Komfort 23TS
Western Michigan
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Joined: 09/29/2002
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I am talking to a plumber ight now and he is going to put a valve in my water line and then blow out the pipes, in the spring when I come back all I do is turn the valve on. I have hot water heat so we will by pass that and leave that on at about 50 degrees. I also put a gage on a light and the light comes on if the house temp goes below 35 degrees and I have friends who look in on the house.
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John&Joey
Northern MN
(Baby it's cold outside)
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Joined: 05/20/2007
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bobofthenorth wrote:John&Joey wrote:
Your biggest concern will be a broken foundation if you do not heat your house. This is assuming you have a basement. As you can see I come from -40f country. What happens is the ground will freeze so hard it will push in the walls of the basement.
This is the biggest load of hooey I've seen in a lifetime where I have seen a lot of nonsense. If your foundation is so poorly constructed that the surrounding ground can't freeze then you have a lot bigger problems than winterizing your house.
You make a very broad statement at someone else's expense.
If you live in a very cold climate (many parts of Canada are warmer then Northern MN) and have a clay based soil you can run up a very high bill by turning off the heat and then needing someone to rebuild your basement walls.
Here's a local company that makes a very good living from people that think it's hooey Basement Savers. Very possible you might not know as much as you think.
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g1g
ohio
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Joined: 11/08/2005
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After reading this post I just have a question. Won't there be condensation from not having on heat? I would think that would cause damage too. I know I have been a house that was winterized and the moisture was all over.
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bid_time
Michigan
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Joined: 08/18/2006
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John&Joey wrote:bobofthenorth wrote:John&Joey wrote:
Your biggest concern will be a broken foundation if you do not heat your house. This is assuming you have a basement. As you can see I come from -40f country. What happens is the ground will freeze so hard it will push in the walls of the basement.
This is the biggest load of hooey I've seen in a lifetime where I have seen a lot of nonsense. If your foundation is so poorly constructed that the surrounding ground can't freeze then you have a lot bigger problems than winterizing your house.
You make a very broad statement at someone else's expense.
If you live in a very cold climate (many parts of Canada are warmer then Northern MN) and have a clay based soil you can run up a very high bill by turning off the heat and then needing someone to rebuild your basement walls.
Here's a local company that makes a very good living from people that think it's hooey Basement Savers. Very possible you might not know as much as you think. I can tell you this. My MIL has a cottage on a lake in northern MI. We have drained the lines and turned off the heat, completely, for the last 20+ years. We don't have any basement foundation problems or any cracks in the dry wall. As a matter of fact, I can point to literally thousands of vacation homes in MI that do the exact same thing and have experienced no problems. It's expensive enough to own and maintain a cottage in MI let alone heat it all winter when no one is there.
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jispa
Bancroft, Ontario
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Thanks very much for all of your advise.
We also in Northern ON have many cottagers that leave their cottages all winter without heat and have no problems and we get to -40 Celcius at times.
We are concerned about condensation and since this is our first time leaving it for the winter without heat....I suppose it could be said that we are a tad paranoid. Well I guess there is no answer but to jump right off the dock into the water and SWIM.....we can do it! Thanks again and we welcome any more advise. OH btw how do I get one of those maps that we colour the places that we have been to????
Jill & Bob
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ronfisherman
SE Michigan
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Joined: 06/05/2006
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jispa wrote:. OH btw how do I get one of those maps that we colour the places that we have been to????
Add a Visited States Map to your signature
This is a start, then look for Canada map. 
2004 Gulf Stream Endura 6340 D/A
TST tire pressure monitor system
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Argosy24
MI
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bobofthenorth wrote:If your foundation is so poorly constructed that the surrounding ground can't freeze then you have a lot bigger problems than winterizing your house.
You need to quit giving advice about what you don't know. A soil with a high moisture content will expand a lot during a long hard freeze, it will crack basements and foundations. In your area it might not get that cold that long, the soil might not hold water that well. If you have the right combination it will happen.
