It’s nine a.m. on Sunday morning when the OPP call to inform you your cottage has been broken into. Some neighbours discovered your back door ajar during their early morning walk. The officer explains your boat house door has also been jimmied, and needs to be repaired before it can be secured.

If you’re lucky, the cottage is only a three hour drive away; but not everyone is lucky.

Or, what if you’re almost home after a relaxing weekend, and you have that nagging feeling that you’ve left the stove on. What do you do?

These are issues that every cottage owner dreads. Fortunate are those who have a neighbor or a friend, who lives close by, and can check on your property for you.

Protecting a cottage is not just about preventing break-ins. Frozen pipes, uprooted trees, and heavy snowfall can also wreak havoc on summer homes.

We check it out, founded by Angela Balan, who is also a cottager, provides peace of mind for property owners. Her company perform routine inspections on vacation properties, inside and out, and posts a report on their website complete with photos. In the event of an emergency, they guarantee a four hour response time, and will make “temporary fixes” to any problem they discover.

“If a cottage is left open after a break-in,” explains Balan, “more damage can occur, particularly with animals or inclement weather. Our people secure the place, take photos and post a report on our secure website. The owners then go online where they can view the damage.”

We check it out, also maintains a network of trades people who will perform the repairs on your behalf. I could see this service working really well for people who fly south for the winter or for folks living out of province.

A membership can be split between a city property and a vacation property. You can have them inspect your city property in the summer and your summer property in the winter.

Memberships vary in price, but a basic plan which includes six regularly scheduled inspections and two emergency visits, costs $379 a year.

Unfortunately, this service is only available in Ontario - Muskoka, Haliburton and Kawaratha regions, but rest assured, they are expanding across Canada.

So the next time you arrive home only to discover you’ve left your make up bag at the cabin, don’t panic, we check it out will Fedex it to you.

Cheers,

Julie

This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 11:05 am and is filed under Fix It. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.