7 Things You MUST Do Before The First Freeze Hits Your House (Do #7 TONIGHT!)

There's a night every fall, usually in October, when the forecast says twenty-eight degrees and you don't think anything of it. You go to bed. And somewhere around four in the morning, in a pipe you've never seen, the water stops moving and starts to swell. Water grows about nine percent when it freezes, and copper doesn't grow at all. Nothing happens yet. It's the next afternoon, when the ice lets go, that a crack an eighth of an inch wide starts putting out two hundred and fifty gallons a day into your ceiling. In this video, Ray walks you through 7 things you must do before the first freeze hits your house, in the order that matters. Number seven you can do tonight, before bed, and it's the one that saves the ceiling. Number one is the one that decides whether you spend this winter at home or in a rehab bed. In this video: ✓ The twenty-minute job with the hoses, the spigots and the sprinkler line that fails first every year ✓ Finding the main shut-off, turning it tonight, and the tag that saves the floor ✓ The furnace test while it's still warm, the filter, the outside pipes and the alarm batteries ✓ Which pipes freeze, the two-dollar foam sleeves, the garage rule and the 20-degree drip ✓ Why the thermostat never goes below 55 when the house is empty ✓ The dollar-bill test, door sweeps, window film and the attic hatch nobody seals ✓ Gutters, downspouts, ice dams, and how to tell if the attic has enough insulation ✓ The three-foot rule for space heaters, the chimney, and the dryer pipe behind the dryer ✓ Salt and sand bought this week, the loose handrail, the light over the steps, and the boots by the door ✓ Two warnings about ladders and frozen pipes that keep people out of the emergency room It's a Saturday, a ladder, and maybe sixty dollars in parts. The guidance follows IBHS, the Insurance Information Institute, the Department of Energy, NFPA, CDC and Ready.gov recommendations, so you can trust the numbers when it counts. Whether you live alone, look after an older parent, or just want the house ready before the first hard frost, these 7 steps are worth doing before the night you need them. Watch until the end for the one-minute recap of the whole list in the order you'd do it. Tell me in the comments: What county are you in, how old is the house, and what froze last winter, a pipe, a spigot or the sprinkler line?