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I recently purchased a home off of 211 in Bolivia. I'm not relocating to the area until a year or so.
My question is, what do you recommend for a long term "vacant" care of the home ?
For this winter at least, I was thinking of turning off the water to the house, and draining the hot water heater and blowing out all of the pipes inside of the house (just incase there's a power loss during the winter). I'm too far away to just drive there and care for it.
Setting the heat down to 62 degrees and keeping a few ceiling fans on low just to move air around. Installing a Nest thermostat so I can control the heat from my phone, and also installing security cameras inside and out so I can monitor it from my phone.
I winterize our mt house by turning off the main house intake valve, and flipping the hot water heater breaker (or gas) to off. After that, I hook a compressor at 30 or 40 psi to an outside water spigot (needed a few special fitting from the hardware store). I attach a hose to the hot water heater and drain it so it's just blowing air, then close the drain and begin pressurizing the entire house while moving from most distant from the hot water heater to closest sinks, etc. and opening them until air flows rather than water. I repeat the process once again to get any trapped water, then close valves and disconnect compressor.
After that I use 10 to 15 oz of RV anti-freeze in each trap... sinks, commodes, shower drains, washing machine drains, dishwasher drains, etc.
I also have WiFi thermostats and WiFi temperature monitors under the house. I leave the HVAC off most years, but if it gets well under freezing for several days, I turn on the Heat just as a precaution (if the power is on of course)
You do have to remember when reversing the process to prepare the house for people, you have to open a hot water faucet while filling the hot water heater before electrifying (or gassing) it again. Once one tap runs from the hot water faucet, you are ready to fire it up again, then go around opening other faucets to clear the air, rust, mud, gunk before anyone takes a shower.
I've done it so many times, I can bring the house out of it's "deep freeze" and up to living standards in 30 minutes or so and re-winterize to leave again in about an hour now.
If you have a lawn irrigation system, you should also drain and blow out those pipes. They rarely freeze, but are expensive to replace.
Yes, the house has a well for lawn irrigation. I'm going to have to educate myself on the well. I have inground sprinklers where I'm at now and I'm familiar with blowing them out. I would assume the systems are similar.
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