How to close a cottage for the winter, on a shared well

Start with the date. The water goes off for the whole community at the end of the season, so your closing day has to come before it. Ask the manager for this season’s water-off date, then pick a closing day a few days ahead of it.

While you’re writing, ask three more things: whether the community wants antifreeze in traps, how heat tape should be left, and what can stay outside the home over the winter. Then contact your insurer (step 9) and, if the home runs on propane, your propane retailer (step 5). Use up the food in the last week, so there’s less to carry out.

Close your home’s own water shutoff, then open every faucet, hot and cold, and let the lines empty. Water left in a pipe, a valve or a fixture is what splits it when it freezes.

Work through the whole home: kitchen and bathroom taps, the tub and shower, any outdoor faucet, and the washer and ice-maker lines if the home has them. Flush each toilet with the water off and sponge out what’s left in the tank. Disconnect and drain the garden hoses. Some owners finish by blowing the lines out with an air compressor. Leave the faucets open, so no water is trapped behind a closed valve. If you don’t know where your home’s shutoff is, ask the manager before closing day, not on it.

Shut the water heater off first: the breaker for an electric heater, the gas control for a propane one. An electric heater that comes on with an empty tank can burn out its heating element.

Then close the cold-water supply to the heater, run a hose from the drain valve near the bottom to the outside, and open a hot tap so air can get in and the tank can empty. Heaters differ, so follow the label on the tank and its manual. Hang a tag on it that says it’s empty, so nobody turns it on in spring before it’s full.

Every sink, tub and shower drain holds a little water in its trap, and every toilet holds some in its bowl. At a cottage with its own septic, owners often pour non-toxic RV antifreeze into each one. Here, ask the manager first.

Every home at Side O’ Lake drains to one shared septic system, and the University of Maryland Extension warns septic owners not to pour antifreeze down the drain, because it can kill the organisms the system depends on. If the community says yes, use only non-toxic RV antifreeze (propylene glycol), never the automotive kind: ethylene glycol is poisonous to people and animals. If the answer is no, ask what the community wants done with the traps instead.

If your home uses propane, turn the appliances off, then close the main supply valve on the tank by turning it to the right (clockwise). Ask your propane retailer first how it wants the home shut down for the season.

In spring, don’t relight pilots yourself. The propane industry’s consumer safety guide says that after a leak, your retailer or a qualified service technician must check the whole system before you use any propane appliance, so ask your retailer whether it wants the same check after a seasonal shutdown. If you ever smell gas: put out every flame, don’t work light switches, appliances or phones, get everyone out, close the tank valve only if it’s safe to, and report it to your retailer, or 911, from a building away from the leak.

Empty, clean and unplug the refrigerator and freezer, and prop their doors open so they don’t grow mildew. Unplug small appliances and electronics, and turn off the breakers for anything that won’t run all winter.

Then the heat tape. On a manufactured home the water supply runs under the floor, behind the skirting, and that’s where heat tape usually lives. Once the lines are drained there’s no water left for it to protect, so ask the manager how the community wants it left. If yours stays plugged in, the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s advice for mobile vacation homes is to inspect it before winter: replace tape with cracked or charred insulation or bare wires, never wrap it over pipe insulation, and don’t lap it over itself unless the maker allows it.

Take every bit of food home, the pantry, the spices and the birdseed included, and take out the trash. A closed, quiet home with food in it is a winter’s lodging for mice.

Then close the ways in. The CDC’s advice is to look for and seal up holes around the home. On a manufactured home, check where pipes and wires pass through the floor, any gaps in the skirting, and the underbelly, the board or fabric under the floor: a torn or sagging patch is a door. Store bedding and linens in sealed bins.

Keep the skirting closed to animals, but don’t seal its vents. The federal installation standard requires ventilation openings in skirting, and vents from fuel-burning appliances and the dryer have to reach past it to the outside.

For the roof, clear the gutters and look for loose or damaged roofing. Then find your home’s data plate. On a home built to the federal manufactured-home code it’s fixed near the main electrical panel or another easy-to-see spot, and it names the roof load zone the home was designed for. FEMA’s snow load guide lists the signs of a roof under too much snow, among them sagging ceilings, popping or creaking, and doors or windows that stop opening or closing, and notes that snow can be cleared from the ground with nobody on the roof. You won’t be here to see any of that, so ask the manager how snow and winter checks work.

Ask your insurer what it expects of a home that sits empty all winter, and get the answer in writing. Homeowners policies cover damage from a “sudden and accidental” discharge from plumbing, and the NAIC notes that policies generally expect you either to keep the home at a minimum temperature or to shut off the water supply when the home sits empty.

Ask four things: whether the policy changes when nobody is living in the home, whether it wants the heat on and at what setting, whether someone has to check on the home on a schedule, and how it covers a manufactured home on rented ground. Then take dated photos on closing day: the open faucets, the drained heater, the closed valves. That record is yours if you ever need to show what you did.

Walk the home once more with the closing-day list below. Lock every door and window and close the blinds. Bring in outdoor furniture and anything the wind can move. Set the thermostat the way your insurer asked. Hang a tag on the main valve and the water heater. Then email the manager at hello@sideolakemhc.com that the home is closed up, with the best way to reach you over the winter.