A House File for staying in your Cumberland County home

Carlisle is the Cumberland County seat: a brick and stone borough, with townships around it where the utilities change. Many people here have been in the same house a long time and mean to stay. MOSES is a digital service for homes anywhere, and this page is a Carlisle example. It is not open yet. There is no Carlisle office and no claim of a local license. Join the waitlist if you own a home here, help someone who does, or look after a condo, a rental, or a small commercial room in this part of the valley.

A House File is the memory of one place. It holds who has a key, where the shutoffs are, which company delivers the heat, and what the last service visit actually fixed. It’s yours to keep and yours to share. It is not a plumber on call and not a camera in the basement.

A hard freeze is the stress test

Winter splits a hose bib that was left charged, a pipe in an exterior wall, or a line in a crawl space nobody insulated. The file should say where the main shutoff is — a labeled valve, not “somewhere in the basement” — and which outdoor spigots have an indoor valve. It should name the heating fuel. Many borough streets have natural gas. Plenty of township houses still run on heating oil or propane, with a tank, a gauge, and a delivery company. That phone number is the January page of the file.

Snow sits on older roofs and on flat additions. Record the roof age, whether ice has backed up at the eaves before, and who plows or shovels if you hire it out. Basements are ordinary in these masonry houses. A sump pump, a battery backup, and the discharge point belong in the record, including who last replaced the pump. If the pit has overflowed, the next person should not discover the pump by flashlight.

Borough utilities and township wells are different files

Inside the borough, water and sewer are typically public. The curb shutoff and the valve inside the house are still two handles, and both should be photographed. In the surrounding townships a house may have a well, a pressure tank, and a septic system. Those details do not belong only in a closing binder at a lawyer’s office. The file should show the well head, the tank location, the pumper’s name, and the last pump-out. A gas-furnace manual does not describe an oil boiler. Write the equipment you have.

Older limestone and brick handle moisture and wiring differently from a later frame house. Plaster cracks, white mineral on a basement wall, and an undersized panel are facts to photograph once. Rentals near Dickinson College add another user of the same file: an owner who is not in town, a resident who needs the shutoff without a lecture, and a plumber who already knows the alley. MOSES does not manage those rentals. It can hold the page they keep asking for.

• Main water shutoff and indoor valves for outdoor faucets
• Fuel type, tank or meter location, and the delivery company
• Sump pump, backup, and who last serviced it
• Well and septic, or a clear note that the house is on public utilities