Preparing a House for Deployments / Trips

[Banquet Beer]

Dudes,

I'm about to buy my first house and I was curious what y'all do to prepare your house for both long deployments and 3-6 week trips and TDYs? I'm expecting about 250+ days gone in the next year...

I'm single and was just wondering if y'all have a checklist of things to do/shut off/hire people for, since no one will be there to take care of the day to day stuff?

Googled a bunch of stuff but it was just random things here and there. I'm looking for more of an all/mostly encompassing checklist.

Thanks,

Banquet

[FUSEPLUG]

1) Stop the mail if you'll be gone for more than a week or two. Bring a set of orders to the post office if it's over 30 days.

2) If you don't have a security system, get one! I learned that the hard way.

3) Set a timer on a lamp somewhere in the house.

4) Unplug everything else.

5) Close all the blinds

6) Set the thermostat appropriately.

6) Hire a lawncare guy to come every couple weeks if it's summertime.

7) Have someone swing by every week or so to start the car (if it's there) and check or busted pipes, and pull the religious flyers off of your front porch.

8) Get a safe, or hide your valuable stuff someplace your common thief wouldn't think to look.

9) Get as many of your bills as possible set up for online payments. Bring checks and mailing addresses for the rest of them.

This has all worked pretty well for me during 2 deployments and many many TDY's.

Edited January 12, 2011 by FUSEPLUG

[nrodgsxr]

Just rent out a room from one of your bros that bought and put your shit in storage.. Bank that BAH until you will be home enough to enjoy your house or have a family to live in it.

[stract]

1) Stop the mail if you'll be gone for more than a week or two. Bring a set of orders to the post office if it's over 30 days.

2) If you don't have a security system, get one! I learned that the hard way.

3) Set a timer on a lamp somewhere in the house.

4) Unplug everything else.

5) Close all the blinds

6) Set the thermostat appropriately.

6) Hire a lawncare guy to come every couple weeks if it's summertime.

7) Have someone swing by every week or so to start the car (if it's there) and check or busted pipes, and pull the religious flyers off of your front porch.

8) Get a safe, or hide your valuable stuff someplace your common thief wouldn't think to look.

9) Get as many of your bills as possible set up for online payments. Bring checks and mailing addresses for the rest of them.

This has all worked pretty well for me during 2 deployments and many many TDY's.

1. The neighbors who were watching my house/cats got my mail, so that worked out for me

2. I know all my neighbors and they do a good job of looking out for suspicious activity

3. YES, in at least two different areas (say, front room and bedroom, with timers set for appropriate times)

4. Agreed, no reason to pay more on your utility bill for something you aren't using. Don't forget to turn off your hot water heater!

5. Sure

6. As long as you don't have other living things (pets, plants, etc), I would only set it to heat at a low temp (like 62º) to save your pipes if you live in an area that might freeze in the winter.

7. Or a neighbor.

8. Have them drive it to an errand once a month - at least in my car care manual it says a 30 min drive.

9. Good idea.

10. Also a good idea.

[Hammer]

I have heard of some local PDs having programs where you tell them you will be gone and they put it on an officers route every week or so just to look and make sure things are going alright. Anyone heard of this before?

That's what Kevin's family thought they were getting...

and we all remember how that turned out.

[HuggyU2]

Turn off the water to your washing machine.

Reduce water heater temp.

[AZwildcat]

Or be like a certain PIT pad owner and install remote cameras in your house you can view from the internet. This idea combines well with renting rooms out to females.

[Sim]

1) Stop the mail if you'll be gone for more than a week or two. Bring a set of orders to the post office if it's over 30 days.

So when I re-start my mail, I'm going to get a couple metric-tons of spam?

[FUSEPLUG]

So when I re-start my mail, I'm going to get a couple metric-tons of spam?

Upon return, I go to the post office where they hand me a large plastic container full of crap, 5% of which is of any importance.

[Skitzo]

The wife heads out of town everytime I deploy. The laundry list is:

Set AC/Heat as appropriate

Turn off hot water heater

Unplug all major appliances

Hire someone to pickup mail/mow the lawn/start the car/board up the house for hurricanes.

[M2]

GREAT story for those bound to Norther Tier bases -

DO NOT TURN DOWN YOUR THERMOSTAT BELOW 55-60'ish degrees... it happens every year in Alaska and every year pipes burst when the ambient temp drops in the house...

FWIW.

Chuck

Great advice that only fails when the power goes out in your house for an extended period of time during a hard freeze. Happened to us in Germany and we not only had numerous pipes explode but the entire heating system was TU'd when we returned. Landlord tried to blame us stating we turned the heat off, but his father (who installed the system) said it has a fail safe that prevented that from happening. He also lived in the same village (the landlord had moved away) and knew about the extended power outage. Landlord had to make extensive repairs on his own pfennig...