The preparations on our house are just about done.
I try to make sure that both of us are ready for Winter around Thanksgiving plus 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 cut down in the middle of Winter would be catastrophic! I am not interested in dealing with either of those scenarios so, I spend the Summer plus 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 plus an emergency heating method. I spend a fair amount of time in the Summer rounding up firewood. The prep for the HVAC component is the domain of the HVAC professionals. An HVAC worker comes out to do heating repair about midway through the fall. This ensures that the gas furnace is running at top efficiency while also making sure both of us are not going to have a mid Winter HVAC cut down. But I also make sure that the house is ready to hold in the heat plus keep the freezing air out. That means changing storm doors, replacing weather stripping plus 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 a/c machine outside. It seemed to make good sense just to keep the weight of all the snow plus ice off the component in that HVAC cabinet.