- The One-Minute Version
- Lawn Sprinklers: the One With a Hard Deadline
- Outdoor Lighting: Don't Shut It Off, Tune It Up
- Gutters and Downspouts: the Foundation Problem
- Yard Drainage: Fall is When You Find Out
- Holiday Lighting: Book It Now, Not in December
- The Printable Checklist
- Get on the Fall Schedule
Maryland falls are short. There's a stretch from early October to late November when the weather is still workable, the leaves are coming down, and everything outside your house needs attention before winter. Miss that window and the jobs either get harder or get expensive.
Here's everything worth handling, organized by system, with a printable checklist.
The One-Minute Version
October: Schedule your sprinkler winterization. Book holiday lighting if you want it. Clear the first round of leaves.
Early November: Get the sprinklers blown out. Walk your lighting system. Clean gutters once most leaves are down. Check where water goes in the first heavy rain.
Late November: Final gutter clearing. Reset lighting timers for winter hours. Mark fixtures before the first snow.
Lawn Sprinklers: The One With a Hard Deadline
Everything else on this list is flexible. This isn't.
Water left in your irrigation lines expands when it freezes. Pipes crack, valves split, and your backflow preventer, the most expensive single component in a residential system, can be destroyed. Repairs typically start around $200 and can exceed $1,500, and most people don't discover the damage until spring startup, when every irrigation company in Maryland is booked solid.
What Needs to Happen:
- Shut off the water supply to the irrigation system
- Drain the backflow preventer
- Blow out each zone individually with compressed air
- Confirm heads retract and drain
- Set the controller to off or rain mode
When: Mid-October through mid-November, before the first hard freeze. Don't wait for a freeze warning — that's when everyone calls at once.
DIY or pro: This is a pro job. Draining manually leaves water in low spots, and most homeowner compressors produce pressure but not the air volume needed to clear lines. Too much pressure cracks fittings and destroys heads.
Lawn sprinkler systems with 1 to 6 zones can be scheduled and paid for online in about two minutes.
Outdoor Lighting: Don't Shut It Off, Tune It Up
Lighting doesn't need to be winterized the way irrigation does, given there's no water to blow out. But fall is when a lighting system needs attention, and winter is when you'll notice if it didn't get any.
- Clean the lenses. A season of pollen and rain splash noticeably dims output. The cheapest brightness upgrade there is.
- Dig fixtures out of the mulch. Buried fixtures overheat, hold moisture against the housing, and light the mulch instead of the tree.
- Re-aim after leaf drop. This is the step everyone skips. Your lights were aimed through a full summer canopy. Once the oaks and maples drop, uplights that were hitting leaves now shoot into your neighbor's window.
- Check connections and the transformer. Look for corrosion, wet splices and unsealed knockouts. Confirm the outlet has a weatherproof in-use cover and test the GFCI.
- Reset the timer. By the winter solstice, it's dark here by about 4:45 p.m. A fixed clock schedule set in summer leaves your front walk dark exactly when you're coming home.
- Mark fixtures near driveways and walks. Plows, snow blowers, and shovels cause most of the winter damage we see.
What not to do: Don't shut the system off for the season. Winter is fifteen hours of darkness a day on walkways that ice over. LEDs cost very little to run, and an unlit house in January looks exactly like an empty one.
Gutters and Downspouts: The Foundation Problem
Gutters are the item people put off, and they're the one most directly connected to expensive damage.
Clogged gutters overflow against your foundation. In Maryland, that water then freezes and thaws repeatedly through the winter, working on your fascia, siding, and foundation walls. Ice dams form at the roof edge, and meltwater backs up under shingles.
What Needs to Happen:
- Clear leaves and debris from gutters
- Clear the downspouts, which is where most serious clogs form. Clean gutters feeding a blocked downspout still overflow.
- Check that downspout extensions carry water well away from the foundation
- Inspect hangers, seams, and pitch while you're up there
When: The main clearing goes after most leaves are down, typically early to mid-November in central Maryland. If you have oaks, you'll need a second pass — oaks hold their leaves longer than almost anything else here.
Gutter, downspout, and drainage maintenance plans start at $225 a year for a single-story home with one annual cleaning and a 5% repair discount. Silver adds spring and fall cleanings plus camera monitoring of your downspouts, and Gold adds four cleanings a year and drainage blockage removal. Plans cover up to 150 feet, with additional footage at $2 per foot.
Yard Drainage: Fall Is When You Find Out
Here's the argument for paying attention to drainage specifically in fall: this is when you can actually see the problem.
Summer storms come and go fast. Fall and winter in Maryland bring long, soaking rains onto ground that's already saturated and sometimes frozen. Water that soaked in during July runs across the surface in November, and that's when you learn where it actually goes.
What to Do:
- Walk your property during a heavy rain. Not after — during. Note where water pools, where it runs toward the house, and where soil is washing out.
- Check French drain outlets and catch basins. Leaves clog grates and outlets, and a blocked drain in December backs up and freezes.
- Look at the grade near your foundation. Soil should slope away from the house. Settling over the years quietly reverses this.
- Check that downspouts discharge far enough out. This is where gutters and drainage meet, and it's the most common cause of wet basements we see.
- Note any soggy areas that never dry. Those become ice patches in January and dead turf in spring.
Freezing makes drainage problems worse, not dormant. Water in a clogged pipe expands. Saturated soil heaves. A small issue in November is a bigger one in March.
While You're Thinking About It: Holiday Lighting
If you're considering professional holiday lighting, the decision point is now, not December.
Nearly every customer wants lights up in the same three-week window, and installation calendars fill quickly for dates before the first week of December. Late-season requests can require premium labor. TLC's holiday lighting runs from about $1,800 to $10,000 or more depending on your home's height, roof complexity and how elaborate the display is, and the price covers design, commercial-grade LEDs, installation, in-season service, takedown and storage.
The Printable Checklist
Sprinklers
☐ Schedule winterization
☐ System blown out before first hard freeze
☐ Controller set to off or rain mode
☐ Water supply shut off
Lighting
☐ Lenses cleaned
☐ Fixtures raised out of mulch
☐ Fixtures re-aimed after leaf drop
☐ Connections and transformer inspected
☐ Timer reset for winter sunset
☐ Fixtures near drives and walks marked
Gutters
☐ Gutters cleared
☐ Downspouts cleared and tested
☐ Extensions directing water away from foundation
☐ Hangers and seams inspected
Drainage
☐ Property walked during a heavy rain
☐ Drain grates and outlets cleared
☐ Grade near foundation checked
☐ Problem areas noted for spring
Holiday lighting
☐ Booked, if you want it
One Visit, or Four?
Most of this gets handled piecemeal, by whoever happens to be available, which is why it tends to stretch from September into December.
If TLC already handles one of these systems for you, ask about scheduling the others alongside it. Coordinating your winterization with a gutter cleaning or a lighting walkthrough means fewer appointments and fewer gaps where something gets forgotten.
Get on the Fall Schedule
The first hard freeze doesn't negotiate, and our calendar fills as the temperatures drop.
Sprinkler winterization: 1 to 15 zones can be scheduled and paid for online in about two minutes.
Gutters, lighting, drainage, or holiday lighting: Call (301) 603-3097 and we'll get everything on one schedule.
After 40-plus years of Maryland winters, we can tell you how this usually goes: the homeowners who call in October have an easy fall, and the ones who call in April have an expensive spring.
