Home Winterization - Long Term

[bigdog]

After this brutal winter I'm thinking of heading South next Feb & Mar 2016.

Can the Forum give me an idea what I need to do for long term home winterization on my homes. Also what cost may be incurred?

Have two properties:
Residential home - 2 levels - Oil Heat Forced Hot water
Condo-Townhouse - 2 Levels - Oil Heat Forced Hot water

Neither property has anti-freeze in the heating systems.

I really don't want to leave the heat at both locations for 2 months, even if I set to minium 50 degrees. Would be a waste of heat and money !

Thoughts?

Thanks!

[RLW]

I well make a couple suggestions that I have done and very happy with the results in energy savings. First off and probably 2x6 studding with heavier insulation. I'm so glad that when I built that had become the code on new construction. Cost almost nil between 2x4 and 2x6 as I had done my material lists for 2x4. The second huge savings is quality windows. I replaced 2 large picture windows last year with Pella's best. They made such and difference I replaced the rest of the living area windows over to Pella. Now I did not put in replacements, but new construction windows, which is more dollars, but well worth it and you maintain the full size window. Not much help except the windows are super with us living on the lake 30' from the ice and the wind howling most of the time. NO DRAFTS what-so-ever:)

I forgot. try and stay away from the anti-freeze in the heating system. I have it and it will fine pin holes and or start to leak around shut offs and zone valves etc. I am going to replace any piping that goes out into the overhangs as that is the only place that the piping is close to the outside. At the moment I cannot recall the type of flexible piping one uses in this condition.

[BroadHopper]

Uncle Sam will help pay for the energy features such as insulation, windows, furnace etc. Call your utility company for an energy audit.

If you search, you will find many happy owners of split-systems. The beauty of the system is that there is no water drainage or anti freeze to contend with.

I have found Alside windows very economical and efficient. You won't find these in the box stores but at jobbers sites. I believe there is a wholesaler that will sell to the public on Brown Ave in Manchester. I can't recall the name.

[ITD]

I don't think you will get around using antifreeze. You need to have it tested every year and change it when it becomes corrosive. Your house should be pretty straight forward, drain all the water pipes and shut everything down, antifreeze in drains and heating system.

The condo may be more complex. There could be neighbor pipes in your walls and/or sprinklers.

I would consider just running the heat at 50 degrees, unless you can do all this work yourself it will probably pretty much a wash. Don't forget you'll have to start everything up too. For two months it may not be worth it.

[Lakegeezer]

I would consider just running the heat at 50 degrees, unless you can do all this work yourself it will probably pretty much a wash. Don't forget you'll have to start everything up too. For two months it may not be worth it.What about the power failure issue? We've seen plenty of week long outages over the past 10 years. What do you do when you are 1000 miles away from your house, it is 10 degrees and the power has been out for three days? You have to leave the house able to freeze, even if you are heating it to 50. Backup heat using a non-electric source might give you a few days cushion, but you'd be nervous.

[Misha888]

After this brutal winter I'm thinking of heading South next Feb & Mar 2016.

Can the Forum give me an idea what I need to do for long term home winterization on my homes. Also what cost may be incurred?

Have two properties:
Residential home - 2 levels - Oil Heat Forced Hot water
Condo-Townhouse - 2 Levels - Oil Heat Forced Hot water

Neither property has anti-freeze in the heating systems.

I really don't want to leave the heat at both locations for 2 months, even if I set to minium 50 degrees. Would be a waste of heat and money !

Thoughts?

Thanks!

5 gallons of glycol $150 (factored in inflation since material cost is consistently rising)
$200 - $300 labor per house depending on whether the house/condo is set up for easy drainage. Note, it's rougher to drain a house in sub zero weather than it is in say, Nov. particularly if your home is on a crawl space.

And the flexible pipe the other gent mentioned is called crosslinked polyethylene, one brand and most commonly know as PEX.

Good luck.

[camp guy]

I have given this answer before, and I still stand by it. Going away isn't easy, and there is a dollar cost involved, but, the dollar cost following a major problem would be significantly more. The small cost saved by turning your heat off would probably not even cover your deductible if you had a problem.

Go ahead and drain what you can, but leave the heat on at a reasonable level, say 55 degrees F, and open all cabinet doors. Engage a property watch specialist to visit and check your house while you are away. These people offer a wide variety of services, and you can set up a Plan to cover virtually any contingency. Do you want plowing done (strongly recommend this), do you want shoveling done (another good idea), do you want the property watch person to walk through your house periodically, do you want to set up a telephone tree of whom to call in the case of problems?

