What do you do to your house?

I second the comment about finding another insurance company/policy. Before we started to spend winters in the south I contacted our broker who confirmed that the coverage would continue as long as we had the house checked.

Two winters ago we had an ice storm and a tree branch broke and fell on the roof, a neighbour E-mailed us to report it. I E-mailed the broker who sent out a crew to inspect the roof, they had to put rock salt on the ice to check for roof damage, turned out that the only damage was to the eaves trough, and the cost estimate was lower than our deductible so I waited until our return to get it fixed. No charges from the insurance company and all done via E-mail.

Thanks for all the info. It takes a lot of planning to leave for an extended time. All of you have a good winter in the warn south

rjxj wrote:

djgarcia wrote:
Snowbirds----
1. Make sure your home insurance is up to date and paid.
2. Sign up for a Volunteer Police watch program to keep tabs on your home when you are gone.
3. Turn water off to your refrigerator ice maker
4. Purchase a commercial alarm system for your complete home. The alarm system should be throughout your home and connected to a 24hr. alarm security call center and your local police/fire dept. It is cheap insurance and gives you peace of mind.
5. make sure a reliable friend in town has a complete set of keys for your house. Be sure this friend has the correct pass word for you alarm system if they have to talk to the call center.
6. Put all your valuables i.e. jewelry into your safe deposit box.

Good point about the insurance. I'm in snow country so when I'm gone there is no getting in the driveway. No, I'm not paying someone to plow it and know that I'm not there. I'll take my chances with not having it accessible for the locals to empty it out or squat in it. SO.......I went around and around with the insurance co because of it being snowed in. They would verbally say it's ok but they wouldn't give it to me in writing. One agent told me that properties that are vacant need a special pricey insurance or it's considered abandoned. I cant even remember all the stuff that they said but I think there are a lot of people around me who are not actually insured. It seems to be one of those things that no one wants to talk about but if something happened like a fire they may be surprised at the outcome. I finally got it insured with Citizens and have it in writing that it is ok for the property to be snowed in and no access to the house.

I would be looking for a new home owner's insurance policy.

shut off the water to washers and turn off the water at the wall for toilets. set thermostat down to 50 or less, nothing will freeze. a friend of mine years ago unplugged every thing clocks, furnace, frig, freezer, you name it. the electric company came out and replaced his meter, they thought the meter stopped working

djgarcia wrote:
Snowbirds----
1. Make sure your home insurance is up to date and paid.
2. Sign up for a Volunteer Police watch program to keep tabs on your home when you are gone.
3. Turn water off to your refrigerator ice maker
4. Purchase a commercial alarm system for your complete home. The alarm system should be throughout your home and connected to a 24hr. alarm security call center and your local police/fire dept. It is cheap insurance and gives you peace of mind.
5. make sure a reliable friend in town has a complete set of keys for your house. Be sure this friend has the correct pass word for you alarm system if they have to talk to the call center.
6. Put all your valuables i.e. jewelry into your safe deposit box.

Good point about the insurance. I'm in snow country so when I'm gone there is no getting in the driveway. No, I'm not paying someone to plow it and know that I'm not there. I'll take my chances with not having it accessible for the locals to empty it out or squat in it. SO.......I went around and around with the insurance co because of it being snowed in. They would verbally say it's ok but they wouldn't give it to me in writing. One agent told me that properties that are vacant need a special pricey insurance or it's considered abandoned. I cant even remember all the stuff that they said but I think there are a lot of people around me who are not actually insured. It seems to be one of those things that no one wants to talk about but if something happened like a fire they may be surprised at the outcome. I finally got it insured with Citizens and have it in writing that it is ok for the property to be snowed in and no access to the house.

On Cape Cod where it can get into the 20s over the winter. We were gone from November till May last year. Here's what we did

1. All food out of the house, freezer and fridge propped open.
2. AVgas in the mower and power washer. 93 octane unleaded and Lucas stabilizer would be ok as well. The neighbor used the snow blower so I didn't need to worry about that.
3. All batteries out of battery operated stuff (puck lights, remotes, power shades).
4. Unplugged the garage door openers.
5. Put the car batteries on a Battery Minder.
6. Water off, but this was a mistake. I have a forced hot water heating system and the pressure got too low without makeup. I've since learned that this is solved by running a separate line to the furnace that doesn't require the rest of the house to be on. If I were to do this, I'd run the PT valve overflows to a sump somewhere.
7. Heat set at 50°.
8. Got one of these. http://www.protectedhome.com/homesitter-p-118-l-en.html
9. Had the local handyman check the place regularly.
10. Unplugged everything, TVs, cable, internet. Left one inside and one outside light on a timer.
11. Screwed the cooktop vent closed so critters couldn't crawl in there for the winter.

I rented out my house this year. It was really nice to have the income -- and to have people watching out for everything.

Snowbirds----
1. Make sure your home insurance is up to date and paid.
2. Sign up for a Volunteer Police watch program to keep tabs on your home when you are gone.
3. Turn water off to your refrigerator ice maker
4. Purchase a commercial alarm system for your complete home. The alarm system should be throughout your home and connected to a 24hr. alarm security call center and your local police/fire dept. It is cheap insurance and gives you peace of mind.
5. make sure a reliable friend in town has a complete set of keys for your house. Be sure this friend has the correct pass word for you alarm system if they have to talk to the call center.
6. Put all your valuables i.e. jewelry into your safe deposit box.

I drain the water pipes and hot water water tank.

My alarm system goes off if the house falls to 4C (maybe 40F). The thermostat is set for 8C (maybe 46F).

I don't blow the water pipes so there could be freeze damage of the power went off for a long time, but it should be pretty minimal.

Our neighbour checks our house every day - otherwise no insurance.

On edit: I forgot to say that I dump RV antifreeze in all the P-traps.

path1 wrote:
.... Well, I wasn't going to do all the stuff it said to do, so all I did was disconnect battery and filled up tanks with premium on all the vehicles and put in some Sta-bil fuel helper to help keep it fresh. Read somewhere that regular gas falls apart ,but don't know for sure.....

Any E10 (gas-a-ual) gas (reg, premium, etc) sold in WA has the same additives. They all degrade with time. Stabil helps, there are better brands eg Briggs & Stratton Fresh Start Fuel, Onan Onafresh, etc.

You can buy alcohol free gas (at a premium) at a number of stations (often tribal) in the state. The lack of alcohol helps with long-term storage.