For those of you who have second vacation homes, travel for extended periods, or snowbird to warmer climates in the winter, do you have any helpful hints for leaving your main residence for several months at a time? For example, do you totally turn off the water if just for a few months? How far can you safely lower the thermostat? Is a weekly house check enough…and who does it for you? Forward all mail each time you’re away? ETC. Thanks in advance!
I had a maintenance company come weekly. I would let them know when I was arriving, and they would turn water in n. For money,they would have house cleaned and fridge stocked with basic food. If a repair was needed, the maintenance man would stay in house while repair done. Peace of mind.
We use a security company who checks the house daily, sometimes twice. They do a perimeter check and then enter the house once a day to check for any issue. They also pick up the mail and deliver it to one of our Ds who checks it to see what, if anything, needs to be forwarded to us.
Be sure to check with your insurance company as to what they require as to frequency of house checks in order to keep insurance valid.
What location are you in? Climate, etc?
My folks would go away for periods of time and also had a second home that would be empty most of the winter. With technology these days you can program thermostats to not only raise and lower temps but also notify you if them temp drops below a certain level (power outage, broken furnace, etc.) 55 degrees seems to be a safe temp to lower the house to without damage or freezing.
They had a housekeeper who’d come in every week or two to check on things.
Mail was held if only for a few weeks or forwarded (if longer). In these days of online billing and banking, forwarding might not be necessary. 95% of what we get is junk these days. The rest is online. You can also get a box at the PO so that junk doesn’t sit in your mailbox. The worst are those freebie local newspapers that pile up without a subscription. Clear sign that no one is home so you need to someone to pick those up if you have that issue.
Another clear sign is plowing if you get snow, so if you have a regular plow guy that solves that problem.
I used to work for one of those freebie newspapers. Some of them have a “do not deliver” list you can get on. It is variable in how well it works, because it depends on their delivery people to know which houses to skip. Since those people don’t get paid a lot, they have little incentive to skip. But, it is worth calling them and asking because it may work.
In my neighborhood people pay neighbor kids to check on the houses. These tend to be the 14-16 year old age group-old enough to know how to make sure stuff is locked up afterwards, not so old they’re tempted to throw a huge party at the empty house.
Our community requests that we register absences with the police. I live in a college town and there are many grad students looking to housesit. H says no way.
We live in Minnesota, left for 2 weeks a couple winters ago and came home to frozen pipes. City says the solution is to leave one faucet running with a stream the diameter of a pencil. Seems wasteful…snow birds, what do any of you northerners do?
Climate does make a difference. I spend 7 months a year in Florida and 5 months in NJ. My husband goes back to the NJ house often during the winter so I don’t worry about anything there except the mail which he hates to deal with. I have found that having a house manager for the months the Florida house is empty is worth every penny. He comes once a week and sends me a text with everything he did. Our manager works for the builder of the house so he is well versed in its construction and knows all the subcontractors when something needs attention.
We knew when we built the house a couple years ago that we would never live there full time. For that reason, we put in security cameras around the whole exterior and in the garage which I check almost daily from my phone or computer. We also put the some of the lighting on a home automation system which can be programmed any number of ways and also controlled from my computer. And the garage door openers are connected to the wifi so I can check the status at any time from my phone and operate them remotely.
When I close up the house, I set the upstairs thermostat at 77 and the downstairs at 78. We could probably bump those up a little but the electric bills have been very reasonable and it’s important to keep the humidity level down in that climate. I do turn off the hose bibs but not the interior water. Here are some of the things on my checklist when I leave:
- Turn up refrigerator/freezer temps a little
- Shut off ice makers. I clean and drain the stand alone ice maker.
- Put a little granulated bleach in each toilet bowl so they don’t get nasty. Don’t put it in the tank!
- Set water heater to vacation mode and turn off recirculating pump
- Lock up valuables such as the family silver, jewelry and checkbooks
- Empty and unplug Keurig machine. First I add some vinegar to the tank and run it through a couple times. You can never completely empty those machines so I figure the vinegar will keep mildew from growing inside.
- Turn off gas fireplace starter/logs
- clean out pantry
- call alarm company to change order of notification calls if there is an alarm
- stop newspaper delivery
- cover outdoor furniture
The house manager checks:
- flyers at front door
- irrigation timer/yard condition
- outdoor lights for burned out bulbs
- runs all faucets weekly
- checks bathrooms/kitchen for leaks
- checks humidity level
- checks for heavy leaf buildup on balcony, decks, etc
- checks gutters and cleans when needed
- checks phone messages
- we leave a car there so checks to see if battery is strong
It’s really good to have a neighbor who will keep an eye on things too. We tend to have advertising flyers left on the front porch so I’m lucky that a neighbor who walks her dog daily picks those up between house manager visits.
I’ve also used Premium Mail Forwarding from the post office. It gets a little pricey but very reliable.
“We live in Minnesota, left for 2 weeks a couple winters ago and came home to frozen pipes. City says the solution is to leave one faucet running with a stream the diameter of a pencil. Seems wasteful…snow birds, what do any of you northerners do?”
If I left a pencil diameter stream of water running constantly, my well would run dry.
