We’re fortunate to have a lovely, old home, but like any long-lived system, it has a lot of operational complexity. Some stuff everyone in the family knows how to deal with (a clogged toilet) and some stuff happens infrequently and requires some non-obvious solutions.

Over the years I noticed a group of home events that were easily dealt with if one knew how, but infrequent enough that most family members wouldn’t remember the steps to take to fix them. When I was home, that wasn’t a problem, but when I was traveling, it was a big frustration for everyone.

After a few such incidents I created a home operations manual. Its cover says “Emergency Operations Procedures” and there’s a printout posted on the wall in our mud room. It lists clear steps to take with annotated photos for a few different uncommon situations. The sections are:

  • The Parents’ Shower Only Uses One Showerhead!
  • The Parents’ Shower Isn’t Working At All!
  • The Fire Alarm Is Going Off!
  • The House Alarm Is Going Off!
  • The Water Is Shut Off Everywhere!
  • The Heat or AC Isn’t Working!
  • The Internet Is Down!
  • The Power Is Out In Only Part Of the House!
  • The Power Is Out In The Whole House, But Only Our House!
  • Lots Of Houses Have No Power!

There are quite a few entries about showers and water because we have an overly complicated digitally controlled multi-head steam shower that we like a great deal, but that sometimes crashes in a way that you don’t expect from showers.

A SRE friend pointed out that’d I’d just created an on-call-style Run Book for my home without having realized it, and of course, she was correct. To my knowledge no one has actually looked at it yet, but I’ve been home a lot more lately too.

The front of a home