in August by accident.

Most of what this tool tracks is somebody else work. The checking is not, and a monthly walk round with a torch catches an enormous amount.

Look under every sink. A dark line along a joint, a lifted cabinet edge or a soft base pressed with a thumb all mean water has been there.

Look at the indoor AC units. Any staining on the ceiling around them means the drain has been backing up.

Look along the silicone in every bathroom. Black lines, gaps and lifted edges are all early warnings.

Turn a valve or two. Valves seize from never being touched, and a seized valve is the same as no valve when you need one.

And read the water meter with everything off. If it moves, water is going somewhere it should not, and that is worth knowing this month rather than next year.

The reason most maintenance gets missed is not laziness, it is that nobody knows when anything was last done.

A note on a phone with the date and the job is enough. Written on the equipment itself is even better: the date on a filter housing, the settings on a pump, the last service date inside a water heater cupboard.

For a rented property this is doubly useful, because it settles arguments about condition and it makes handover simple.

If you use a maintenance contract, ask for a report after each visit. What was checked, what was found, what was done. A contract with no reporting is a contract you cannot verify.

Then use this tool once or twice a year with those dates, and the answer stops being a guess.