Advice on Mountain Home STR Necessities

[Shane Roberts]

Hi All,

We are under contract on our first property intended to be an STR! We're very excited! This is an A-Frame home (about 1,700 sq. ft.) in the mountains of Colorado. Someone with a home in the mountains mentioned that we MUST install a furnace and cannot rely on the wood stove alone. This got me thinking there are probably other items we need to upgrade in a mountain STR.

So here's my question for those with experience in the area: What other items or upgrades do I need in a mountain home STR that are not obvious to a newbie/city dweller?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

[Ken Boone]

One of my cabin's is up on a knob off a mountain in the Smokies so different environment than you but the issues are probably the same and they all revolve around winter, albeit I am guessing yours will be much worse than ours.

Mild scenario is where guest are at the cabin and a snow/ice storm hits while they are at the cabin.  In this case, the guests can't get down the mountain and nobody is coming up.  So for this scenario there are 2 things we do.  Alert the guests when we know there is a possibility of a storm and recommend they bring enough food and drink to sustain them for a few days.  The second thing we do is leaved some canned good in the cabinets just in case.

The worse case is the same as the first but they lost power.  This means, no electricity and no water as the well can't pump - which also translates to you get one more flush on each toilet and then you are done.  Also means no regular heat source.

We always leave the cabin with a good wood supply in the winter, fire starters, lighters and such to ensure they will have a heat source.  Again, it's back to alerting guests of the possibilities.  They can use water from the hot tub or fill up a bathtub to have water for flushing toilets.  But again its about recommending to them to pack a sufficient food and drink supply if a storm is possible.

We also to try have ice melt and snow shovels on hand, extra blankets and stuff like that.

To mitigate some of this think about a full time back up generator to keep the power.