Getting your thermostat/furnace connected to an alarm that will notify you remotely of a temperature drop (same for loss of power) as I mentioned previously would give you a heads up so you could arrange for someone to handle it before the pipes freeze. Technology can be your friend here.
We do have everything hooked up to our alarm with notifications so nothing froze inside the house. Our house sits 250 ft back from the street and pipe that started the freeze was under the city street. So everything between the street and our house froze up. We ended up hiring a welder to heat up the water main at the street and whoosh…the ice crystals blew into my basement pipes!
@GRITS80 - good tips
Another thing that’s been handy is signing up for My Choice with UPS and MyUSPS with the post office. These programs sent notifications when packages are in route/delivered to your house. The UPS site allows you to reschedule deliveries to another day or reroute the package to a UPS authorized location for pickup at a later time. I have found this to be very helpful when out of town. I think USPS allows some changes to delivery instructions too. But at a minimum I know when a package or special mailing has been delivered and can ask someone to get it for me.
^The only limitation is the short period of time they can hold packages at the UPS stores after rerouting. FedEx has a similar service, too.
I have quite a few retired neighbors who travel out of town for extended times. Almost all have invested in a Nest thermostat http://www.homedepot.com/p/Nest-Learning-Thermostat-3rd-generation-T3007ES/206391087
My bil has a nest thermostat in his vacation home. It’s really nice to turn up the heat on the drive there so the house is warm. They have radiant heat so it takes a while for things to warm. My H and bil installed it in an afternoon.
They also have security cameras and smoke alarms.
I would turn off your water if not home during the winter. We had a prolonged below 0 period a couple of years ago. A friend who was in Florida had their pipes burst and it wasn’t discovered until a neighbor noticed condensation on the inside of their windows. It was a huge mess.
I might make a separate post about the MyChoice for ups and USPS. My D is having problems with having her packages stolen at her new apartment.
So many family stories about empty houses in northern climates in the winter!
Zero stories involving break-ins… Except one, when the person who broke into our north woods cabin left a note and money for repairs. Their car broke down and they hiked down the nearest gravel driveway (a mile long) to use the phone. This was in the '70’s. Pre cell phone era, with above ground phone lines. They knew the cabin had a phone.
Water has been the source of most empty house problems. Turn it off, and/or have someone check the inside of the house every day.
We have learned to turn off the water to the clothes washer whenever we leave even for a weekend. Those hoses are under pressure, should be replaced more often than most of us do. If a hose breaks, the water is gushing out at full strength.
An issue that occured in my parents’ house one winter was with an old lamp that had been left plugged in, and they returned home after a winter away to a scorched wall. They were lucky the house didn’t burn down.
The person who checks the inside of the house everyday should do a quick check of every room and area. My parents’ neighbor never looked into the room with the faulty lamp. It was a bedroom, and the door was closed.
Pipes
Our pipes froze & burst in our snow country second home–big mess! We insulated the pipes in the basement and leave the heat on at a low temp. We haven’t had a repeat pipe bursting incident since.
Surveillance & Snow
We installed a webcam and can see the driveway & problematic areas indoors. The purpose of the surveillance is home maintenance rather than security. When we see the snow falling hard, we remotely turn on the driveway snowmelt system.
Mail
Our neighbor periodically collects our mail from the maibox.
Emergencies
We have friends in town to call if an emergency happens while we’re away.
I automatically imagine a fire-breathing dragon that lives in your garage.
My parents leave their house empty every winter. They have good neighbors and my brother and I are both fairly close to handle the snow, mail, papers, etc.
They turn off their water and put antifreeze (you can buy it at camping supply places) in the pipes and then turn the heat way down. It’s see-your-breath cold in there in January. Nothing is really left plugged in and they’re in a location where crime isn’t typically a problem. A motion detector security light is installed over the driveway and another in the backyard.
This is kind of off-topic, but one of their biggest problems was that they couldn’t refill prescriptions at all of their winter destinations, and they can’t typically get several months’ supply before they leave, so they’ve gone to an online service (I think it’s just Walgreens) where they can change the delivery address as needed for prescriptions that are mailed to them.
If you have lights on the front of the house, those can be wired through a light sensor that can automatically turn them on at dusk and off at dawn. We are not snowbirding yet, but we have a lot of such minutia on automation in the house we live year round. If you use LED lights, the damage to your electrical bill from having lights on all night is minimal, but the fully lit driveway wards off at least some trouble.
What is this, 1998? 
^^ It is where I live. Our landline (Frontier) does not have voice mail for our locale.
The safest thing with water if you are away is to shut the water off and drain the system (it isn’t that hard, usually the hot water heater is the lowest point in the house), and obviously, turn off the hot water heater if you do that . You can put antifreeze in the pipes, but draining it is just as easy, doesn’t take long. at that point, if you have things like house plants and such you want to keep going, you could keep the heat at 55 and be fine.
I have another issue with my house, my basement can flood if we lose power and there is a lot of rain, if I ever go away for an extended period of time in the future I’ll have people check my house, but I will also have a permanent backup generator, might only need it once every couple of years but it would save a lot of heartache.