What do you do to prepare and protect your house before winter arrives?
Besides making monthly mortgage payments and property tax on time. The homeowners are responsible to take good care of their biggest investment, similar responsibilities as being parents.
They are responsible to take care of the lawn, trash pickups, paying utility bills on time, regular maintenance of the house, and home repairs that occur from time to time. Particularly, the various structural and mechanical systems of your lovely house would bear a tremendous burden in order to defend against the harsh wintery weather. Preparing and executing a winter checklist are essential steps to take to protect your home.
Owning your own house has a lot of responsibility.
Before the arrival of harsh winter. The number one chore that my husband or my son would remember to do is to drain the outdoor pipes and remove trapped water. It is essential to keep outdoor plumbing fixtures from freezing. Especially the indoor pipe that runs through the exterior walls and close to the outdoor faucet. Due to the fact that water expands when it freezes. Ice takes up more space than the same amount of water. The pipe is already full of liquid water. Thus, if the temperature gets extremely cold, there are no extra rooms for expansion. It causes the water pipe to burst. I learned it through an unforgettable experience.
As well as making sure to disconnect the garden hose, shut off all the valves and faucet fixtures before the weather gets very cold.
The next thing to remember is to make sure that the gutter and dry well is clean, preventing water from flooding the garage.
Also, remember to check the heating system and cover air-conditioning system, shut down the sprinkling system, etc.
We learned it through a difficult experience, pipe bursting and flooding our basement.
