Preparing for Winter: Warranty Expert Shares Essential Tips for New Alberta Homeowners

As Alberta homeowners brace for their first winter in a new build, understanding how to prepare for the season is crucial.
Nick Lobchuk, Warranty Manager at Lighthouse Custom Homes, is the go-to person for post-possession support—and he’s sharing what every new homeowner should know before the snow flies.

“I’m in charge of all customer care after possession,” said Lobchuk.. “So anything that comes up with the house—questions, support on how things function, or if anything goes wrong—I’m there for the year after possession to ensure everyone’s happy with their home and that it functions as it should.”

Facing Alberta’s famously unpredictable winters, Lobchuk offered advice to help homeowners get ahead of the cold. “One of the things they should do is ensure that all of their downspouts are down, that their exterior water is shut off to all of their hose bibs,” he explained.

“Beyond that, there’s not too much, aside from setting up efficient schedules based on how they like to live in the home for adequate heating,” he added. “Of course, after the summer months, it’s always great to check on your furnace filter and have that replaced before you head into the winter season.”

Moisture management is another area new homeowners often overlook.

“Also ensuring that they get into the routine of making sure their blinds are on some sort of a cycle to move up and down in the winter months,” said Lobchuk.. “As it gets cooler, you can collect condensation on your windows, and it’s important to allow the home to be able to move that moisture around rather than let it collect and form ice. Then they can run into issues where it affects the paint finish on their casings when it does a rapid melt and sort of leaks out.”

Lobchuk emphasized why those first tasks—downspouts and hose bibs—are essential. “It’s important for your spouts to be down just to usher [water],” he said. “Since we have a rapid sort of freeze-thaw cycle here in our winters, as a general rule, it’s always good to just have everything down and left like that so it can adequately usher the water away from your building.”

He noted that failing to do so can cause minor but avoidable problems: “It also helps prevent little ice dams. If you have them up, then you’ll get little pools of ice closer to your foundation. Not that that’s a large concern, but it’s best to always keep the water moving away from the building if you can help it.”

As for shutting off water to exterior spigots, Lobchuk explained the importance of using built-in features properly: “We do use a product called a vacuum break. When you shut off your water, every time you use it, it puts an air bubble back into the line so that the water always sits within the warm space of the building. But since you’re not using them, it’s always a great idea to just err on the side of caution and have that shut off so there’s no mistakes made with potentially freezing a line.”

Given Alberta’s variable winter temperatures, Lobchuk also highlighted the importance of climate awareness inside the home. “Due diligence on the homeowner’s part to understand how to control the environment in which they live goes a long way,” he said. “Humidity in the wintertime is a large conversation point because a lot of people enjoy high humidity in their homes and then wonder why they’re getting frost on their windows.”

He compared the issue to a weather phenomenon. “I always describe it in the terms of a thunderstorm. In the summertime you have warm, moist air meeting a cooler air mass, and it immediately equals condensation. So monitoring how much humidity you have pumped into your environment, and monitoring the exterior temperatures, is a key role in mitigating the amount of water that collects on surfaces of windows.”

While the checklist may seem simple, Lobchuk noted that humidity is one of the most important areas to educate homeowners about. “The humidity part and everything else though, I think is a key one,” he said. “As a general rule, I usually broadcast the whole email to all of our homeowners heading into the cooler months just reiterating that. And it’s also in the documentation that we hand over at the possession time.”

With a few straightforward but essential steps, Alberta homeowners can enter the winter months confidently—and avoid common seasonal pitfalls in their new homes.

Mario Toneguzzi is a veteran of the media industry for more than 40 years and named in 2021 and 2024 a Top Ten Business Journalist in the world and only Canadian. He also made the RETHINK’s global list as a Top Retail Expert 2024 and 2025.