Years ago I had a house where the cold cracked the foundation, it happened about 11 at night. I've heard houses creak and pop from the cold, nothing like that. It sounded like an explosion when it broke, I went out so see what happened.
Bad advice you are giving, because you haven't heard of it or seen it you think it is a bunch of hooey, but I know it can happen.
To the OP, no way I would let a house freeze hard over the winter if you are in a very cold climate. It will cost a few hundred $$ to keep minimal heat, but there is so much that can happen to everything from the house to the contents. If you can afford to spend the winter in a warm climate budget $300 or $400 to insure you don't loose something a lot more valuable. Most cottages are minimally furnished, not a lot to damage. Not so with a home where the contents aren't designed to freeze hard.
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bid_time
Michigan
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Argosy24 wrote:
Years ago I had a house where the cold cracked the foundation, it happened about 11 at night. I've heard houses creak and pop from the cold, nothing like that. It sounded like an explosion when it broke, I went out so see what happened.
Bad advice you are giving, because you haven't heard of it or seen it you think it is a bunch of hooey, but I know it can happen.
To the OP, no way I would let a house freeze hard over the winter if you are in a very cold climate. It will cost a few hundred $$ to keep minimal heat, but there is so much that can happen to everything from the house to the contents. If you can afford to spend the winter in a warm climate budget $300 or $400 to insure you don't loose something a lot more valuable. Most cottages are minimally furnished, not a lot to damage. Not so with a home where the contents aren't designed to freeze hard. Looks to me like your house cracked while it was being heated. At least you were there at 11:00 at night so I would presume it was heated at the time. Looks like heat vs. non-heat would have no bearing on the end result.
But rather then belabour the point, how about this? Instead of advising the OP to spend several hundred dollars a year heating their vacant home in the winter which in my experience (and several thousand similar experiences) is going to be money wasted, why not offer this. Do what others in your immediate area do. If others in the immediate area have experienced basement cracks, heat your house. If others in the immediate area leave their house for extended periods of time un-heated, go for it.
As I have said, several thousands of people leave their vacation homes un-heated in the winter year after year after year with no ill results. The chances of something bad happening, except in some areas as Argosy24 has noted, is very minimal if winterizing is done properly. (Most of the plumbers in our area have quit a business winterizing and de-winterizing cottages every year).
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jispa
Bancroft, Ontario
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HI thanks for the link to the map.....oh and btw we have no basement. Take Care all and happy trails and a safe and WARM winter to you all
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John&Joey
Northern MN
(Baby it's cold outside)
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jispa wrote:HI thanks for the link to the map.....oh and btw we have no basement. Take Care all and happy trails and a safe and WARM winter to you all
We do not have a basement under our cabin, so for the last 20+ years we've turned off the heat also. During those 20+ years what I've seen (again Northern MN gets extreme cold, I also lived in the UP and it's nothing like this, lots of snow, but not cold) is sheet rock cracks, a couple dozen one inch icicles hanging from the ceiling (freezing and thawing,) ceiling sheet rock sagging because it was 1/2 inch, and hung on 24 inch centers, and booze bottles bursting and soaking everything around, and doors not closing because of heaving problems.
What issues you'll have in Bancroft I don't know. Best advice is to ask locally as someone else stated. If you're on a sandy soil and don't get extreme cold then you won't even have heaving issues to come back too.
Also the reason why a basement wall can break even when a house is heated (as a prior poster had happen) is because the basement wasn't heated enough or the walls were so well insulated that it didn't allow enough heat to escape out into the soil, chasing away the frost. In my area some will stud out the basement walls, but only insulate the top four feet. Leaving the bottom uninsulated for heat escape thereby pushing the frost away from the foundation. A couple of years ago the miners here saw frost eight feet deep in the mines.
Good luck on your adventure. Also here is a LINK that you might want to read.
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