Winter Home Maintenance Checklist for Spokane-Area Homes

In short: winter maintenance in the Spokane area is mostly about watching three things: heat, water, and the weight on your roof. Keep the furnace breathing, keep pipes from freezing, and keep an eye on ice at the roof edge. Everything else on this list exists to protect those three.

The fall push gets all the attention, and it should. Winterization is the single highest-value maintenance window of the year for an Inland Northwest home. But the house doesn’t stop needing you in December. Cold snaps, freeze-thaw swings, and two feet of snow on the roof all do their work between Christmas and March. Here’s what we watch on member homes through the cold months.

Check the furnace filter monthly, not seasonally

A furnace that runs hard from November to March moves a winter’s worth of air through one filter. Wood stove use, closed-up rooms, and dry dusty air load it faster than the summer months do. A plugged filter makes the furnace run longer to move less heat, and the strain shows up on your power bill before it shows up as a breakdown. Pull it monthly, hold it up to a light, and swap it when you can’t see through it. If you’re on our preventative maintenance route, we’ve already left you spares sized to your unit.

Watch the roof edge for ice dams

Icicles look festive and tell an ugly story. A row of thick icicles at the eave usually means heat is escaping into the attic, melting the underside of the snowpack, and refreezing at the cold edge. That refrozen ridge backs meltwater up under the shingles, and that’s how ceilings stain in February. After each decent snowfall, walk the outside and look for uneven melt lines and heavy ice at the gutters. Gutters that went into winter full of pine needles make it worse, which is why gutter cleaning after leaf drop is on our fall list.

Protect the pipes that run cold

Most frozen pipes in this area are in crawlspaces, garages, and exterior walls on the north side. Before a forecast cold snap, open the cabinet doors under sinks on exterior walls, let a pencil-width stream run overnight on the most exposed line, and make sure crawlspace vents are closed and skirting is tight. If you have a tankless water heater, know where its freeze protection stands; a power outage during a cold snap is the scenario that cracks them. Our plumbing and water heater visits cover all of this in one pass.

Test what keeps you safe

Wood stove season is carbon monoxide season. Test smoke and CO detectors when the stove starts running daily, and replace any detector past its printed date. Check that the dryer vent flap outside isn’t frozen open or blocked by drifted snow; a blocked dryer vent is a fire risk that gets worse in exactly the months you use the dryer most.

Don’t let the quiet season go to waste

Winter is when we do our best interior work: the repairs, refinishing, and home safety upgrades that wait all summer while the outdoor list runs. It’s also when travel season peaks, and an empty house in a cold snap is the riskiest combination there is. If you’ll be gone more than a few days, have someone walk the house, or put it on our property check-in route.

The member version of this list

Summit Care members don’t keep this list; we keep it for them, and the winter visit lands before the coldest stretch, not after it. Home Care members get the reminders timed to the forecast, priority scheduling when something does freeze or leak, and a member discount on repairs and seasonal packages. The full comparison is on the plans page.

Questions homeowners ask

How much snow on a roof is too much?

Most roofs in Spokane County are built for the snow loads our winters deliver, and a typical snowfall isn’t a concern. The time to pay attention is heavy wet snow stacking past a couple of feet, drifting deep on one section, or doors inside the house starting to stick, which can signal structural strain. When in doubt, ask us to look.

Should I knock icicles off my gutters?

No. Pulling ice off frozen gutters tears fasteners and shingle edges, and standing under the eave to do it is the real hazard. Icicles are a symptom, not the problem. The fix is attic insulation and air sealing, plus clean gutters going into winter. Treat the cause in the off-season and the icicles stop forming.

What temperature should I keep an empty house at?

Keep it no lower than the mid-50s, and leave interior doors and under-sink cabinets open so warm air reaches the plumbing. Shutting the water off at the main and draining the lines is better still for a longer absence. A house that sits empty through a cold snap should have someone checking it every few days.

When does the furnace need a professional look?

Once a year is the right rhythm, ideally before the heavy season. Between visits, call someone if you notice short cycling, a burning smell that doesn’t clear in a few minutes, or rooms that used to heat evenly and don’t anymore. Those are early symptoms, and early is when they’re cheap.

If your winter list is the kind of thing you’d rather hand to somebody, start with a walkthrough. We’ll tell you what your home actually needs this season, and you decide from there.