Leave your telephone and cable service in 'active' status.

Talk with any neighbors who already go away and see what they do.

And, maybe first and foremost, do not publically talk about when you are leaving, how long you will be gone, nor where you will be visiting.

I am sure there is more to this list, but this is a start.

[songkrai]

People do winterize their homes and are successful doing it.

Do go and read your homeowners policy and check the deductibles.

If you have a modern home with modern insulation and up to date doors and windows all could work out fine

Hire a professional plumber to winterize all of the pipes and appliances that use water. Yes, some homeowners are real good at this and don't require a plumber. Are you?

Over the decades, though, I have seen too many issues come up with some that do not heat their 2nd home. Something is always forgotten. I have seen sheetrock split at seams. Jars, cans, bottles break. Toilets break. All repair costs are much more then the fuel savings. Even with insurance. And a continual filing of insurance claims may affect your homeowners insurance rates.

Penny wise and pound foolish.

[upthesaukee]

...if you hire him. If he doesn't perform the work properly, it should not be the homeowner's insurance that should pay for the damage.

[ITD]

What about the power failure issue? We've seen plenty of week long outages over the past 10 years. What do you do when you are 1000 miles away from your house, it is 10 degrees and the power has been out for three days? You have to leave the house able to freeze, even if you are heating it to 50. Backup heat using a non-electric source might give you a few days cushion, but you'd be nervous.

Depends on where he is, I'm having trouble remembering more than a day without power in the past 15 years where I am on the lake. Personally what I would do is turn the water off when I left. With my house, I'm 1 hour and 45 minutes door to door, I have a monitoring system that I check regularly to make sure the heat is on. You can spend from $50 to thousands to do this. I would also have someone on call who can get in the house if there is an issue. It's worked well for me so far....

[Kamper]

If you do it yourself, get a compressor to blow out the lines after you let them drain. Leave a hose hooked up from the lowest point to a floor drain in a bucket in case there's a little water settling out of the system.

[TriDad]

Depends on where he is, I'm having trouble remembering more than a day without power in the past 15 years where I am on the lake. Personally what I would do is turn the water off when I left. With my house, I'm 1 hour and 45 minutes door to door, I have a monitoring system that I check regularly to make sure the heat is on. You can spend from $50 to thousands to do this. I would also have someone on call who can get in the house if there is an issue. It's worked well for me so far....

What kind of remote monitoring system do you use?

[ITD]

What kind of remote monitoring system do you use?

I have an alarm system made by HAI, Home Automation Inc, now owned by Leviton. It's the Omni IIe system that controls systems through a communication system the runs through the home wiring. You can really go wild with the system and control everything in your home. I mainly use it for some lights, my dock bubbler and roof heat tapes (which I don't use any more). It also controls one zone of my heat, the main floor, which I turn up remotely so the house is nice and toasty when I arrive. The system is programmable and can be set to call you when the temp inside gets too low, it can turn your water heater on and off, it can report when your oil gets low, it can do it all, if you want to pay for the sensors. I use the system to control my dock bubbler as the service I used to use to monitor it would leave it on from January until April. I had a friend install the system about 10 years ago, now I maintain it myself. It has been very reliable.

I also have an older security DVR and cameras that I use to see my dock and driveway. I had a plow guy who was not reliable, I've since fired him and really don't need the driveway camera, but I do check the dock camera to make sure the boat is ok in the summer and the ice eater is working in the winter.

[garysanfran]

We've been winterizing our place for 50 years. We shut everything down. Drain the pipes and blow compressed air through the lines. Leave all faucets, including outside, open. Run vegetable oil through the garbage disposal. Remove all liquids...i.e. cans of soup, laundry detergent, insect repellent, etc. Flush anti-freeze through the toilets and then drain them. Remove batteries from smoke detectors. Shut off electricity. Because there should be no one trespassing on our land, we don't do any snow removal. Because we don't leave the heat on, we have no problems with ice dams.

