Smith County, Texas
November in Smith County
- Test smoke and CO detectors
Detectors are the one system in your house where "it looks fine" means nothing — the sensor inside degrades on its own schedule regardless of how clean the outside is.
- Disconnect garden hoses before the first freeze
Freezes are rare where you are — which is exactly why they cause damage.
Scheduled ahead of Smith County's average first frost (11/14).
- Space heater rules, before the cold snap
A space heater is a 1,500-watt appliance — a full circuit's worth of load — that lives on the floor near fabric and gets moved around by whoever's cold.
Scheduled ahead of Smith County's average first frost (11/14).
- Winter storm readiness
Freezes are rare in Smith County — which makes yours the dangerous kind.
Scheduled ahead of Smith County's average first frost (11/14).
- Clean gutters and check downspout flow
Gutters have one job: get roof water away from your foundation.
- Crawlspace vents — the seasonal switch
Crawlspace vents are one of building science's ongoing arguments, so here's the honest version for a vented crawlspace in a freeze climate: the vents exist to let summer moisture out, and in winter they mostly let freezing air in.
Scheduled ahead of Smith County's average first frost (11/14).
- Crawlspace moisture check
Out of sight is exactly how crawlspace problems get expensive — nobody looks until a floor feels soft.
- Leaves — mow them, don't fight them
Here's the part the bag-every-leaf tradition gets wrong: your lawn doesn't need rescuing from leaves.
- Degrease the range hood filter
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.
- Skip the AC cover (mostly)
Every fall the covers appear at the big-box stores, and every spring the service techs find what they did: coils sweated under vinyl all winter, rust where the moisture sat, and mouse nests in the wiring of the warmest sheltered box in the yard.
Scheduled ahead of Smith County's average first frost (11/14).
- Oven and range clean-and-check (before the holidays)
The range is the appliance most likely to start a fire in your house, and the fuel is almost always accumulated grease — under the burners, in the drip trays, filmed on the oven walls, and soaked into whatever's been living in the drawer underneath.
- Winterize the mower and gas tools
Small engines don't die of work; they die of storage.
Scheduled ahead of Smith County's average first frost (11/14).
The rest of Smith County's year
Not from around here? The national November list casts a wider net.
Close — but it's not your house yet.
This page plans for a typical local house. The app asks twelve questions about yours and rebuilds the year around the answers — your systems, your dates, your prices.
Free to start · the whole year is $24 · no card required