Home Maintenance
A few simple preparations before leaving for vacation can prevent water damage, frozen pipes, break-ins, and other costly issues while you're away.
Q&A: "What winter maintenance tips should I follow to protect my house when leaving for a long time?"
This is a question we hear quite often. Many people wonder what steps to take when they will be gone for an extended time. What about water? What should I do with my furnace? These are great questions and we'll answer them from a qualified home inspector viewpoint.
Remember the scene in Home Alone, when the parents have just boarded the plane - quizzing each other about things they may have left on or forgot to turn off. While we certainly don't want you to leave a child behind, we don't want your house to have a major disaster from forgetting one of these simple steps!
We'll divide the topic into three sections: Plumbing, Heating, and "Oh Yeah" - the easy-to-forget stuff.
Turn off the water to your house. This is the single most important step. It reduces the chances of a catastrophic water problem if something goes wrong while you're gone. You can then open the lowest water faucet in your house to drain the pipes.
From personal experience: several years ago, our family had been gone for over a week. When we returned, we opened our door to several inches of water. A supply line to a bathroom fixture had broken and was spraying hot water everywhere. If I had turned off the water supply, this wouldn't have happened.
If you'll be gone for a long time, put RV antifreeze in the plumbing traps throughout your home - including:
These traps prevent sewer gases from entering your home. If the water evaporates, you'll return to the smell of sewer gas - and possibly rodents that entered through the open sewer lines.
Skip this: There's no need to have someone periodically flush the toilets. And lowering the water heater temperature to vacation mode? In our opinion, the small savings aren't worth the risk of Legionella bacteria growing in the tank.
Turn down the thermostat, but never turn off the heat entirely. We recommend 55°F, though this isn't a hard rule - some homes can't tolerate that much of a drop. Whatever you do, don't completely shut off the heat.
Install a smart thermostat. A WiFi-connected thermostat will send you alerts if the temperature gets out of control. We use a Wyze thermostat, but there are several good options available.
These may feel like common sense, but they're easy to overlook:
Contact us if you have questions or want to schedule an inspection before you go.
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