Pre-Maintanence, and not the SPAM post!

Thanks, Larry, I agree this is a useful topic if started by an actual forum participant (you!!) and not a spambot!

I have been having a run-around trying to get my mail held for a few days. The USPS website is not working correctly (and my carrier confirmed this) and she told me in her daily meetings their supervisor had told them people needed to go to the main PO so they could confirm their identity to put in a hold as there were a lot of scammers getting people's mail held or redirected. Went to the PO, filled out the yellow card and the staffer at the desk said, no she did not need to see ID. OH Well...mail held and the carrier told me yesterday she'd received my card and all was well.

We've got people coming in to water plants and are just going to be gone a few days. I'll also tell the across the street neighbor our plans....our version of a neighborhood watch, hahaha!

You bet, it's always good to check the safety boxes when leaving home!

Here's something that drives me nuts (not that I've all that far to drive.) We tend to travel a lot in the fall...which is a big ramp-up period for November elections. Canvassers for various candidates have a bad habit of sticking/hanging their materials into/onto front doors when you're not home and advertising that fact to eyes that might be watching for unoccupied properties. There's not a thing we can do about it as it's legal in our suburb for political purposes as long as materials are not taped, nailed, glued to the door. etc.

We have our neighbor watch for and remove that stuff when they see it but they're snowbirds and gone by early-mid October (we watch their home for these visible flags when we're here) so it can sit there awhile. For all that local law enforcement goes on about all the safety precautions we should take, I can't believe they let this one fly! Grrrr.

The water issue is a big one for me. My neighbor had his house ruined ( >6 months to be re-occupied) due to an overnight upstairs water leak, while they were home. After that I had installed a leak detector / valve system which notifies me by phone if there is a potential leak, and shuts off the water automatically or by request. So this provides protection not only for travel but everyday situations.

The leak detector/auto shut off) is now very common with new construction- mandated in some states. Insurance companies in many parts of the US are now requiring them to be install if you want your home policy renewed. Once again mainly newer homes but homes with interior fire sprinkler systems the water needs to stay on- if you turned the water entirely off and if there is a fire your insurance company will say thank you for calling but no check for you.

A friend of mine goes to Georgia for the winter, to avoid the cold northern Michigan winter. He has a smart thermostat that lets him see and control the house temperature. So far, so good. While in Georgia, what happened was that he lost communication with it.

What caused this is that the thermostat needed a battery to run, since his old house only had two wires to the thermostat. When the battery died, it quit communicating, but more importantly, it quit turning on the furnace. So the boiler in the basement froze up, along with a few pipes in the basement.

So what would have saved him a lot of repair cost would have been putting a simple mechanical themostat across the wires from the "smart" thermostat. And set the mechanical thermostat to 50 degrees or so.

So my advice is to make sure that a dead battery can't disable your furnace.

For my house, I have a very similar smart thermostat (Honeywell), that gets it's power from 24 vac from the furnace. And it communicates by wifi. If the thermostat fails, or the furnace loses power, I get an email from Honeywell that communication was lost. Then I call my neighbor and tell him where my house key is hidden.

When we're gone for more than a couple of weeks and don't have a dog-sitter staying at the house we have someone come in at least once a week to water the plants, check for any mail that didn't get held or forwarded and walk around to make sure there aren't any leaks or burst pipes. Since it's summer she's watering the outdoor containers too. We started doing this after hearing the story of a friend of a friend who was gone for 3 months. Pinhole leak in the upstairs bath and yup, new bath, new floors, new ceiling, new walls.

I have dumb thermostats, but a clever way to monitor the temperature inside the house. 😀

There’s an app called “Alfred Camera” This application will turn any old iPhone or IPad into a web camera. I point the “web camera” at one of those indoor/outdoor wireless thermometers with the outdoor sensor downstairs in the basement. Using the Alfred camera app installed on my iPhone I can connect and see the temperatures in both areas of the house from anywhere.

Once a day I’ll check in to see if the indoor temperatures are being maintained. My reasoning is if there is a problem with the heating system the problem with manifest itself slow enough for me to catch it. If there ever was an issue I could text a friend to come over and take a look.

