Out of the four different seasons, winter is the most important to prepare for. The problems your property and tenants can experience in winter can be devastating and impossible to fix quickly (weather dependent).
If your rental property is in a location that experiences cold temperatures, ice, and snow in the winter – this blog post was created with you in mind.
When preparing your rental property for winter, there are a few goals you’re trying to achieve:
- No major water leaks.
- No loss of heating systems
- Reduce the risk of personal injury
Achieving the three things above should help you and your tenant avoid the majority of stressful situations in the winter. So, let’s dive into achieving the three goals above.
Table of Contents
Prevent major water leaks
Winter, in a location that snows, comes with many days of freezing temperatures (< 32 degrees Fahrenheit). Extreme cold weather can cause water leaks in places you don’t want them.
So our job as landlords is to make as many preparations as we can to prevent frozen pipes and major water leaks.
Start with outdoor water spigots
The first place I “prepare” when getting my properties ready for winter is the outdoor water spigots. If left in the same condition as they were in the summer, the risk of the water inside of the water spigots freezing and causing a leak is higher than if we winterize them.
Thankfully, winterizing the outdoor water spigots is usually easy but could be difficult if you don’t have shut-off valves for each water spigot.
How to winterize your outdoor water spigots
To winterize your outdoor water spigots you need to go inside the property and close the shut-off valve for that specific spigot. Ideally, this shut-off valve would have a bleeder-vale that you’d open/turn and it would drain the outdoor water spigot. However, if your shut-off valve doesn’t have a bleeder valve, go outside and open/turn on your water spigot.
Doing this will drain some water stuck between the shut-off valve and spigot, and will also give any small amount of water stuck in the line a path for expansion should it freeze.
If you’d like to avoid having to drain your outdoor water spigot yearly, you can opt to purchase and install a “frost-free” outdoor spigot.
The “frost-free” outdoor spigots work by having an attached pipe that extends further into the house to hook up to your plumbing. Every time you turn the spigot off, it shuts off the water near the end of the attached pipe (which should be inside your house and warm) and allows the water stuck between the end of the pipe and the outside spigot to drain out.
Check your attic next
After handling the outdoor water spigots, I’d recommend checking the attic. The majority of rental properties I’ve seen in America have a “vented” attic.
This basically means that there are vents in the soffits that bring in fresh air and vents on the roof that remove air from the attic. The main purpose of this system is to prevent excess moisture (humidity) and help control the temperature of the roof.
To keep things simple, when you have snow and ice on your roof, you’re going to want it to stay there as-is or completely melt. You don’t want the top of your roof melting and then re-freezing as the water travels over the unmelted snow/ice.
This can lead to ice “growing backward” up into the shingles; leading to penetrations in the roofing system and inevitably leaks (aka ice dams).
To get an idea if you may have a problem with this, go in the attic and check for these two things:
- Adequate insulation (this depends on your location but more is usually better)
- Adequate airflow
Having adequate insulation will help slow the heat transfer between your living space and the attic. While having adequate airflow will allow the heat that does escape into the attic to be constantly “chilled” by the cold air being brought into the attic – thus keeping the attic dry and cold.
As long as the attic is dry and cold, the snow/ice on the roof won’t melt without the sun or higher outdoor temperatures (which would affect the entire roof).
If you don’t have access to your attic, you won’t be able to predict if the attic is going to potentially cause issues. However, here’s another (albeit retroactive) way to determine if you might have issues:
After snow has accumulated on your roof and a day or two of warmer days and cold nights have gone by, take a look and see if you have any icicles hanging or big pieces of ice on your roof (typically towards the lower portion of the roof).
A few small ones are no big deal and could easily be caused by melting snow hitting a cold gutter (especially if you have a ‘helmet-like’ leaf guard system). However, if you see large icicles or big pieces of ice on your roof (ice dam) – you should consider your risk for potential issues higher.
Winterize your attic?
While I wouldn’t call this “winterizing” your attic, there are things you can do to reduce the risk of leaks in your attic for winter:
- Add as much insulation as possible until you reach the desired R-value for your area. (reduce the speed of heat transferring into the attic)
- Air seal your attic. This is a ton of work and expensive but works extremely well if done correctly. (reduce the speed of heat and moisture transferring into the attic)
- Improve attic ventilation. (removes excess moisture and regulates the temperature of the roof)
- Purchase a roof rake and keep as much snow off the lower portions of your roof (Removes excess snow that would melt and contribute to ice build-up)
- Install a metal roof when your current roof is ready for replacement. (Less likely to have ice-related leaks even if the snow is melting and ice damming occurs)
Prevent the loss of your heating systems
Losing your HVAC system in the winter is an awful experience. Not only is it inconvenient because it’s time-sensitive (no heat = increased risk for water leaks if the temperature drops too low) but, if the weather is bad or there’s a storm – you may not even be able to get anyone out to fix it.
Start with changing the furnace filter
Some landlords put this responsibility on the tenants but, while it’s probably fine if you have a responsible tenant – if you don’t have a responsible tenant – this can cost you additional time and money that could have been prevented.
So I’d recommend changing the furnace filter yourself on a regular schedule.
Purchase spare parts for your furnace
If your furnace is brand new, you can skip this step if you’d like. While it’s not like the spare parts you purchase will go bad; if you have higher priorities elsewhere, like saving money, you should be fine skipping this step.
