January in Washington County

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.

An extinguisher is the one tool in your house where "it's probably fine" isn't a plan — you find out whether it works at the exact moment it's too late to fix.

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.

Electricity that's flowing right doesn't make heat where you touch.

This card is only for houses with a radon mitigation system already installed — the white PVC pipe running from the slab up through the roof (or up an exterior wall), with a fan unit in the attic or outside.

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.

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.

First, the honest gate: no hot tub, no task — skip this card and enjoy your quarter.

Grout is rigid and belongs on the flat planes of tile.

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.

Every bit of air your system heats or cools passes through one filter.

Older dishwashers had hard food grinders.