A house left empty for a week or two is not quite the same as a house with people in it. Nobody is there to smell something off, hear a breaker trip, or notice water under the sink. In Hampton Roads, a summer thunderstorm or a tropical system can also roll through while you are gone. A little preparation before you leave means the house is quieter, safer, and less expensive to run while you are gone, and you are not spending the trip wondering. Here is a list you can work through in an afternoon, with the electrical items first, since those are the ones most often skipped.
A few days before you go
- Test the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and put in fresh batteries, since an alarm that a neighbor can hear is the only warning an empty house has.
- If you have a standby generator, confirm it has been running its weekly self-test and that the controller shows a green status. A generator that starts on its own while you are away is the difference between coming home to a normal house and coming home to a warm refrigerator and a wet crawl space.
- Decide which lights will stay on and put them on timers or smart plugs, so the house looks lived in without running lights around the clock.
- Look at the weather. If a tropical system is in the forecast for your week away, the storm preparations below move to the top of the list.
The day you leave
- Unplug what you can: the television and its electronics, the computer, the coffee maker, the toaster, chargers, and anything else that draws power sitting idle or could be damaged by a surge. A power strip with a switch makes this a single motion.
- Leave the refrigerator, the freezer, the sump pump, the security system, and any timers plugged in, along with the garage door opener if someone will be checking on the house.
- Set the thermostat rather than turning the system off. In summer, somewhere around 80 to 85 degrees keeps humidity from building in a closed house, which is what protects the floors, the furniture, and the walls in this climate. In winter, 55 degrees or above keeps the pipes safe.
- Turn the water heater to its vacation setting if it has one, or lower the temperature, and consider shutting off the water main if you will be gone more than a few days. A supply line that lets go in an empty house runs until someone finds it.
- Make sure the outdoor GFCI outlets are not running anything unnecessary, and bring in or secure anything outdoors that a storm could move.
Why the electrical items matter most
Unplugging electronics does two things. It stops the small, steady draw that idle devices pull around the clock, which shows up on the power bill over two weeks, and it takes those devices off the grid during the surges that come with summer storms and with power returning after an outage. In this region, lightning and restoration surges take out televisions, computers, and appliances every summer, and a house with nobody in it has no one to notice the smell of a failed power supply. If your home does not have whole-home surge protection at the panel, a vacation is often what prompts homeowners to add it, since it protects everything you cannot unplug: the refrigerator, the air handler, the well pump, and the sump pump.
The water side of an empty house
Water damage in an empty house is a significant problem worth preventing, because it compounds every hour nobody is there. Shutting off the main is the simplest protection, and if you leave it on, closing the valves to the washing machine and turning down the water heater reduce the risk. If your home sits over a crawl space on the region’s high water table, the sump pump is the other thing to think about. A summer storm can fill the space while you are gone, and a pump without power does nothing, so a battery backup pump, which our sump pump team installs, or a generator circuit for the pump is worth arranging before a long trip.
If a storm is coming while you are away
Hurricane season overlaps with vacation season here, and a trip planned in March can land in the path of a storm in August. If one is in the forecast, ask a neighbor or a friend to check the house after it passes, shut off the water main, unplug everything that is not essential, and confirm the generator’s status one more time. If you have a portable generator, leave clear instructions with whoever is checking the house about running it only outdoors and never plugging it into a wall outlet, or leave it in the garage unused, since a portable generator run by someone unfamiliar with it is a risk of its own.
When you get home
Walk the house before you unpack. Check the panel for tripped breakers, look at the sump pit and under the sinks, run the water for a minute if the main was off, and plug things back in one area at a time. If anything is not working the way it did when you left, or if the power was out while you were gone, our technicians can look at the equipment and the panel in one visit.
Getting the house ready before a trip
Russell’s American Mechanical has served Hampton Roads since 1977 with electrical, heating, cooling, plumbing, and generators under one roof. If you would like a technician to look over the panel, add surge protection, test the generator, or set up a backup for the sump pump before a long trip, schedule online, use the website chat, or call, and same-day appointments are available by phone when the day allows. Members of the Premium Home Care Agreement receive priority scheduling, which helps when the trip is coming up quickly.