About Eaves & Acres

Why this site exists

Most home and yard advice is written for nowhere in particular: “plant after your last frost”, “overseed in early fall”, “close the pool when it gets cold”. Those rules are only useful once they become a date or a number for your address. Eaves & Acres turns them into one. “Eaves” stands for the house and its systems; “Acres” for the lawn, garden and pool.

What we do differently

• Real local data. We matched every US ZIP code to the nearest NOAA weather station and loaded the official 1991–2020 climate normals for 41,488 ZIP codes: frost and freeze odds, monthly temperatures and rainfall. When you enter a ZIP, the numbers come from that table, not from a map zone.
• Checked against the people who know. Before a date or formula goes live, we compare it with what extension services, government agencies and manufacturers publish. Our overseeding cut-off, for example, lands within about four days of the published windows from Nebraska, Purdue and NC State; our pool salt formula matches the salt charts in Hayward’s and Pentair’s own manuals.
• The math is on the page. Every calculator shows its formula next to the result, and every guide lists its sources and what each one was used for. Our methodology page documents every rule.
• Honest limits. If the nearest station is more than 50 miles away, or frost happens in fewer than half of years, we say so instead of printing a date.

What we cover

Four sections, each with tools and guides: lawn care (seeding, feeding, weed timing), the vegetable garden (seed starting and planting dates), pool and spa (volume, salt, opening and closing) and home energy (heating, cooling and backup power), tied together by climate data such as your frost dates.

Who writes and reviews our pages

Pages are published by four subject desks: the Home Systems Desk, the Pool Desk, the Yard & Garden Desk and the Data & Methodology Desk, which checks the numbers and methods on every page. Desks are how we organize subject areas; they are not people. We do not put invented names or credentials on pages. When a named specialist reviews a page, their name and verifiable credentials will appear on it.

How we use AI

AI tools help us research, draft and check pages. They never get the last word on a number: every figure on a page must trace to a source cited on that page or to our own published code. Our editorial policy explains the full process.

How we make money

Right now, nothing: the site carries no ads and no affiliate links. We plan to add clearly labeled display ads. If we ever add affiliate links, they will be marked, and they will never change what we recommend. See our advertising disclosure.

Get in touch

Spotted an error, or want a guide we don’t have? Use our contact form. Every correction we make is listed on our corrections page.