I am considering shutting off the water main before my next trip, but I’m not sure if there are other considerations I should be aware of before doing that. For example, should I be concerned about the water in the trap evaporating and allowing sewer gas to enter the home? This would only be possible during the summer months since the house is heated by a hydronic heating system.

Joe, you can check with a plumber, but I can’t see why shutting off the water should affect the traps. Shutting the water off means nothing can come out of a tap. The traps are in the waste lines. It would take some time for the water to evaporate out of them, and with the water shut off, nothing would reestablish them until some water ran.

BTW don’t you need a constant power source for the device you use as a web camera? Battery life while on won’t be more than a couple days.

BTW don’t you need a constant power source for the device you use as a web camera? Battery life while on won’t be more than a couple days

Yes, if the power goes out for any length of time that’s a big problem since that will shut down the heating system. The iPhone cameras themselves are just plugged into a power strip so they will never run out of juice. They do require the Wi-Fi connection to be active but that’s not been an issue in the past, and they will reconnect on their own if there is a temporary outage.

When we first got our apartment in France, we bought controls for turning the lights on and off from a distance. I couldn’t put them on an automatic timer , so when in the US, I put them on at 3:30 pm US eastern time, and at 7:30 pm, turn them off.
Then one day, the software updated and the connection was lost. Our dark windows did attract the attention of a scout for burglars because a neighbor found the symbol for “people away” marked on our doorframe. Look up burglar signs on line to understand the language.

Follow up, over the next two months, two more doorframes in our building were marked, so the building heightened security and we moved into the apartment full time.

Relating to batteries, I have a house/cat sitter so I always refresh the batteries in the smoke alarm, the front door keypad lock, and the outdoor porch cameras. The smoke alarm idea was at the request of a house sitter who had a traumatic experience with a chirping alarm. I also have light timers and furnace thermostat that are programmable so I make sure the schedule is house sitter friendly. And I always double check that the coffee grounds have been tossed from the coffee maker because returning to that is a nasty surprise (ask me how I know!) and toss anything from the fridge that won't last the duration.

Kate, I get what you're saying about the political and promotional materials being left at your house.

Have you thought of maybe putting some kind of small plastic wastecan next to the door, with a note on it that says something like "Please leave political brochures here"?

I realize it's not a perfect solution, but IF the canvassers follow the instructions, it would avoid having colored brochures stuck in your door, which you can see from the street. Obviously, if someone went up to the house, they would see the wastecan there, but they still wouldn't know how long the material has been there. Material that is inserted on the door, however, screams, "Hey, no one's gone through this door in a while. I'm free game!"

Pam, I think the post office is going down the tubes. I get so disgusted with ours, and when my daughter and her family moved temporarily last year, during the time when the house was on the market, they had such a problem with mail getting forwarded. What you're saying doesn't make me think any better of the organization. They stop it online because of security issues, but then they don't bother to ask for any ID? Jeez!

My solution is to leave my husband at home!
He hates travel now, and so he and the cat look after the house while I'm away.
The garden?...well...it has to look after itself as DH thinks every plant is a geranium.

We contact our police department and complete a "Vacation alert". They will periodically conduct a walk around our home to ensure that everything looks in order.

The garden?...well...it has to look after itself as DH thinks every plant is a geranium

SJ, I almost choked on my toast with laughter! My husband thinks anything that isn't a flower is a weed. He once pulled up all of my grape hyacinths (they weren't in bloom, yet).

My husband sent me a picture of my garden and asked me to circle what to keep. I said just leave it for me because it was pretty messy. So I've been weeding all week. And leeks and grass look pretty similar at a certain stage.

I have a sprinkler system for the lawn that I can control from my phone and have had a lawn service for two years now mowing.

I ordered a flower hanging basket from Amazon before my last trip, and I hung it on my covered patio. From the sidewalk across the street, it looks real. Actually it looks nice enough I’m not replacing it with a real one this summer! I also used the same brand for filling my flower planters on the porch. That cut way back on flowers my neighbor waters.

Otherwise, I have a few neighbors who gladly come inside and check on everything periodically, and they pick up my mail. And yes, they throw away those annoying campaign flyers!. Our routine when I’m back home is to treat her to a nice lunch which she says is more than enough. My oldest daughter’s family loves to watch my dog, so that’s a huge win-win.