How to winterize your home before the first freeze

The first hard freeze is a deadline your house takes seriously even if you do not. Water expands about nine percent when it freezes, and it does not care whether it is sitting in a garden hose, a supply line, or a hairline crack in your driveway. One cold night turns any of those into a repair. Here is the weekend plan, in priority order.

Saturday morning: water

Disconnect every hose

This is the single highest-value five minutes on this list. A connected hose traps water in the spigot and the pipe behind it. When that water freezes, the pipe splits inside your wall, and you find out in spring when the wall does.

Shut off and drain outdoor faucets

If your house has interior shutoff valves for the outdoor spigots, close them, then open the outdoor faucet and let it drain. If you have frost-free spigots, disconnecting the hose is most of the job, but drain them anyway. It costs one minute.

Know where the main shutoff is

If a pipe does freeze and burst, the difference between a mess and a disaster is how fast you can close the main. Find it now. Touch it. Make sure it actually turns.

Saturday afternoon: the roofline

• Clear the gutters after most of the leaves are down
• Run a hose to confirm each downspout actually drains
• Check that downspouts discharge at least four feet from the foundation
• Look at the roof from the ground for lifted shingles and exposed nails

Ice dams, the thick ridges of ice that peel gutters off houses, start with clogged gutters and warm attic air. Clean gutters are half the fight.

Sunday: heat

Service the furnace before you need it

Book the annual service now, while technicians still have open calendars. A furnace that dies on the first cold night dies during everyone else’s first cold night too, and the wait proves it. Replace the filter while you are at it.

Reverse the ceiling fans

Clockwise in winter, low speed. The warm air pooled at your ceiling gets pushed back down the walls to where you live.

Seal the obvious drafts

Hold a hand near outlet covers on exterior walls, window edges, and the bottom of exterior doors. Weatherstripping and outlet gaskets are a few dollars and pay for themselves in a season.

Winterizing is not one big job. It is nine small ones, and the freeze date is the only deadline your house will ever enforce for you.

Do the water jobs even if you skip everything else. Frozen pipe repairs run into the thousands, and the prevention is a Saturday morning and zero dollars.