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Habitia Help

Lifecycle rules

Habitia watches your assets — appliances, HVAC units, water heaters — and raises an alert when one is likely at the end of its useful life. Lifecycle rules are the per-category settings that drive those alerts.

You don’t have to touch this tab. Habitia ships with reasonable defaults for every asset category. Edit only if your experience says otherwise — for example, if you know the dryers in your buildings tend to last longer (or shorter) than the default.

Open Settings → Lifecycle Rules.

Note: Only an admin can edit lifecycle rules. Other roles can view but not change.

What the table shows

A row per asset category (refrigerator, HVAC, water heater, dishwasher, washer, dryer, etc.). Five columns:

  • Category — the asset type the row applies to.
  • Life (mo) — expected useful life in months. After this, the asset is flagged “near end of life” even if it hasn’t broken.
  • Repair cap (%) — the percentage of the asset’s value beyond which a repair is “not worth it.” Example: 60% means if a repair quote is more than 60% of the asset’s current value, Habitia flags it as replace-not-repair.
  • Repeat window (mo) — the rolling window (in months) used to count repeat failures.
  • Repeat count — number of work orders within the window that signals end-of-life. Example: window 12, count 3 = “if there are 3+ work orders on this asset in the last 12 months, it’s end-of-life.”

Screenshot: Lifecycle Rules table with the defaults

Tip: A category showing the Custom badge has been edited from defaults. Categories without the badge are using the system defaults.

How an asset gets flagged

Any of these three triggers, on its own, will mark an asset as end-of-life:

  1. Age — the asset has passed its Life (mo) value.
  2. Expensive repair — a recent work order’s repair cost exceeded the Repair cap (%) of the asset’s value.
  3. Repeat failures — there are Repeat count or more work orders on this asset within the Repeat window (mo).

When any trigger fires, the asset shows a yellow or red badge on the unit detail page and rolls up into the Smart alerts feed.

When to customize a row

Most landlords use the defaults. A few cases where overriding makes sense:

  • You’re in a coastal area. Salt air kills appliances faster. Drop Life (mo) by 20–30% on items most affected (HVAC condensers, washers, dryers).
  • You buy used appliances. The system defaults assume new. If you typically buy refurbished, drop the life accordingly.
  • You’re conservative on repairs. If you’d rather replace at 40% repair cost than 60%, lower the cap.

Editing a row

  1. Click Edit on the row you want to change.
  2. Update Life, Repair cap, Repeat window, or Repeat count.
  3. Click Save. A green check appears next to the row name for a few seconds.

The Custom badge now appears on this row.

Reverting to default

If you’ve customized a row and want to undo it, click Reset (only shown on customized rows). Confirm. The row returns to the system default and the Custom badge disappears.

The version stamp

At the top-right of the table you’ll see something like rules v.3. This is the version of Habitia’s underlying defaults — your customizations are tracked separately. If a future Habitia update changes the system defaults, your customized rows are untouched; only the categories you haven’t overridden get the new values.

What’s next

  • Smart alerts & notifications — what alerts Habitia raises and where you see them.
  • Logging a work order — how the work-order history feeds the repeat-failure trigger above.