More of this town hides than you would think. Drive some Bonita Springs streets in late May and the shutters are half-deployed, the cars are gone, and a thousand houses are settling in for a hot, humid summer without anyone home. Closing a house for the wet season and opening it for the dry one is a skill, and the people who do it well follow the same list. Here is both halves of it.
Closing for summer: the humidity math
The single decision that decides most of the summer is the air-conditioning setpoint on an empty house. Southwest Florida’s summer air is full of water, and an interior that is allowed to run hot and humid grows mold in closets, on furniture, and inside walls that look fine from the hallway. The common local approach keeps the house cooler and drier than an off-the-shelf vacation setting would, with a dehumidifier or the AC itself holding interior moisture down while nobody is there. Check with your own contractor on what your system can hold and how the humidifier will perform on its own — but do not treat “the AC can be entirely off” as an option in this climate. The CDC’s mold cleanup guidance is the reference document for what mold needs to establish itself and how hard it is to remove once it does; the whole game is denying it the moisture early.
With moisture managed, the rest of the shutdown list is about utilities and small failures nobody is around to notice:
- Water off at the main, water heater off or in vacation mode, and the appliances drained or emptied — the icemaker line and washing machine hoses are classic leak sources.
- Drains protected: run a little water in every trap first, then cap or cover the little-used ones so the water that seals the trap does not evaporate over months.
- Perishables out of the pantry, the fridge cleaned and propped open, boxes and paper goods out of closets where paper and glue feed mildew.
- Screens on the lanai in their hardware, furniture secured, outdoor cushions stored inside (not in a wet lanai box).
- Storm readiness completed before departure: the hurricane-prep calendar still owes you work this season, because a Gulf system in August does not care that the owners are north.
And a note on the empty house as a neighborhood matter: an unoccupied house is attractive to wildlife looking for a dry attic or a quiet crawl space, particularly over a long wet season. Close the gaps at rooflines and crawl-space entries, and have pest exclusion done at closing time, not in July. One raccoon in the attic in September can cost more than every other item on this list combined.
Opening in fall: un-bag it
The startup list is shorter, but two items deserve real time. First, do not walk into an August-shut house in October and trust smells, use tools — a cheap hygrometer and a moisture meter read a house more honestly than a nose, and a musty smell anywhere in the house deserves investigation before furniture goes back into rooms. If mold found any surface, the CDC cleanup guide explains safe cleanup limits: small surface areas can be handled with care, larger or recurring growth needs a professional.
Second, run the utilities back on in order, watching for the leaks that grew in your absence: water first at low pressure while checking the water heater, every toilet, and under every sink; then the AC, verified by a thermometer against the setpoint and a look at the condensate line; then the outside, checking the roof and soffits for anything wind-and-rain introduced over the summer. If the insurance file or the roof age clock needs fresh photos or an inspection, schedule it during this trip, while you can still meet a contractor at the house.
Do this well and the house takes care of itself, the way the best Southwest Florida houses do — boring, until they matter.