When it comes to closing up the cabin for the winter you can never be too careful, especially when it come to turning off the water. The challenge of winterizing the cabin is, you’re not going to know you made a mistake until next spring, and by then, the damage is already done.

Ray Landry of Raymar Plumbing and Heating in Kenora, has lots of experience with cottage plumbing. He offers these suggestions to new cottage owners and women, who like myself, wish they knew how to turn off the water, but are overwhelmed by the whole process.

1. Make an initial checklist and try to follow it. It is a good idea to work in pairs.
2. Turn off the power to the hot water tank first, if this gets drained and the heaters are still on, the elements will get burn out once the air hits them. Be careful in the spring when you turn the power breakers back on, making sure the hot water tank is turned off.

3. When setting up your plumbing system, try to put the drains where they are accessible, ideally, have two drain point valves. That way you don’t have to crawl around underneath the cabin making sure you haven’t missed a valve.

4. Don’t use ethylene glycol or car antifreeze on your drains and toilets. Instead, Ray recommended using RV or Plumbers antifreeze - it’s non toxic.

5. If you have propane appliances, try to seal the flue passage way, and have them checked in the spring, especially if you have a propane fridge. These are easily blocked and something as small as a spider can affect your cooling systems.

If you would like a detailed step-by-step guide on how to prepare your water system for close up, go to Winterizing Your Plumbing System.

This year, in addition to taking notes, I am going to follow my husband around with a video camera, that way I have a recorded version of cottage closeup. If might make for some interesting viewing depending how everything goes.

Cheers,

Julie

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 5:52 pm 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.