February in Middlesex County

Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that seeps up from the soil into homes — you can't see it or smell it, and the only house that has a radon problem is one that's been tested and confirmed.

Middlesex County is an EPA Zone 1 radon county — the highest band.

Your heat comes from burning fuel, which means your house makes carbon monoxide on purpose all winter and exhausts it on purpose — until something interferes: a cracked heat exchanger, a blocked flue, a backdrafting water heater sharing the chimney.

Every water disaster starts as a drip you couldn't see: the washing machine hose weeping behind the machine, the water heater rusting through at the base, the supply line sweating inside a vanity.

Everything in a modern house has a circuit board in it now — the furnace, the water heater if it's fancy, every appliance with a display.

Someday — a burst washing machine hose, a split supply line, a frozen pipe letting go — water is going to be spraying inside your house, and every minute it runs costs you real money.

Nobody goes in their attic, which is exactly why problems live there rent-free for years.

The plumbing you can see fails loudly — a burst pipe announces itself.

Almost every slow bathroom drain is hair and soap scum in the first six inches, and almost every kitchen clog is grease that got poured warm and set cold.

That metal mesh over your stove has one job: grab airborne grease before it gets into the fan, the duct, or back into your kitchen air.

Attic insulation is measured in R-value, but you don't need a meter — you need a ruler, because depth is a good-enough proxy: loose blown insulation runs roughly R-2.5 to R-3.7 per inch.

Front-loaders seal watertight, which means they also seal humid — and the fold of that big rubber door gasket holds a spoonful of water, lint, and detergent residue after every load.

The garbage disposal is the most misunderstood machine in the kitchen.