A neighbor who picks up the mail is doing you a favor, and it is enough for a long weekend. It is not enough for a month. A neighbor picks up the envelopes, looks at the front door, and goes home. Nobody reads the thermostat, nobody looks under the sinks, and nobody notices that the air handler has been silent since Tuesday.
A house in Wesley Chapel, FL that sits empty for a few weeks in summer still has to run without anyone in it. The A/C pulls water out of the air, the pool pump cycles, the water heater holds pressure, and the fridge holds temperature. When one of those stops, the damage starts, and finding out in 3 days costs a service call while finding out in 3 months costs drywall.
This is the checklist we run on every home watch visit, in the order we run it, and what the report you get the same day looks like.
The exterior walk
We start outside, before we open the door, because the outside tells you what to expect inside.
- Roof line and gutters from the ground, looking for lifted shingles, a hanging gutter or a downspout that has come loose
- Soffits and the garage door, which is the biggest opening on the house and the one the wind tests first
- Standing water against the foundation, hose bibs dripping, sprinkler heads stuck on
- Anything that shows from the street that the house is empty: flyers wedged in the door, packages on the porch, a lawn that has not been cut
- Screens, exterior lights, and any sign that someone has tried a door or a window
Doors and windows
Every exterior door gets pushed and every lock gets checked, including the door between the garage and the house, which is the one a contractor leaves unlocked. Sliders get latched. Windows get checked from the inside, because a window that looks closed from the yard can be unlatched behind a blind.
The A/C, the thermostat and the humidity reading
This is the most important part of a Florida home watch visit, and it is the part a neighbor does not do.
- Is it running. We listen for the air handler and feel for air at a register.
- Thermostat photo. The set point and the actual temperature go in the report every visit, so you can see them drift before anything fails.
- Humidity reading. We carry a small hygrometer and record the indoor humidity. Under 60 percent is the number that keeps mold from starting, and closer to 50 is better.
- Drain line and pan. A clogged condensate drain line is a common reason a Florida A/C quits in summer. If your system has a float switch, a backed-up line shuts the whole system down to protect the ceiling, and the humidity starts climbing that afternoon. We check the pan for standing water and the line for a backup.
- Filter. We look at it and tell you when it needs changing.
Water intrusion, smell and pests
We walk every room with the lights on. Ceilings and the tops of walls for stains, window sills and slider tracks after a storm, under every sink, around the base of every toilet, and the laundry room, where a washing machine hose can fail with nobody in the house to hear it.
We smell the air the moment the front door opens. A musty smell in a closed house means the humidity has been up or water has gotten in, and it will not go away on its own.
Pests get their own look: droppings along baseboards, ant trails in the kitchen, wasp nests forming in the corners of the lanai, anything living in the garage. A small pest problem is cheap to treat, and a month of it is not.
Water heater, main valve and the electrical panel
- Water heater. We look at the pan under it for moisture or rust and at the fittings on top.
- Main valve. If you shut the water off before you left, we confirm it is still off. If you left it on, we check for drips at the main and listen for water running when nothing should be running.
- Panel. We open the electrical panel and look for a tripped breaker. A tripped breaker on the A/C, the fridge or the pool pump is the most useful thing to find early.
Running the water
Every faucet gets run, every toilet gets flushed, and the disposal runs for a few seconds. This keeps the traps full so sewer gas does not come up into the house, keeps seals from drying out, and moves water through lines that would otherwise sit for weeks.
Lanai and pool cage
Screens intact, cage doors latched, furniture where you left it, and no debris piled in the corners. If a pool company services the pool, the water level and the skimmer basket show whether they have been coming. If the water is low or green, you hear about it that day, not when you get home.
Mail and packages
We bring in whatever the mail hold missed, take packages off the porch and into the house, pull the flyers out of the door and toss the free newspapers. A stack of boxes on the porch is the clearest sign that a house is empty.
The same-day photo report
After every visit you get a short message the same day. It has the date and time we were there, a photo of the thermostat showing temperature and humidity, and a line for each area above. Most lines say nothing to report. When something is off, there is a photo of it: the stain, the tripped breaker, the water in the pan, the screen panel that let go.
If something is wrong, we do not just write it down. We call you. You decide what happens next, and we do not bring in a repair person without your say-so. If you would like someone at the house to let a repair person in, ask us and we will work it out.
What it costs
- $45 per visit for a one-off check, before a trip or after a storm
- $150 per month for weekly visits
- $85 per month for visits every other week
- Hurricane prep and the post-storm check are included in both monthly plans
Weekly is the plan most people want from June through October, when the A/C is doing its hardest work and the storms are coming through. Every other week suits the cooler, drier months.
What we are not
We look, we report, and we call you. We are not home inspectors, and we do not guarantee the condition of the home. We cannot see inside a wall, and a visit is a record of one afternoon. A schedule of visits shrinks the time between something going wrong and someone knowing about it, and that is most of what protects a house that sits empty.
We are not in Wesley Chapel ourselves. We are just down Bruce B. Downs in New Tampa, and we cover Wesley Chapel and New Tampa. Before the first visit we walk the house with you at a free meet and greet. You show us the main valve, the panel and the thermostat, tell us what number you want to see, and we write it all down once.