The North Idaho Winter Home Maintenance Checklist

Winter is coming, and smart homeowners are already working through the list. Getting a house in order before the snow flies protects the building and makes the whole season easier. If you are behind schedule, we can take some of it off your hands — but most of this is genuinely DIY-able, so here is the whole list.

Start with anything involving water

These are the urgent ones. Water that freezes inside something expands and breaks it, and it does not wait for a convenient weekend.

Disconnect the garden hoses

Take hoses off outdoor faucets. A hose left attached causes water to back up in the faucet and in the pipe just inside your exterior wall. One hard freeze and that water expands and cracks the faucet or the pipe — inside the wall, where you will not find out until it thaws.

Shut off any valves on the supply lines feeding exterior faucets while you are at it, then drain the hoses and store them in a shed or garage.

Drain the sprinkler system

Buried irrigation lines freeze too, and the result is busted pipe and broken sprinkler heads in the spring. To drain it:

1. Turn off the water to the system at the main valve
2. Shut off the automatic controller
3. Open the drain valves to let the water out
4. Pull any above-ground heads, shake the water out, and put them back

If your system has no drain valves, have an irrigation professional blow the lines out with compressed air.

Seal the building up

Air sealing

A couple of tubes of color-matched exterior caulk and a walk around the house is one of the highest-return jobs on this list. Seal the cracks between trim and siding, around window and door frames, and anywhere pipes or wires enter the building.

Keeping moisture out of your walls is the point. Cutting the draft and the heating bill is a bonus. Pick a day above about 45 degrees if you can — caulk does not cure properly in the cold.

Add insulation if the attic needs it

Ideally this happens before winter, but late is better than never. If your attic is leaking warm air, insulation makes a real difference to heating costs — and it is also the long-term fix for ice dams, because a cold attic does not melt the snow on the roof above it.

Insulate exterior pipes and hose bibs too, or replace them with frost-proof versions.

Clear the gutters and check the roof

De-gunk the gutters

Once the leaves are down, clear the gutters of leaves, twigs and grit. Clogged gutters cause ice dams, and ice dams cause expensive repairs.

While you are up there, check that the gutters are not sagging and holding water, and tighten any loose hangers and downspout brackets. Downspouts should discharge at least five feet from the house — add extensions if they do not, or you are watering your own foundation all winter.

One thing to watch for: if you find sand-like colored grit in the gutters, that is granule loss from asphalt shingles. Those granules are the shingle's UV protection, and losing them means the roof is aging out.

Inspect the roof

If the roof is steep, stay off it and use binoculars from the ground. You are looking for:

• Shingles that are buckled, cracked or missing
• Rust spots on flashing
• Masses of moss or lichen, which can mean decay underneath — black algae staining alone is only cosmetic

Any loose, damaged or missing shingles should be replaced now rather than in February. Check the rubber boots around plumbing vent stacks as well; they crack and loosen with age and will usually fail before the roof itself does.

Direct the water away

Look at the soil around the foundation. It should slope away from the house — roughly six inches of fall over the first ten feet. Soil that slopes toward the building soaks the ground against your foundation, which leads to cracks and leaks. Make sure soil is not in contact with your siding either.

Check the heating

The furnace

Get the heating system tuned up before the season, and change the filters — that is a job for every couple of months anyway. If your system has a built-in humidifier, replace that filter too.

The fireplace and chimney

Take a flashlight and look up inside the flue. The damper should open and close properly, and you should see daylight at the top with no birds' nests, branches or leaves in the way. Check the firebox for cracked or missing brick and mortar and get any damage fixed before you are relying on it.

Your flue should be cleaned of creosote buildup every other year.

Then the fun part

With the outside squared away, you can put the holiday lights up — or have us do it. We have the tools and the experience for the hard-to-reach spots on the roof, which is a much better outcome than a ladder accident in December. We can also look at converting outdoor outlets to GFCI while we are at it.

Move indoors for the winter

Once the outside is handled, winter is the right season for interior projects. There is a whole separate list of those worth planning — see indoor winter home projects for the ones that make the most sense between now and spring.

A quick word on one of them: before anyone takes a sledgehammer to a wall, sit down with someone who can tell you whether it is structural. We can look at a planned renovation and tell you what is load-bearing before it becomes a problem.

If you would rather not do it yourself

We are happy to take any of this on — gutters, roof checks, air sealing, insulation, winterization, or the whole list in one visit. Batching several items into one trip is almost always the cheapest way to handle it.

Call 208-304-6335 for a free estimate. We work throughout Sandpoint, Sagle, Ponderay and the rest of our service area.

Have a safe, warm and trouble-free season.