Texas winters are mostly mild and occasionally catastrophic. That combination is exactly what makes them expensive. A climate that freezes hard three days a year builds houses, habits and expectations for a climate that never freezes at all — and then February arrives.
This is the list that matters here, in the order the calendar actually calls for it. Not a generic northern checklist with the snow shovels swapped out.
October: while it is still pleasant outside
Get the heat tested before you need it
The first genuinely cold night in Texas is the night every HVAC company in the metro is booked. A furnace that has sat idle since March is the one that fails on it. Run yours for twenty minutes now with the windows open. You are listening for anything that is not a fan, and smelling for anything beyond the first-burn dust smell, which should clear in a few minutes and not come back.
If it does not light, or it lights and cuts out, that is a call you want to make in October at a normal rate rather than in January at an emergency one.
Change the filter, and keep changing it
The cheapest maintenance in the house. A choked filter makes the system work harder, costs you efficiency and shortens its life. If you have not looked at it since spring, look at it.
Clear the gutters, then check where the water goes
This is a foundation job disguised as a roof job. In DFW, more than half the soil is expansive clay that swells when wet and shrinks when dry, and concentrated roof runoff at the slab edge is the most fixable cause of the movement that leads to foundation repair.
Clear them, then watch where the downspouts discharge. You want water carried five to ten feet away from the house — and on clay, closer to seven to ten. Extensions are cheap. Piers are not. Details in the gutter guide and the foundation repair cost guide.
Look at the roof from the ground
You do not need to climb it. From the yard, with binoculars if you have them: lifted or missing shingles, granule loss showing as dark patches, anything bent around the flashing. Summer hail leaves damage that does not leak until the first sustained winter rain, and by then you are arguing about causation with an adjuster.
If you suspect storm damage, work out what a claim is actually worth before you call anyone — the wind and hail deductible calculator will show you whether filing is even worth it.
November: the freeze list
This is the section that actually matters in Texas, because this is where the expensive failures come from.
Disconnect every hose
The single highest-value five minutes on this page. A hose left attached traps water in the bib and the pipe behind it. Water expands as it freezes, the pipe splits, and you find out when it thaws and starts running inside a wall. Pull every hose, drain it, coil it. Then fit insulated covers on the bibs — a few dollars each.
Find your main shutoff now, in daylight
Not during the emergency. Find it, make sure it turns, and make sure everyone in the house knows where it is. If it is seized, get it replaced before winter — a valve that will not close is not a shutoff.
Insulate what runs through unconditioned space
Attic, garage, crawl space, exterior walls. Foam sleeves are inexpensive and go on in an afternoon. In Texas the plumbing that fails is almost always the plumbing nobody thought was exposed.
Our full walkthrough is in how to winterize outdoor pipes and faucets.
Know what to do when the hard freeze is forecast
- Open cabinet doors under sinks on exterior walls so household heat reaches the pipes.
- Drip a pencil-width stream from the fixture furthest from where the water comes in. Moving water is much harder to freeze.
- Leave the heat on if you travel — 55 degrees minimum, not off.
- If the power goes out and stays out in freezing weather, shut the water off at the main and drain the system. That is the difference between an inconvenience and a flood.
December and January: the quiet wins
Reverse the ceiling fans
Clockwise, on low. It pushes the warm air that has collected at the ceiling back down the walls. Free, takes a minute per fan, and genuinely noticeable in a room with a high ceiling.
Seal the draughts you can feel
Weatherstripping on doors, caulk around window trim, foam gaskets behind outlet plates on exterior walls. Cheap, unglamorous, and it does more for comfort than most upgrades that cost a hundred times as much.
If the real problem is the windows themselves, the honest answer is in the window replacement cost guide — including the fact that the federal tax credit expired at the end of 2025, so any quote still showing it is understating your price.
Test the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms
Heating season is carbon monoxide season. If you have gas appliances, you want a working CO alarm outside the sleeping areas. Batteries in both, and check the manufacture date on the unit — detectors expire, typically at seven to ten years, and an expired one is decoration.
The one-page version
- October: test the heat, change the filter, clear the gutters, check the downspout discharge, look at the roof from the ground.
- November: hoses off and bibs covered, main shutoff located and working, exposed pipe insulated.
- Before a freeze: cabinets open, one faucet dripping, heat left on, and know how to drain the system if the power fails.
- Winter: fans reversed, draughts sealed, alarms tested and in date.
Almost none of this is expensive. The most valuable item on the list — taking the hoses off — costs nothing and prevents one of the most common and most destructive claims in the state.
If something on the list turns up a problem rather than a chore, the repair or replace tool and our Texas cost guides will tell you roughly what you are looking at before you call anyone.
Free: the Texas contractor bid checklist and hail worksheet
One page, fourteen questions. It is what I run every Texas contractor bid against before signing — licence and insurance, line items, change-order terms, the lien waiver — plus a hail-claim worksheet for your own deductible. Free, no catch.
