[VTrunner]

My wife and I are looking to move to The Villages as soon as we find the home that meets our needs. We are planning to keep our current home for summer use, at least for a couple years.
While this is an exciting time, I am a little nervous about leaving the current home for 5-6 months over the winter months. We live in Vermont and have relatives that can look in on the house as well as having cameras etc. setup.
Leaving the house in TV I would engage a service to watch but I was curious if anyone had experiences they could share on leaving a home in the frozen north?
We've factored in the added expenses of a second home but it is more about any unknowns that could come up when leaving a home empty for six months?

Thanks for any tips anyone may have, good or bad.

[dewilson58]

Our biggest concerns were fire, water and crime.

Cameras help a lot.

We did get a wifi connected water meter.
Flume. Sends messages when it detects water flow.

We also installed a couple (no need to over do it) smart smoke alarms.

Smart thermostats are nice.
Or Govee to monitor house/garage temps.

We already had a house alarm, but there are a number of easy add-ons.

[UpNorth]

Originally Posted by dewilson58

Our biggest concerns were fire, water and crime.

Cameras help a lot.

We did get a wifi connected water meter.
Flume. Sends messages when it detects water flow.

We also installed a couple (no need to over do it) smart smoke alarms.

Smart thermostats are nice.
Or Govee to monitor house/garage temps.

We already had a house alarm, but there are a number of easy add-ons.

All the above.
Cameras are the best devices you can add. The next best thing to "being there". You will have to keep your internet service active, but it is well worth it. Set your heating temperature down to 55 degrees, unplug everything that's not needed, and turn the water off at the sinks and bathrooms. Make sure your driveway gets plowed and your mail is forwarded. And have a neighbor or relative come in and check around at least once a month. It will take a year or two for you to feel comfortable being a snowbird.

[CoachKandSportsguy]

Congratulations for moving out of New England, I just flew back yesterday for a family issue, and the house heating had been turned off, so upon arrival, i turned on the oil burner, the gas fireplace and put the electric blanket on the bed and turned it on high!

Google winterizing a house, and read many of the pages to get all the different issues to consider.

Have copies of all important legal and medical documents in both houses.
Have scanned copies of all of the above documents saved in both houses or in the cloud with long passwords, and a non personal generic user names. .

Draining water lines from houses, if left unheated the first time, usually finds undrainable locations and burst pipes in hard to reach places (of course) after the first winter. Always has happened to me.

For the TV house, search this forum and you will find many detailed posts about the issues to consider here.

[dewilson58]

Agree with North.

The only thing I would add to North............Consider the age of your house and wall insulation.
Outside walls with water pipes could freeze.
Leaving doors open under sinks help with circulation.

There are a number of "shut-down" threads on this site.

[BrianL99]

Originally Posted by VTrunner

My wife and I are looking to move to The Villages as soon as we find the home that meets our needs. We are planning to keep our current home for summer use, at least for a couple years.
While this is an exciting time, I am a little nervous about leaving the current home for 5-6 months over the winter months. We live in Vermont and have relatives that can look in on the house as well as having cameras etc. setup.
Leaving the house in TV I would engage a service to watch but I was curious if anyone had experiences they could share on leaving a home in the frozen north?
We've factored in the added expenses of a second home but it is more about any unknowns that could come up when leaving a home empty for six months?

Thanks for any tips anyone may have, good or bad.

I'm in NH. No worries.

Turn off your water, flush your toilets. Empty your freezer & most of your refrigerator.

Use a Remote Thermostat, with a remote temp sensor for each floor. Set it at 50. Set your Thermostat App to give you a warning if it drops below 45.

Lock your house. Make sure your camera sees your driveway and perhaps the back of your house.

Forward your mail.

Tell your local PD, you'll be gone for the winter.

Have someone you can call, if your inside temp sensors approach 30 degrees.

Stop worrying, nothing to it.

[Stu from NYC]

Makes life to complicated for us. Told wife ok to move but we own one home.

Travel north during the summer.

