About HouseByMonth
HouseByMonth is a free home maintenance calendar for U.S. homeowners. You enter your ZIP code and what your home has, and it gives you a month-by-month plan that fits your climate.
Why it exists
Most home maintenance checklists are written once for the whole country, with the same "October" or "fall" for everyone. But fall in Minneapolis means freezing nights in September, while in Miami pipes almost never freeze at all. The tasks are right; the timing often isn't.
The timing depends mostly on climate: when your first hard freeze usually arrives, when you start running the heat, and when the air conditioning season begins. HouseByMonth uses the climate zones from the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), the model energy code most states adopt, to move each task to the month that makes sense where you live.
Where the information comes from
- Climate zones: the 2021 county climate zones published by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy, matched to ZIP codes with the 2020 Census relationship files. See how climate zones work.
- Maintenance guidance: U.S. agencies and public institutions where they publish guidance, such as the U.S. Fire Administration, ENERGY STAR, the Department of Energy, the EPA and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, plus university extension services and equipment manufacturers. Every guide lists the sources it relies on.
- Timing by month: the months in the calendar are our own rules, built from those sources and the typical heating, cooling and freeze seasons of each zone. They're a sensible default, not a law of nature. If an early cold snap is forecast, act earlier.
How pages are written and checked
Pages are researched against the official sources listed at the bottom of each guide. We use software tools, including AI writing assistants, to help research and draft, and every page is checked against its sources before it's published. Guides show the date they were last reviewed, and we update them when guidance changes.
We don't sell products or services, and no company pays to be mentioned. If the site shows ads, they're clearly separate from the content and never change what a guide recommends.
Who runs it
HouseByMonth is an independent project created and run by Pau Cozar Navas, a telecommunications engineering student based in Spain who also runs the programming blog Easy Code Blog. It isn't affiliated with any government agency, manufacturer or contractor.
Found a mistake, or a task that's in the wrong month for your area? Please get in touch. Corrections from people who live in each climate make the calendar better for everyone.