Lake Erie Cottage
We are about two weeks away from closing up our cottage for the season. This is our first year with the place and the closing / opening experience should be an interesting one. Fortunately, we are about 1 hour away from the property, so an emergency trip is not a big deal.
When searching on closing/winterizing advice, I came across a couple of terrific resources and felt the need to share. The first is from WikiHow.com and covers many aspects of a seasonal cottage and also discusses how to address a situation based on a cottage with the heat remaining on and the heat being turned off.
- WikiHow – Winterize a vacant home
Our cottage has been seasonally occupied by the same family for more than 20 years. Needless to say, they have the winterizing process down pat. The prior owner was kind enough to provide us with about 4 pages of notes that discuss every aspect of the closing. In addition to that, I had him walk me through each process and videotaped the whole thing as a reference. There is something to be said for a visual cue. Our cottage has well water, so some of the aspects of dealing with the well pump were very specific to our system.
The next resource that I found incredibly useful is actually an iPad application from “Cottage Life” magazine. This is the Cottage Life Q&A app. The application isn’t just about winterizing. It covers hundreds of questions relating to a cottage. The questions are broken into categories and should provide any new cottage owner with a nice resource to call on.
If you are winterizing your own seasonal property we would love it if you could share some of your own tips in the comment section below.
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