1. Turn off main water supply
"If you're going to have a leaking supply line, it's going to happen while you're away," says Fred Spaulding, president of Quality Home Improvements, Inc., in Kingwood, Texas. And a major leak could be catastrophic if there's nobody around to deal with it. In the Houston area, where he lives, for example, hot-water tanks are placed in attics to avoid taking up floor space in living areas. "If that water tank leaks, you'd better catch it quick," he says. "I've seen cabinets in kitchens destroyed. It only takes a little bit of a leak."
Closing the valve on the main supply line cuts off water to the house but still allows outside sprinklers to work. If you do spring a leak inside, the line will be under some initial pressure, but it will not continue to spray water. "Instead of thousands, literally thousands, of gallons of water, you might have 50 gallons from the hot-water tank leak," Spaulding says. "There is no downside whatsoever [to turning off the water]. It takes a little bit of time, and it can save thousands of dollars in potential damage."
2. Turn up the thermostat
If you have a programmable thermostat, Spaulding says, you're golden. "You can set and hold the temperature to have the house at 85 degrees while you're gone [in the summer], then the day before you get back, get it down to 72," he explains. If you have a manual thermostat, it's still worth turning it up while you're gone to avoid wasting energy. You'll just have to deal with a hot house when you get back.
But don't turn off the air conditioner or furnace during your vacation. "You want to keep the air circulating so it doesn't have time to condensate," Spaulding says—it keeps the house from turning into an oven, which can impact wood doors, cabinets and flooring. O'Grady agrees, saying it's important to keep the temperature from climbing too high. "You can have tremendous heat buildup, which can have an effect on surfaces like wood floors," he says. Since wood expands when it's warm, excessive heat could cause the flooring to expand and buckle, and doors to not close properly.
The same goes for winter travelers, but in reverse. Turn down the thermostat while you're at Aunt Betty's for the holidays, but don't turn off the furnace completely, which could put your pipes in danger of freezing.
3. Keep flowers alive with soaker hose
If you'll be gone for several days and don't have an in-ground sprinkler system (or a neighbor kid who can water your garden), use a soaker hose to keep the flowers or veggies watered. You can to set up your hoses on a timer to turn them on and off at preset times.
4. Unplug outlets
If any of your televisions, computers, stereos, and other electronics are plugged directly into the wall rather than into a surge protector, pull the plugs in case a power surge happens while you're away. If you do have them all run through surge protects, O'Grady says, you can simply flip the switch to power them off.
Plus, unplugging electronics or turning off the surge protector can save you some coin. "All of these electronics are drawing power," O'Grady says, even when they're not in use. And that vampire voltage adds up. The Department of Energy estimates that the average U.S. family spends $100 annually to power devices that are turned off or in standby mode.
5. Light rooms with timers
To make your house appear occupied while you're gone and a less appealing target for burglars, O'Grady says to put timers on lights in different rooms of the home. The timers turn on and off the lights at different times of the night, as if someone in the house were flipping a switch. Timers are available at home centers for less than $10 a piece. "You want to leave the house looking like it's lived in," O'Grady says.
