Guide · Seasonal closing

Winterizing a Smith Mountain Lake House: The Full Checklist

By Adam Sable, Force Recon Home Watch. Former Force Recon Marine, former insurance adjuster. He closes lake houses for owners every fall, and this is the checklist he works from.

A lake house that sits empty all winter has exactly one enemy: water left standing where it can freeze. Closing the house right is a half day of unglamorous steps done in the right order. Here they are, plainly, the way they are actually done.

Have Adam do the closing See a sample report

First, decide which house you have

Everything forks on one choice. Winterized houses get shut down hard: main water off, lines drained, traps protected, heat off or set to its lowest hold. That is the right call if nobody will set foot in the house until spring. Water-on houses keep the water live and the heat set around 55 degrees, for owners who come back on winter weekends. A water-on house is never drained; its closing is a shorter list, and its thermostat becomes the most important number of the winter. Pick one. Doing half of each is how pipes freeze.

Gear, before you start

Garden hose long enough to reach from the water heater to a floor drain or outside
Bucket and sponge, plus old towels for the drips that always happen
Pink RV antifreeze, 2 to 3 gallons (propylene glycol, made for plumbing systems)
Flashlight, a wrench, and pliers for valves that have not moved in a year

Step 1: Turn the water heater off

Gas heater: turn the dial to pilot or off. Electric: flip its breaker. Do this first, before any draining, so the heater never sits heating an empty or half-empty tank. Take a photo of it off. If something ever goes wrong later, that photo is worth having.

Step 2: Shut the main off, the inside one

Every house has an inside main shutoff, usually where the water line enters: basement wall, crawlspace, or a utility closet. That is your valve. The valve out by the road, at the meter, belongs to the water company; leave it alone. On well water, the shutoff sits by the pressure tank, and the well pump's breaker gets turned off too, so a burst line cannot pump the well dry into your crawlspace all winter.

Step 3: Drain the lines

With the main off, open faucets starting upstairs and work down, so air gets in and water gets out. Flush every toilet to empty the tanks, then sponge out what is left in the tank. Open the outside spigots. At the dock, shut the water feeding the dock line, open the dock spigot, and let it drain dry: dock lines freeze first and split quietly, and nobody finds it until the water comes back on in spring.

Step 4: The water heater, drain it or not

If the house keeps heat all winter, the heater stays full and off. It sits fine. Drain it only when the house will sit unheated for the whole season: hose on the drain valve, valve open, hot faucet open somewhere upstairs to let air in. One hard rule: if the drain valve is clogged or stuck, close it and stop. Never force it. A snapped drain valve turns a closing into a flood, and a note in the report beats a repair bill every time.

Step 5: Antifreeze every trap

Draining empties the supply lines, but the traps under every fixture still hold plain water, and that is what freezes and cracks. Pour pink RV antifreeze into every toilet bowl until the water in the bowl turns pink; that antifreeze is now sitting in the trap, where it belongs. A cup goes in each toilet tank, and a cup down every sink, tub, shower, and floor drain. Use only the pink RV antifreeze made for plumbing. Automotive antifreeze is poison and has no business in a drain.

Stop rules, no exceptions

If the house heats with a boiler or radiant system, stop at Step 1. Never drain anything on a house like that and never touch the heating loop; closing one is a heating company's job. If you smell gas, leave the house and call from outside. If you find an active leak at any point, that is no longer a closing, it is damage: shut the water down and call the owner from the property.

All winter, and then the spring

A winterized house should stay exactly as dry as the day you left it. If anyone checks it mid-season, that is what they are confirming: main still off, every fixture dry, toilets holding pink, heater quiet. Any moisture anywhere is a finding, not a shrug. For water-on houses, the winter check is the thermostat reading, the indoor temperature, and running every faucet and flushing every toilet so traps stay full and lines stay fresh. And one rule covers both: nobody turns the water back on at a winterized house mid-season to "just check something." Water back on is the seasonal opening, done slowly, valve by valve, with a full leak walk before the house is left alone. If the house has an electric water heater, its breaker stays off until the tank is confirmed full. Powering a dry tank kills it in minutes.

Or hand it off

Adam does all of this as the $250 seasonal closing

Every step above is included in the seasonal closing: heater off and photographed, main off and photographed, lines drained, traps filled, dock line drained, and the house's winter plan, winterized or water-on, set for the season. It all lands in a dated photo report, and the spring opening reverses it the careful way. Pick it on the sign up page and choose the week; Adam comes one day that week and confirms the day with you first.