[tophcfa]

Our biggest and only real concern is freezing pipes. Although our northern home is in a very rural area, we are extremely lucky to have a great neighbor who watches over things for us closely. When at our home we heat with a wood and pellet stove, but when gone we rely on our back up heat, which is oil and forced hot water. We have our oil burner tuned up every fall and leave for Florida with a full 330 gallons of oil in the tank and the heat turned down to 55 degrees. I have a temp stick, which reads our humidity and temperature every hour and sends a notification text to me if the house temperature falls below 50 degrees. If it’s been below zero overnight sometimes that happens with no problems, the heating system just can’t keep up overnight, the temperature recovers during the daylight. One time our oil burner failed (I knew because the house temperature fell below 50 degrees and it was only about 20 degrees outside) and I called our oil burner servive guy and he came and fixed the problem (I showed him where we hid a key to the house). In the mean time, my neighbor fired up the pellet stove and filled the hopper the next day to heat the house until the oil burner was fixed. Another time we lost power for a couple days during an ice storm and my neighbor fired up our generator and flipped the switch’s on our transfer panel to power our oil burner and freezer so we had heat and didn’t lose any food (most falls I manage to fill the freezer with deer meat). Our forced hot water heating system is sealed, so I turn off the breaker to our well when away as insurance just in case we have a water leak. Our house is plumed with pex tubing, which unlike copper, can expand a little bit if frozen so a burst pipe is highly unlikely. Our neighbor uses my tractor to plow out both his and our home and we don’t worry about crime. We don’t have a lot of valuables and what we don’t want stolen is locked in a very secure bolted down safe. Plus, if my neighbor sees a vehicle going up our driveway that he doesn’t recognize, he’ll show up with a shotgun.

[JP]

Just sell your place up north, its not worth the effort and you will sell it eventually. I've played this game now for 10 years and looking back on it I wish I didn't.

[tophcfa]

Originally Posted by JP

Just sell your place up north, its not worth the effort and you will sell it eventually. I've played this game now for 10 years and looking back on it I wish I didn't.

Can you tell that to my wife, she doesn’t seem to get it when she hears it from me?

[Stu from NYC]

Originally Posted by tophcfa

Can you tell that to my wife, she doesn’t seem to get it when she hears it from me?

Remind her who is king of your castle.

[asianthree]

Have the lake house, and our regular home up north. Lake house simple to shut down, have been doing it for generations.

We will put our 5 bed 4 bath for sale in couple years. Until then, have smart thermostats, cameras, locks, garage door. We also live in an extremely safe neighborhood, with neighbors that text us even if our daughter, or grandchildren stop at the house. So we really have no worries.

We have a home watch in TV, along with smart everything as up north. After the hot as hell summer in TV, so glad we have multiple homes to escape next summer

Multiple homes is a different lifestyle, some have issues just handling one home, for us multiple homes, just uneventful daily life.

[MX rider]

Originally Posted by tophcfa

Can you tell that to my wife, she doesn’t seem to get it when she hears it from me?

We're in the same boat as you. We both just retired, 67 and 66. This will be our first snowbird winter. We kept our home in SW Indiana because my wife isn't ready to leave the grandkids. They're 7 and 9. She wants to wait a few years.

We did plan for this but It's not a longterm plan. I would sell our home here tomorrow if it was only up to me.
Fortunately she knows we can't do this for too long and is already talking about when we should sell. So for now we'll enjoy the best of both places.

[VTrunner]

Thanks for the great tips. I feel much better now about closing up our current house for the winter and still hope to convince my wife to sell and only have TV house.

[Velvet]

When I leave my northern home, I put all really expensive stuff in a bank safe box. Drain the outside pipes and turn the water off to the house. Put water heater on vac mode. Unplug everything except the security cameras, inside and outside the house, and one fridge. I have a standby generator. The smart thermostat tells me the indoor temperature and I can change it. I have a friend who is also a home property manager check on the house once a week, I pay him. He turns the water on, waters the plants, turns each tap on and flushes the toilets. Then turns the water off again, reads the gas meter (as the gas people have been playing games with me) and emails everything to me. The snow is shoveled by the city as I am a senior and if the grass gets too long before I return, my neighbor cuts it for me. And I have excellent property insurance.

I forgot, I have a master box for keys outside, not very visible, like real estate agents. In an emergency I can get anyone I want to go inside (including me if I can’t find the keys).