Locking up holiday home for the winter - Hints, Tips, What precautions should I take?

[Explorer450]

Hi everyone,

 

Just looking

for some advice, hints or tips anyone may have about locking up a holiday home

in France for the winter? I only bought my home in France earlier this year so

this will be the first winter I’ve had to prepare for. We’re in the Monedieres mountains of the Correze,

Dept 19 in central France, and I’m told that even though the last few winters

have been quite mild it can get very cold, so I want to make sure I’m properly

prepared.

 

I’m heading over

to France in the next few weeks and will be there for all of October, but when

I come back to the UK in November I won’t be back in France again until March

next year so am just wondering what precautions I should take before heading

back home or are there things I need to take over to France from the UK that I

might find useful?

 

I don’t want

to sound totally clueless here, I think I’ve got the basics covered, pipes

insulated, hot water tank drained down, anti-freeze in the toilets, we have electric

heating which can be left on frost guard and we have a friendly neighbour who’s

agreed to keep a key and pop in regularly to make sure everything’s ok. But I

was just wondering if there’s anything I’m not thinking of?

 

Thanks

GT

[Clark Kent II]

[quote user="Explorer450"]

 

I don’t want to sound totally clueless here, I think I’ve got the basics covered, pipes insulated, hot water tank drained down, anti-freeze in the toilets, we have electric heating which can be left on frost guard and we have a friendly neighbour who’s agreed to keep a key and pop in regularly to make sure everything’s ok. But I was just wondering if there’s anything I’m not thinking of?

 

[/quote]

 

A thought: check your property insurance to see whether you can leave electricity on if the house is unoccupied.

 

When I vacate my house, which is possibly in a more temperate area than yours, I turn off electricity and water and leave at least two windows ajar behind closed shutters. The windows do have security catches. This to allow a through flow of air.

 

The first time I closed up the house I made certain all windows were closed. There was a lot of warm air containing moisture trapped inside the building and, when the temperature dropped, this moisture condensed on cold walls on the north facing side of the house.

 

Some people suggest dropping a tennis ball into wc pans - if the water freezes, its expansion is taken up by the ball and the pan is at less risk of cracking.

[andyh4]

OK

As someone who has been where you are now (House in the Ardeche at 3000ft - normal winter has around one week at -10degrees as daytime high), let's take the points one by one.

1. No you do not sound clueless - on the contrary you are asking very good questions. This is an environment you are not familiar with.

2. Pipes insulated - very good, but totally useless with an unheated house over the winter. Insulation slows down the rate of cooling, but if the outside temperature is below zero for a week or more, insulation is not going to stop your pipes falling to a temperature below zero. Therefore drain everything down for the winter. This includes the toilet cisterns - turn off the water and flush to empty. We have friends who forgot and found 2 cisterns with the fronts neatly punched out, when they returned in Spring.

3. Do NOT use frost stat electric heating to protect your house unless you have very large cash reserves. 3 years ago same friends decided to avoid a repeat of the punched out cistern fronts by leaving heaters on frost stat. in the bathrooms and kitchen. Result - electric bill for the 6 months they were not there of 1100€. It was a very cold winter and the frost stat was nearly permanently on.

4. Antifreeze in toilets!!!!! Salt yes, antifreeze no. And if you are on a septic tank system antifreeze will probably kill the bacteria dead. If on mains drainage you could be prosecuted for putting industrial chemicals down the drain.

So basic advice. Drain everything down at the lowest point - which for the last bit may be a drain point at the meter. Ensure this drain down includes the hot water cylinder by separately draining at the vent valve at the base - do ensure that the electricity is cut off first.

If you have a radiator system that cannot be (easily) drained down, ensure that this system does have antifreeze in it - and enough to protect to minus 20.

Once all of the water is drained down, flush the loos and then add around a half kilo of salt to each toilet bowl. Also add salt to other U bends - good table spoon in each.

Do not rely on frost stat electric heating - it will bankrupt you.

Put insulation into the meter pit. If the meter freezes and breaks, it is your responsibility. For the same reason that pipe insulation is not a perfect answer, this only helps protect and in the worst case your meter may still go bust.

Empty fridges, turn off the electricity and leave the door ajar. Put a small container of bicarbonate of soda inside - will help avoid smells and mould.

Isolate the electricity - if there are winter thunderstorms you do not want to come back and find all of your electrical kit has been fried by a strike.

[Hoddy]

This is what has worked for us for some years -

We drain all the water entirely. Because we have a fosse-septique we don’t use anti-freeze or salt, but put some little stones in the bottom of a small water bottle and put one of those in each toilet.

We turn the electricity off completely.

I always worry about ‘creatures’ getting into bed linen and towels so I stow them all away in some of those old metal chests that look as though belong to pirates which I bought in junk shops in the UK.

The dust sheets we used for decorating over the furniture .

Fingers crossed.

Hoddy

[PaulT]

Some insurance companies state a minimum temperature that the house must be kept at so if pipes burst because they have not been drained down completely.

