Upkeep Papers

Category

Trailers and marine

Trailers, horseboxes, caravans and boats — annual service records, pre-use inspections and the towing figures you should never be guessing at.

A trailer and a boat both spend most of their lives standing still, and both fail in the places nobody looks: inside a hub, under a floor, behind a seal. These sheets are built around the parts that corrode quietly, and around the weights and limits that have to be looked up once and written down.

Trailer Annual Service Record

Keep an annual service history for a trailer, so its condition is a record of dates and work rather than a vague sense that it was fine last year.

TM-01 3 pages

Horsebox and Livestock Trailer Check

Check the floor properly before every trip, and run the same pre-travel routine each time so the animal side is not left to memory.

TM-02 2 pages

Boat Trailer Inspection Checklist

Inspect the things that only go wrong on a trailer that gets driven into the water — wet bearings, corrosion from the inside, and a winch strap nobody has unrolled in years.

TM-03 2 pages

Towing Weights and Limits Record

Get your own towing figures out of four different documents and onto one sheet, with a line for every time the outfit is actually weighed.

TM-04 2 pages

Caravan Habitation Check Record

Record damp readings at the same points year after year, so a wet corner shows up as a trend long before it shows up as a repair bill.

TM-05 3 pages

Outboard Motor Service Log

Service an outboard by hours rather than by dates, and keep the impeller and anode record that decides whether the motor has a long life or a short one.

TM-06 2 pages

Boat Safety Equipment Check

Keep an inventory of the safety gear aboard with the date each item expires, so the out-of-date ones are found at the dock rather than at sea.

TM-07 2 pages

Marine Battery and Electrical Log

Track battery voltages as a series rather than a single reading, so a bank that is dying is obvious well before it strands you.

TM-08 2 pages

Winter Lay-Up and Launch Checklist

Put the autumn lay-up jobs and the spring launch checks on the same page, so what you did in October is in front of you in April.

TM-09 1 page

Elsewhere in the library

Other categories

Property records

The paperwork that covers the whole building — service history, registers, warranties and the seasonal rounds.

10 sheets

Home systems

Heating, hot water, ventilation, drainage and water supply — the fixed systems that need servicing on a schedule.

13 sheets

Safety checks

Alarm tests, extinguisher checks and the records that prove they happened.

2 sheets

Outdoor machines

Mowers, saws, generators, washers, compressors and tractors — hour-based servicing and the part numbers you can never find.

8 sheets

Vehicles

Cars, motorcycles, motorhomes, trailers and boats — service history, schedules and pre-use inspections.

8 sheets

Water and pools

Pools, hot tubs and private water supplies — chemistry logs and test records.

2 sheets

Rental property

Maintenance logs, periodic inspections and changeover checklists for let property.

3 sheets

Pets and animals

Vaccination and health records, sitter instructions and the emergency details somebody else would need if you were not there.

9 sheets

Workshop and tools

Inventories, service logs and the working paperwork a small workshop, a trade or a van actually runs on.

10 sheets

Cleaning and routines

Cleaning schedules, rotas, deep-clean checklists and the dated records a cleaning routine is supposed to leave behind.

9 sheets

Moving and buying

The paperwork of changing address — moving, viewing, snagging, renovating and switching the supplies over.

9 sheets

Garden and growing

Sowing plans, plot layouts, greenhouse logs, compost records and fruit tree histories — blank wherever the answer depends on where you garden.

5 sheets