If Because today's state of the art new home is the finest home ever built, many important questions about cleaning and maintaining your new home won't arise until you've been living in your new home for quite some time.

So here, courtesy of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) is a quick guide to the most common maintenance questions asked over time by homeowners. Keep this list with your appliance owner's manuals so you can refer to it whenever it is needed.

* Run cold water instead of hot water through your garbage disposal to ensure the longest life.
* Oil the moving parts of garage doors every three months.
* The best tools you can use to unclog your drains are toilet plungers and a plumber's snake.
* The best tool you can use to unclog a toilet is a coil spring-steel auger.
* Rubbing the your window channels with a piece of paraffin will help them slide easily.
* Every year make sure to trim the shrubbery away from your home's exterior so it does not touch your home and provides easy access to utility meters.
* Forced-air furnace filters need to be changed at least every three months during the heating season.
* When you have a water leak, the part of the faucet that usually needs to be replaced is the washer.
* The aerator is the screen inside the end of the faucet and should be cleaned every three to four months.
* A handful of salt will prevent soot and add color to the fire in your fireplace.
* Use concrete sealer to keep unpainted concrete floors clean. When they do need cleaning, use a solution of four to six tablespoons of washing soda in a gallon of hot water. You can mix scouring powder to the solution for tougher jobs.
* You can clean hardwood floors with water when the floors have a polyurethane finish. Hardwood floors that do not have a polyurethane finish probably will need to be waxed periodically. Use liquid or paste 'spirit' wax.
* Use water emulsion wax to polish vinyl floors. * Always fix noisy water pipes promptly because the condition that causes noisy pipes may be accompanied by vibration that can cause fittings to loosen and leak.
* As your home ages, a qualified roofer should inspect your roof every three years.
* The alarms and circuit breakers on your home security system should be frequently checked to make sure they are in working order. Remember to inspect the sensors one by one.
* To ensure your family's safety, smoke and carbon monoxide detector batteries should be checked on a regular basis throughout the year.
* You can use spackling to fill nail holes and cracks in plaster walls and gypsum wallboard.
* Efflorescence is the white, powder - like substance that sometimes appears on masonry walls. It is made up of crystallized soluble salts that can be removed by scrubbing with water and a stiff brush.
* Set your water heater to 120 degrees Fahrenheit * Skylights should be inspected each time your roof is inspected so leaks don't develop from cracks and interruptions around its seals, caulking and flashings.
* A solution of equal parts vinegar and water or three tablespoons of denatured alcohol per quart of warm water will clean extremely dirty exterior windows. Use a piece of crumpled newspaper to wash the glass to avoid lint left behind by paper towels.

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