Run maintenance as a rota: a crew of 2-3 people on building duty each week who walk every building and fix minor faults at once, 2-3 community work days each season for the bigger jobs, skilled people on the hard tasks and a shared log of what was found and done. For 40 buildings the weekly walk costs each crew member about 3-5 hours, and the work days are the bigger commitment at 8-12 days per adult a year.
Part of Building Maintenance Schedules
A community maintenance rotation is the shared schedule of crews, work parties and records by which a settlement spreads the upkeep of all its buildings among its people.
No Family Can Maintain Its Own Building And Everything Else
The maintenance guide says no individual family can maintain its own building, contribute to settlement infrastructure maintenance and do its other work. So it sets four parts: a weekly rotation of 2-3 people assigned to building duty, who walk every building, note issues on a communal log and make minor fixes at once; seasonal work parties of 2-3 community work days per season for the larger tasks; skill matching, with re-plastering, roof repair and chimney work given to people who have the skills and simpler jobs such as clearing drains and debris rotated among all able adults; and a log kept in the gathering hall with the date, building, issue (urgent, plan for summer or monitor), repair done with its date, and materials used.
The guide notes that the log is institutional memory: when the person who built a building is gone, the log tells the next generation what to watch for (Institutional Memory).
Worked Example: The Hours
Inputs: 40 buildings; 15 minutes to walk and check each (assumed); a crew of 2 or 3; 100 adults (assumed); work parties of 2-3 days per season (guide), 4 seasons, 8 working hours a day.
- Weekly walk: 40 × 15 = 600 minutes = 10 hours. Shared by 3 people, 3.3 hours each; by 2, 5 hours each.
- Crew slots a year: 52 weeks × 3 people = 156, or × 2 = 104.
- Spread over 100 adults: 156 ÷ 100 = 1.6 or 104 ÷ 100 = 1.0 weeks of building duty per adult per year, which is a rotation of 100 ÷ 3 = 33 to 100 ÷ 2 = 50 weeks. In hours, 10 hours a week × 52 weeks = 520 hours of inspection a year, which spread over 100 adults is 5.2 hours each whatever the crew size.
- Work parties: 2 × 4 = 8 to 3 × 4 = 12 days a year; at 8 hours that is 64 to 96 hours per adult if all 100 attend, 800 to 1,200 person-days for the settlement.
The weekly duty is light; the work parties are the commitment. Their number should come from the log, not from a fixed rule: add up the estimated hours of all items marked “plan for summer” and divide by the number of adults available, then set the work days to match.
What You Need
- A roster of all able adults, a sub-list of skilled people for roofs, plaster and chimneys, and a list of who can climb
- The log board in the gathering hall, with a pencil on a string
- A common kit and stock (Systems & Tools)
- A calendar of the weekly crews and the four work-party dates
Method: Run The Rotation
Step 1: Make the roster and fix who serves each week.
Step 2: Give each crew the checklist for the season (Seasonal Inspection Cycles).
Step 3: At each walk, fix the minor faults, and log the rest with a severity.
Step 4: Before each work party, pick the jobs from the log, assign the skilled to the hard tasks and bring the materials.
Step 5: After each one, write the repair, the date and the materials used in the log.
Step 6: Review the log each year and move buildings that give repeated trouble up the list.
Common Mistakes
- No log. The same fault is rediscovered every year.
- Putting skilled jobs on unskilled volunteers. A bad roof repair leaks and costs the work twice.
- Fixed work days that do not match the repair list. Either idle people or unfinished jobs.
- One person always on duty. The rota exists to prevent that burden.
Safety
Nobody works at height alone
Roof, ladder and chimney work is done in pairs, by people judged able to do it, with the ladder footed and the roof tested with a probe before it is stepped on. A rotted member fails under the weight of the person inspecting it. Stop in rain, ice, wind and dark, and keep children out of the work area (Roof Maintenance).
What’s Next
- Learn next: Seasonal Inspection Cycles — what the crew checks and when
- Combine with: Systems & Tools — the kit and stock they use