If you don’t have a brand-new furnace, you should absolutely purchase spare parts for your furnace. The benefit of purchasing spare parts is that when something does go wrong with your furnace, you avoid the potential problem of having to wait for parts if they’re not available (and save time).
The last thing you want to do is hire someone to come figure out what’s wrong and they tell you that you’re going to have to wait a few days because of supply-chain issues, weather, or anything else.
Ideally, you’d call them to come to diagnose, and then they’d be able to fix it immediately after since you have the part.
In my experience as a landlord, most heating systems in winter climates in America operate off of a natural gas, forced-air furnace. So, I’ll be tailoring my spare part recommendations based on that.
However, if you have an electric furnace, baseboard heating, a boiler, or any other type of heater – you should be able to Google the model number of your heating system and find a lot of information surrounding how it works and parts that tend to go bad frequently.
Purchase a spare flame sensor
One spare part you should purchase for your gas furnace and have on hand is a flame sensor. Flame sensors are typically cheap to purchase and can sometimes be cleaned/sanded if they’re not working correctly – which could fix the problem. I purchased spare flame sensors for my furnaces for less than $15-$20 each.
The flame sensor waits and monitors to see if flames are being produced by your furnace. If so, it tells the furnace to move on to the next step (I believe it then tells the furnace to turn on the blower motor).
If your flame sensor is bad, your furnace may be able to make heat but, the furnace will shut down because the flame sensor is telling the circuit board (the brains of the furnace) that something is wrong.
Purchase a spare ignitor
Another spare part you should purchase for your gas furnace is an ignitor. Similar to the flame sensor, the ignitor is a cheap part to purchase and worth having on hand just in case. The spare ignitors I purchased were about $20-25 each.
The ignitor heats up and stays hot for long enough to allow to your gas valve to open (releasing gas) and ignite the gas (creating the flames your furnace uses to heat the home). If your ignitor is bad, you won’t have heat because there won’t be any flames.
While not the safest option and I don’t recommend it, if your ignitor is bad – it’s possible to light the gas being released by the gas valve using a grill lighter. The downside to this method is that it’s a much higher risk than just swapping the ignitor. You’ll also have to use the grill lighter to light the furnace every time the furnace turns off and tries to turn back on again.
Purchase a spare gas valve
When talking to a few HVAC guys, they’ve mainly said that gas valves don’t typically stop working because they’re so simple. And while I don’t disagree that they’re simple and should last a long time, I’ve had 2 go out on me and now I try to keep a spare on hand – just in case.
Gas valves aren’t expensive but I wouldn’t call them cheap either. I purchased my spare gas valves for about $60-80 each.
The gas valve basically opens and closes to send gas to your furnace (to be ignited) so that you can have heat. Although the gas valve is extremely simple, when they’re starting to go bad they may only work intermittently. In other words, “it works when it wants to work”. So, if the gas valve doesn’t work, you won’t have heat.
You can purchase more if needed
The parts listed above are my necessities when preparing my properties for winter. However, the more you learn about your heating system – the better you’ll be able to determine if you need to keep additional items on hand.
For example, the inducer motor (which helps exhaust fumes and carbon monoxide) on one of my furnaces would occasionally make a grinding noise when running.
Rather than wait until it goes out, I purchased a spare inducer motor in the spring for about $80 and replaced it when I had time in the fall. This allowed me to enter winter with little worries that I’d have problems with the inducer motor.
Perform a winter ‘tune-up’
I’ve had a lot of bad experiences with HVAC companies performing “tune-ups” but, before I knew how to do my own, I liked them because they were able to check a couple of areas that I didn’t have the skills to check on my own.
So, if you’re getting a furnace tune-up, I’d recommend you make sure they’re at least checking these two areas:
Gas pressure
Every furnace and gas valve has recommended gas pressure settings for optimal combustion. It’s always a good idea to make sure your gas pressure is set correctly to avoid causing premature death to your furnace’s heat exchanger (this holds the heat that then blows through your vents).
Heat exchanger
For a lot of furnaces, this is difficult to check directly but an experienced HVAC person may be able to put a camera in your furnace to try to look for cracks in the heat exchanger.
It’s not a perfect way to verify that your heat exchanger is perfectly fine but it’s better than nothing. There are also signs they can look for, such as the flame going into the heat exchanger behaving differently than expected.
Reduce the risk of personal injury
I always want to reduce the risk of someone getting hurt on my property. However, this desire increases as we approach winter due to the cold, snow, and ice.
Here are some of my personal recommendations for reducing the risk of your tenants (or yourself) getting injured:
- Make sure all railings are secured and in great shape. This will help prevent falls as people enter/exit the building
- Install driveway markers so that anyone in the driveway can stay in the correct area when everything is covered in snow.
- Remind your tenants of their responsibilities for winter If your tenants are responsible for clearing snow and putting down salt. With that said, don’t be offensive or rude about it. Have a normal, genuine conversation to make sure that they remember and have what they need.
Additional Thoughts
There’s always additional stuff you can do to prepare your property for winter. However, I think your top priorities should always start with preventing major water leaks, loss of your heating systems, and reducing the risk of personal injury.
If you can prevent those things during winter, anything else that pops up should be as normal as any other season.
