St. Helena sits far enough up the valley that an empty house is not an errand you do after supper in the city. The properties themselves tend to ask for more than a glance from the sidewalk. Deeper lots, mature trees, a drive, sometimes a barn or a guest house behind the main one. Home watch here is a route written for that ground, kept on the days you are somewhere else.
Trees, gutters, and July
The canopy is one of the reasons people love these houses, and it is also a maintenance fact. Gutters fill. Leaves collect where a wall meets a roof. In the weeks before wildfire season, that is not scenery. On a walk-through we look at those edges the way we look at a kitchen: for what is obvious, and for what has changed since last time. We photograph it. If you want a crew to clear gutters or dry growth, you choose the crew. We can meet them, stay, and lock up. That hour is concierge, not an invisible part of the monthly fee.
The longer, calmer account of the season is the wildfire page. It applies here. It does not single St. Helena out as a warning.
Older houses, ordinary water
A supply line that has been in place for decades is worth seeing every visit, not once a year. We are not plumbers and we do not pretend a look is a repair. We do notice when the cabinet under a sink is no longer dry, or when a water-heater pan has a story it did not have last month. You hear about it the same day if it should not wait for the report. The rest lives in the photo notes, in the tone you can preview on the sample report.
When the flat rate is the wrong instrument
Weekly service is $350 a month and twice monthly is $250, for a house up to 3,000 square feet, each visit a full interior and exterior walk-through with photographs. A number of St. Helena houses are larger than that, or they include a second building that changes the time. Those are quoted after we walk the property with you. An outbuilding you want checked only sometimes is the hourly add-on, named before it is billed. We will not wander into a barn you have not put on the route.
The rate card is the same up and down the valley. There is no St. Helena surcharge on a scheduled visit. A trip that is not already on the schedule carries the $10 fuel surcharge, wherever the house is.
Down-valley and up
Yountville is a smaller, more domestic kind of absence. Calistoga is warmer and closer to the hills. If your St. Helena house spends the holidays full and the late summer empty, say so. The visits pause while you are in residence. The point of naming the town is only to be honest about the drive, the trees, and the size of the place.