[Senior Trend]

I open and shut down my house 10-15 times every winter. It’s a 10 minute job made easy by a few DIY projects years ago.
Heating a finished basement and the main floor with electric head all winter is expensive even when turning the heat to 45 or 50 degrees. I wanted to be able to shut the house down as completely as possible, as quickly as possible.
I built a small utility room (6'X14') and put my lake water pump, hot water tank, washing machine and a small refrigerator in there. It’s in a corner with 6" insulated walls all around. Ceiling has 10" of insulation. I keep this room at 60 degrees. I recently installed a wireless power monitor and check for power outages daily. I'm sure the room will stay above freezing for at least a few days if the power goes out.
I slope my hot and cold supply lines so they drain into the utility room. I made a drain manifold that drains into a 4" PVC pipe my water pipe from the lake comes up through. So, draining the pipes is 2-3 minutes (open the faucets, flush the toilets, open the shower valves). Note that this was easy because of a suspended ceiling in the basement. There are probably other ways to drain the water to the outside.
The first time I shut down for the season I drain back my outside faucets as well. Then I close basement valves that supplies them.
I have a kitchen refrigerators without an ice maker.
I moved the dishwasher control valve into the sink cabinet. It’s on a flexible washing machine hose to survive a freeze. I remove the small supply tube from the control valve to the tub and about 1 oz of water comes out. I shake the valve to be sure its empty and put the tube back on. This was an easy DIY job.
I put windshield washer fluid into the traps, toilets, and the tub of the dishwasher. (Substitute non-toxic RV anti-freeze if you wish.)
My black lake water intake pipe is held to the bottom by a cast iron pipe. It comes out of the shore/lake bottom about a 12-18" depth. In 30+ years it froze twice- Once the lake was very low and the pipe became exposed and one year the rope holding the line to the pipe broke and the line rose. I never thought about the rope and it rotted at about 20 years.
I've been doing this for 30 years with good results. The coldest I've found the house was 23 degrees. I've never had a crack in the drywall/joint compound (or any other problem that was not caused by me).
I'll let others speak to forced hot water…
All of these winterization projects were done after I was in the house for a few years and got surprised a few times by water sitting in a "drained" pipe and leaking when I turned the water on.

When we open it up, I start a fire in a wood burning stove, turn on the heat, and go out to eat. When I get back I turn the water on, check for leaks and then sit by the stove...

I hope this helps with ideas.

[secondcurve]

I open and shut down my house 10-15 times every winter. It’s a 10 minute job made easy by a few DIY projects years ago.
Heating a finished basement and the main floor with electric head all winter is expensive even when turning the heat to 45 or 50 degrees. I wanted to be able to shut the house down as completely as possible, as quickly as possible.
I built a small utility room (6'X14') and put my lake water pump, hot water tank, washing machine and a small refrigerator in there. It’s in a corner with 6" insulated walls all around. Ceiling has 10" of insulation. I keep this room at 60 degrees. I recently installed a wireless power monitor and check for power outages daily. I'm sure the room will stay above freezing for at least a few days if the power goes out.
I slope my hot and cold supply lines so they drain into the utility room. I made a drain manifold that drains into a 4" PVC pipe my water pipe from the lake comes up through. So, draining the pipes is 2-3 minutes (open the faucets, flush the toilets, open the shower valves). Note that this was easy because of a suspended ceiling in the basement. There are probably other ways to drain the water to the outside.
The first time I shut down for the season I drain back my outside faucets as well. Then I close basement valves that supplies them.
I have a kitchen refrigerators without an ice maker.
I moved the dishwasher control valve into the sink cabinet. It’s on a flexible washing machine hose to survive a freeze. I remove the small supply tube from the control valve to the tub and about 1 oz of water comes out. I shake the valve to be sure its empty and put the tube back on. This was an easy DIY job.
I put windshield washer fluid into the traps, toilets, and the tub of the dishwasher. (Substitute non-toxic RV anti-freeze if you wish.)
My black lake water intake pipe is held to the bottom by a cast iron pipe. It comes out of the shore/lake bottom about a 12-18" depth. In 30+ years it froze twice- Once the lake was very low and the pipe became exposed and one year the rope holding the line to the pipe broke and the line rose. I never thought about the rope and it rotted at about 20 years.
I've been doing this for 30 years with good results. The coldest I've found the house was 23 degrees. I've never had a crack in the drywall/joint compound (or any other problem that was not caused by me).
I'll let others speak to forced hot water…
All of these winterization projects were done after I was in the house for a few years and got surprised a few times by water sitting in a "drained" pipe and leaking when I turned the water on.

When we open it up, I start a fire in a wood burning stove, turn on the heat, and go out to eat. When I get back I turn the water on, check for leaks and then sit by the stove...

I hope this helps with ideas.

Senior Trend:

You are obviously a very clever and handy guy. I enjoyed your post.