Summer Home Winterization · Northern Michigan
Winterizing a Summer Home in Northern Michigan: Our Traverse City Checklist
The Sunday after Labor Day the calls start. Someone is loading a car on Old Mission, the boat is already out, and they want to know what to switch off before they lock the door until May.
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It is a fair question with a bad common answer. Most people shut everything down. Then they drive back in the spring to a soaked subfloor and a furnace that will not light.
We are a HVAC contractor working out of Traverse City, and a good share of what we touch every fall is seasonal property. Cottages on the peninsulas. Lake places in Leelanau. Family houses that sit dark from October to Memorial Day. This is the checklist we actually use.
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Common Problems
An Empty House Up Here Gets Cold Faster Than You Think
A lived-in house makes its own heat. Bodies, showers, the oven, a dryer running. Take all of that out and the building loses the small margin that was keeping the cold edges above freezing.
Seasonal places are worse again. A lot of them were built as summer cottages and insulated like it. Crawlspaces are vented. Pipe runs sit in exterior walls because nobody in 1968 was planning on February.
Then the wind comes off the bay.
So what actually breaks first when a house sits empty through a Northern Michigan January?
Almost always the water. Not the furnace, not the roof. A supply line in an outside wall or an unheated crawl gives up at three in the morning in a cold snap, and it runs until somebody notices. That can be weeks.
Straight Talk
Leave the Heat On. Set It Low.
This is the one we argue about most, so here is our position plainly: do not shut the furnace off.
Set it to 55. That is warm enough to keep wall cavities and crawl runs out of trouble and cheap enough that you are not heating an empty house for nothing. If the place is well sealed and the plumbing is all interior, 50 is defensible. Below that you are gambling.
The thermostat matters more than people expect. A basic unit does the job, but a connected one will tell you the house dropped to 41 while you are sitting in Florida, which is the whole point. We put in a lot of smart thermostats for Northern Michigan homes on seasonal property for exactly that reason. A text at 41 degrees is a phone call. A discovery in April is a claim.
Two more things before you leave:
- Open the cabinet doors under every sink on an exterior wall. Free, and it works.
- Leave interior doors open so the heat moves. Closed bedroom doors make cold rooms.
Common Problems
The Water Side Is What Wrecks the House
Heat protects the pipes. Draining removes the argument entirely.
If the property will be empty for months and nobody is checking it, shutting off and draining the water is the stronger play. Shut the main. Open every fixture, low ones last. Drain the water heater. Blow out what will not gravity drain. Pour a little RV antifreeze in every trap so the drains do not dry out and let sewer gas back into the house.
That last one is why places smell wrong in spring.
Ever come back in April to a smell you cannot place?
That is usually a dry P-trap, not a dead animal, and it costs a dollar of antifreeze in the fall to avoid.
We handle heating, cooling and plumbing, so a fall visit does not need two trucks and two schedules. One visit, both sides of the house.
What We Install
What We Check Before You Lock Up
The heating side of a proper close-up is not complicated, but it is specific.
1. Full furnace check first.
No point setting a house to 55 on a furnace that will quit in December. We inspect the heat exchanger, test ignition, and read the flame sensor. In our experience the seasonal units fail at ignition far more than anything else, because they sat idle all summer.
2. New filter.
A restricted filter makes a furnace short cycle, and a short cycling furnace in an empty house is a furnace that eventually locks out. Fresh filter, and we tell you what it takes so you can leave a spare on the shelf.
3. Combustion venting cleared.
We check the intake and exhaust terminations outside and make sure they are high and clear. Drifting snow blocking a PVC vent will trip the pressure switch and stop the whole thing. That is the most common winter no-heat call we get on empty houses.
4. Condensate handled.
High efficiency furnaces make water. That line has to drain somewhere that will not freeze, and it needs a float switch. We have seen what an unmanaged condensate line does to a floor, and we are not casual about it.
5. Carbon monoxide test.
Standard on our visits, and it matters more on a house nobody is walking through daily. If you want the background, we wrote about the signs of carbon monoxide from a furnace.
6. Thermostat set and confirmed.
Set point locked, batteries new, and if it is connected we watch it report once before we leave.
If the furnace is old enough that we would not bet on it, we say so then, in September, when furnace installation and replacement is a scheduled job instead of a scramble. According to most manufacturers' service literature, useful life on a residential furnace runs 15 to 20 years, and seasonal units age worse because of the long idle stretches and the moisture that comes with them.
Common Problems
Should You Cover the Outdoor AC Unit?
Our honest answer: mostly no, and definitely not with a full wrap.
A sealed cover traps moisture against the coil and gives mice a dry place to spend the winter chewing wiring. We have pulled nests out of covered condensers more than once. A hard top cover that shields the fan from falling ice while leaving the sides open is fine. A tarp bungeed around the whole thing is asking for it.
Clear the leaves out, keep snow from drifting solid against it, and leave it alone. We went deeper on this in our piece on covering your AC through a Northern Michigan winter.
Straight Talk
What Drives the Cost of Winterizing a Summer Home
There is no flat number, and anyone quoting you one over the phone has not seen the house. What moves it:
- Whether you are heating through or draining down. Draining is more labor in the fall and more labor again in the spring.
- Furnace condition. A clean unit needing a filter and a set point is a short visit. One needing parts is not.
- Plumbing layout. A house with interior runs and a single shutoff is simple. A rambling cottage with three additions and pipe in every outside wall is not.
- Access. Crawlspaces you have to belly through cost more than a full basement. That is just true.
The number worth holding in your head is not our invoice. It is what a burst supply line does to a house nobody visits for six weeks. That is the comparison.
Common Problems
Opening the Place Back Up in Spring
Do it in the same order, backwards, and slowly.
Close the taps before you turn the main back on, then bring pressure up gradually and walk the whole house looking and listening. Fill the water heater completely before you power it, or you will burn out the element. Pull the AC cover, check the coil for nests, and get the cooling side looked at before the first hot week rather than during it.
We schedule spring startups around Traverse City from April, and we book the peninsulas early because everyone wants the same two weekends. Our heating and cooling maintenance plans cover both ends of the year on one schedule, which is mostly why seasonal owners use them.
Frequently asked questions
Summer Home Winterization, answered