"Steve" wrote in message
...
Deceased Step dads house. We live in New England. The house is empty now
and
I stopped by last night and the furnace was not working. I relit the pilot
light and got it working again but we are concerned that it may go out
again
and we cannot get to the house every day to check. Temps were down to 18
degrees last night. I'm thinking of shutting the water off and leaving the
faucets open to avoid any pipes freezing and bursting. Would there be any
downside to shutting the main water off?
Heat is forced hot air.


It might be easier to simply purchase a 'freeze alarm' such as the one
offered by this company
http://www.protectedhome.com/ Basically, it monitors the temperature inside
the house and if the temperature goes below a predetermined level, the alarm
uses the telephone to call you up and tell you that the temperature has
dropped. The one on this particular website I found costs about $110 but
there are a lot of different brands/models around.

We are in the middle of trying to figure out which one to get for our
vacation home (since if the electric power goes out there, neither our
Rinnai nor our electric baseboard heat will work).