Free Home Maintenance Tools
Every tool here works out something specific about your home — the age of an appliance, what a replacement would cost, what to budget for the year. No sign-up, no email required.
Calculators
Appliance Age Calculator
How old is my appliance, and how long has it got left?
Decode the serial number on a refrigerator, washer, dryer, dishwasher or disposal to find its manufacture date, then see where it sits against a typical lifespan.
Use this tool →Water Heater Age Calculator
How old is my water heater?
Decode Rheem, Ruud, A.O. Smith, State, Bradford White and more. Water heaters usually fail by leaking rather than by stopping, so age matters more here than anywhere else.
Use this tool →Maintenance Budget Calculator
What should my home cost me each year?
Estimate an annual maintenance budget from your home's value, age and features, so a failure is a planned expense rather than an emergency.
Use this tool →Furnace Filter Size Finder
What size filter does my furnace take, and how often?
Find the right furnace filter size and MERV rating for your system, and how often it actually needs changing.
Use this tool →Check a specific appliance
Each guide shows exactly where that appliance hides its serial number, how long it should last, and what tends to fail at which age.
Compare running costs
Replacing something? These work out the real cost for your home, using your own utility rates rather than a national average.
How the age decoders work
Nearly every manufacturer encodes the build date into the serial number on the rating plate — but each one does it differently, and none of them explain it. GE uses two letters for the month and year. Whirlpool, which also builds Maytag, KitchenAid and Amana, uses a letter and a week number. Samsung reads its year from a letter partway along. Bosch does not put the date in the serial at all — it lives in a separate FD number.
Several of those codes repeat. GE's year letter comes round every 12 years, Bradford White's every 20. When that happens we show every plausible year rather than guessing, so you can pick the one that matches when the appliance was installed.
If a code cannot be read, the tools say so and point you at the right number instead of inventing an answer. A wrong date is worse than no date when you are deciding whether to spend money.
More tools coming
We're building more calculators for big-ticket home equipment. Have a suggestion, or a serial number our decoder cannot read? Tell us at admin@mytidyboss.com — the awkward ones are how the decoders get better.