Winterizing your vacation home

Having a vacation home is the American dream. Of course, like all dreams it has a practical side. Maintenance is involved in owning a vacation home. Winterizing your vacation is a lot like winterizing your regular home unless of course, you close your house for the season. If it is a summer only home, then you need to do things that you won’t do if it is a year round vacation home.

Summer home

If you have a summer home when it is time to winterize it, you will make sure that all the summer seasonal furniture and outdoor decor will come in. Take down the flag, bring in the garden elves, hose down and place the lawn chairs in the shed, basement or porch. Bring in any hoses that you may have on the exterior of the house and make sure the water to the faucet is drained and turned off.

If you have a lake home the dock must be brought in, the boat, canoes, kayaks or other water crafts need to be cleaned and either put away or if they are too large turned over in the back yard so that they won’t fill up with water and then ice during the winter.

The water needs to be drained from all the pipes and you should flush the toilet until even the tank is empty. There is anti-freeze that you can buy that is made for RVs, you can put this into the toilet to guarantee that you won’t have any freezing water.

Unplug any appliances that are plugged in, unhook the water hoses to the washer, remove any food from the fridge and pack away any food in covered containers so that you are not tempting any little critters who might break in over the winter. Put out some mouse traps just to be safe.

Call the cable and telephone companies and anyone else who you may have to call to turn off services that you won’t be using during the winter months.

Year round home

If your vacation home is a year round home in order to winterize you home you need to start with the windows. Put in the storm windows or apply the clear plastic window seal. Put in the storm doors. Have the furnace or heating system service done so that everything is ready for the heat to be turned on. Since you won’t be living there every day, be sure to set the heat at a temperature that will keep the pipes from freezing.

Be sure that you have a snow shovel, sand and salt if you plan on visiting when the weather may be bad. Be sure to have some extra bottled water and some non-perishable food on hand in case of a bad storm, as well as flashlights and batteries.

Having a vacation home is wonderful and while it may require a little extra work to get it winterized every year, the upside is that soon it will be time to get it ready for another year of fun.