The preparations on our house are just about done. I try to make sure that we are ready for winter around Thanksgiving and I’m just a bit late this year. Around here, it’s either be prepared for winter or suffer the high cost of heating or worse. An HVAC break down in the middle of winter would be catastrophic. I’m not interested in dealing with either of those scenarios so, I spend the summer and fall preparing a bit for the winter. We have a gas furnace which is our primary heating source. However, I also have a wood stove that functions as both a supplemental heat source and an emergency heating method. I spend a fair amount of time in the summer rounding up firewood. The prep for the HVAC equipment is the domain of the HVAC professionals. An HVAC technician comes out to do heating maintenance about midway through the fall. This ensures that the gas furnace is running at top efficiency while also making sure we are not going to have a mid winter HVAC break down. But I also make sure that the house is ready to hold in the heat and keep the cold air out. That means adjusting storm doors, replacing weather stripping and maybe even adding some extra insulation. However the last thing I do is cover of the HVAC cabinet outside. I bought a hard plastic shell that goes over the air conditioning unit outside. It seemed to make good sense just to keep the weight of all the snow and ice off the equipment in that HVAC cabinet.