Most common service requests

What are your top 3 most common service requests? I appreciate your input!

1. Replacing light bulbs. Our properties replace interior bulbs for tenants.
2. Slow drains. Usually due to hair build up.
3. Garbage disposal not working. Usually due to bottle cap being jammed in disposal, or some other type of metal object

1) A.C. filter
2) Light Bulbs
3) Disposal

Thanks Chas!

Toilet clogged.

1. Disposal not working
2. Bi-fold doors off track
3. Leak under a kitchen or bathroom sink

Thanks Bruce!

Thanks Sandy! I appreciate the input!

For me they have been HVAC issues and more often than not its just simply the tenant not waiting for the unit to do its thing. The heating especially my units are all older and have a set of stages or cycles to go through. I don't know how many no heat calls I have been on this year where you show up they tell you it doesn't work they have it turned off and I turn it on watch and wait as the cycles go by 30 seconds after the thermostat goes up to start the 30 to 90 seconds for the inducer motor. 30 to 60 seconds for the glow plug to fully ignite and open the gas valve then the systems runs and after the burners has been on for 2 minutes then the blower fan kicks in. This summer was the flip side with the AC getting call about it not working and the issues were more often than not tenants turning the unit up or off when they were gone (we do not have programmable thermostats)and then when they get home or back turning it on and calling in about 30 minutes to an hour saying its not working their apartment is hot. The units I have are all somewhere around or close to 1000 square feet. So I feel that that short a time especially if its 80 and up outside and you have been gone all day is just not enough time.

Second would have to be the garbage disposals a man made invention we could really do without especially since most people do not use them in what I deem to be a correct manner. You put your stuff down it run it till the stuff is ground up and pasted through the machine then if your system is luck maybe 20 seconds of water after that. Well honestly its no wonder why us plumbers get so many calls for this type of service. The materials you just ground up haven't hardly left your cabinets drains yet let alone made its way to the main drain stack and out to the main sewer lines. The person who created this item and the guy who created the sanitary "T" for garbage disposals should have been tired to a chair to stare at and smell those slug filled pipes for days until they changed their minds. The "T" fitting have a split in the middle one side for the garbage disposal and they other side for the other sink side which cause a bottle neck for those who force feed these units. I am sorry about this one its my pet peeve you might say because in my opinion it's the fault the user and make of these units every time. I have never been called out to a service call as a plumber or now as a maintenance person because the unit/system just up and did something it wasn't meant to. No I have to say even though it sound a little rough on my part that the user and inventory are at fault always.

Third would be toilet handles for me and though most are made of plastic now a days some of the cause I guess but I do have a lot of these service call. Though over all I am glad to say that other than time my main three could be worse. When I took this position my ideas were more in the toilets stopped up idea of service calls. Which I don't have very many of and believe me that is a good thing. I really did feel having no idea, that I would have spent most of my days going from one toilet to another.

Anyway I am sorry if I seemed a little harsh here I am really very pleasant person. I just am very new to apartment maintenance and had you told me before I took this job that I would spend a large portion of my days dealing with things that in my opinion could have been avoided I don't believe I would have believed it. I thought like I said my large numbers would have been in the toilets clog area or as another posted in light bulb changes. Its funny now to me but if I would have know how large the garbage disposal service calls would have been I might have thought twice about this occupation I really do dislike these items sorry.