Yes, water off and as we have oil heating just the circuit for the boiler left on.

[soupagirl]

In addition to all the sensible advice above - put down mouse traps. The little dears will always find a way of getting in and it's not very pleasant to arrive at your holiday home in the springtime to find all the surfaces of your property covered in their 'calling cards'. (On that particularly memorable visit we found a dessicated mouse corpse on the pillow of my daughter's bed, and a squirrel hibernating in the kitchen sink).

[Théière]

[quote user="soupagirl"](On that particularly memorable visit we found a dessicated mouse corpse on the pillow of my daughter's bed, and a squirrel hibernating in the kitchen sink).[/quote]

Just a regular Sunday morning after a Saturday night party at ours [:)]

[rowland]

As well as draining as much as we can and having anti-freeze for up to minus 20 degrees in the radiators, we put a moisture trap in each of the rooms which seems to prevent any mould. The cheapest ones we have found are in Aldi with M. bricolage own make coming second.

Knitwear and clothes go in tin trunks and breathable bags respectively and we use old bedding as dust sheets .

[woolybanana]

By the way, Explorer, if you have any outbuildings or huts, don't leave any valuable kit in them as it is very vulnerable; mowers etc spring to mind, and unless the place is built like Fort Knox, the insurance probably won't cover it.

[Explorer450]

Thanks everyone, some really helpful advice. Have a few things to add to my shopping list before I head off. You've definitely scared me off leaving any of the electric heaters on, I certainly don't want a bill for 1000€ come the spring! I had thought about leaving a window just slightly open behind the shutters to let some air flow through but was advised against this by a neighbour who did just that and came back in spring to find some bats had found their way in and were roosting in the bedroom!

  

I hadn't thought of damp or mould so I'll definitely be getting some moisture traps. But what about bedding, soft furnishings and clothes, are they likely to get damp over the winter? What about using those vacuum pack things or would putting things in plastic trunks work? And what about mattresses and sofas etc, things you cant wrap in plastic, does just covering with an old sheet offer enough protection?  

  

[Cacknanty]

We leave our windows open and the shutters shut, ever since we came back in the spring to find everything had a thin layer of mould on it.

Also put sofas on bricks, just to lift them off the floor and allow a better air flow underneath.

We use those 'stress' balls/toys in a plastic bag to drop into the toilet.

To help the 'drain down' process, we blow compressed air from the shower head and turn taps on in turn. This also helps if there are some low points in the plumbing.

[Théière]

[quote user="Explorer450"]But what about bedding, soft furnishings and clothes, are they likely to get damp over the winter? What about using those vacuum pack things  [/quote]

The vacuum bags work well, they won't maintain a vacuum seal for more than a week or two but the clothes are well protected having started with the benefit of the vacuum.  Bedding gets a little damp, shame they don't make really big vacuum bags.

[YCCMB]

They do, Teapot, they do. I speak having just packed away 3 or 4 double duvets (and more than one per bag) in some huge vacuum bags I got from Poudland...

That said, I went back to get more and they haven't got the gigantic ones at the moment, but I'm sure they will have them again.

[mint]

Betty, I asked about these bags a few months go and Chancer et al said that they don't keep their vacuum.

So I find what you say very interesting.  I am now running out of cupboard space so I keep all the spare stuff in the guest bedroom in those checked plastic bags that get left on airport carousels and move everything out into the sous sol when the guest room is called into use and hope nobody stays too long because sous sols are inevitably a bit damp in the winter.

[Hoddy]

I don't find the vacuum bags very successful either. I do still have them but I seal them with parcel tape.

This is why I prefer my metal 'pirate's chests' because they really do keep things dry.

[andyh4]

Re balls or bottles down the loo pan versus salt, I think that depends on where you are in France.

Those close to the coast and at low altitudes will get away with a plastic container that will be flattened as the ice forms. At higher altitudes and further from the sea (And I think the OP qualifies on both counts) salt is a better bet. There are some opinions that salt can impact on a fosse septique, but there seems to be little hard fact to back up the assertion that it can cause clay in the outflow to agglomerate. There is no debate however that a completely frozen pan (ball or no ball) can shatter on thawing.

Edited to say that if there ere a real problem then I am sure that dishwashers and water softeners would carry a health warning for those on non-mains drainage - and they don't.

Re: beds and bedding getting damp. - one advantage of having very low winter temperatures is that the air becomes very dry indeed and damp becomes less of a problem tat it might be elsewhere.

[Théière]

[quote user="You can call me Betty"]They do, Teapot, they do. I speak having just packed away 3 or 4 double duvets (and more than one per bag) in some huge vacuum bags I got from Poudland...

That said, I went back to get more and they haven't got the gigantic ones at the moment, but I'm sure they will have them again.

[/quote]

Betty I meant mattress size,  What I am curious about is despite a few saying that the thick walls are insulation on their own blah blah. The relatives' poly tunnel in the garden being just plastic sheet is so much warmer and dryer I am thinking of selling the house and buying a two story poly tunnel [I]