We usually prep for the winter before the middle of November, just in case. This year, we just came in from a quick trip around the yard to prep for what looks like 4 days in a row, starting tomorrow, of morning freezes!
My husband had a couple of strokes the past couple of years, and sometimes he blanks on how to do things. He’s always been the go-to and fix-it guy who knows how to do everything, so I have relied heavily on his expertise. Now he looks at ME and says, “I don’t know how to turn off the irrigation systems in the well house.” GULP.
I found the paperwork for those in the files, thank goodness, and found it was very straight-forward. We went out there and I did that, showing him what I was doing. We then found the electric heater thingie that sits on the floor out there. It monitors the temperature inside the well house. If it decides it’s too cool, it automatically turns on, making sure the pipes don’t freeze out there. I got that going. My husband wanted to fight with lighting the propane wall heater, but I told him we could wait on that, since we’re only supposed to have 4 days of freezes and then we’re supposed to be back into the 50s and 40s for lows for quite awhile.
We made our way around the yard, unhooking hoses (after I went back into the house and found a set of pliers). I found the styrofoam caps for the faucets and we got those installed. We unhooked the hose from the free-standing faucet that controls water to the garden and got that shut down.
Inside, I propped open the cabinets under the sink in the utility room bathroom and made sure the electric sensor heater we have under there was on. I’ll do the same thing upstairs later under my husband’s master bathroom sink.
We turned on the heater for the house for the first time this season. We’ll do the same upstairs later, if we need to. Otherwise, we’ll just turn OFF the a/c up there! We’re laying a fire in the fireplace in the living room in case it’s needed.
And that should be it.
We’ll do the heavier, more serious winter prep when we see the weather has, indeed, decided we’ll skip fall and go straight to winter.
Time for coffee!
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