Preparing the cottage for winter

Contents

In home
Location on
Note
Popular questions and answers

Most summer residents visit their plots only during the warm season; they do not come there during the cold season. But in order to avoid problems in the spring, it is necessary to prepare the site and the house for wintering in the fall. What do you need to pay attention to?

In home

Many summer residents do not come to the dacha in winter and uninvited guests can settle in the house. For example, mice. And during the winter, pathogens can breed.

Spring cleaning

Leaving the house untidy in the winter is a bad decision. While you are gone, which is at least 4 months, pathogenic bacteria will actively multiply in the dirt, dust mites will actively multiply in the dust, which can cause allergies in people and dermatitis in pets (1). Therefore, it is important to clean up before leaving.

Sweep and mop floors, wipe down all surfaces, shake rugs. Take bed linen and clothes with you to the city – there you will wash them, and in the spring you will bring them clean. The fewer dust collectors left in the winter, the better.

hide products

In general, ideally, take all the products with you to the city, so as not to give mice a chance. But it happens that the stocks of cereals, pasta and tea are quite large, there is nowhere to keep them in the apartment. Then you need to carefully hide them.

Wooden cabinets are not suitable for this – hungry rodents easily gnaw holes in the doors of tables. And then, in addition to spoiled products, you will also get damaged furniture.

Hiding food on cabinets and shelves is also a bad idea, because mice are very dexterous and can climb anywhere, even up the wall.

The best way to store food is to hang it from the ceiling. Rodents won’t get there. Or put them in metal jars or pans and cover with lids. It is advisable to tie the covers with wire to the handles, because mice sometimes manage to move them and get inside.

Scare away mice

Many summer residents solve the problem with mice radically – they place mousetraps around the house, lay out poisonous baits or planks smeared with special glue. These are effective means, but you should not leave them in the winter. By spring, you will get half-decayed mice, and this is a source of dangerous infections. In addition, then you will get rid of the unpleasant smell for a long time.

The best way is to lay out and hang bunches of mint, tansy or wormwood around the rooms. Mice do not like their smell and will try to bypass your home.

Well, if you have already decided on drastic measures, then choose drugs that cause suffocation in rodents – after such baits it becomes difficult for animals to breathe, they get out into the open air and die there.

Tape up the windows, close the shutters

Especially if your windows are wooden – they always have gaps and the house cools down very much in winter. But if you caulk them with hemp, cotton wool or foam rubber, and then glue them with paper, the room will be much warmer. In the spring (or winter, if you decide to visit the site), it will be easier to heat the house.

If there are shutters on the windows, be sure to close them, and it is better to lock them so that uninvited guests cannot look inside the house and look after something valuable. In general, everything of value should be taken to the city.

Drain all the water

Turn off the water supply. Check all taps and tanks (boiler, toilet bowl, washstand) – they should go dry in the winter. To remove residual water from the water supply, it can be blown with a compressor. Leave the taps open – during thaws, condensate can accumulate in them, which then freezes and can damage the water supply system. And through the open faucet, it will drain. Unscrew the siphons under the sink.

Turn off appliances and turn off the gas

These are basic fire safety rules.

Close all burners, close the gas pipe. If there is a gas cylinder in the house, take it to a distant barn.

Unplug all plugs from the sockets, and if there is an electrical panel, turn it off.

It seems to be simple rules, but for some reason they are often not followed. Meanwhile, according to statistics, violation of the rules for the construction and operation of electrical equipment and household electrical appliances is in second place among the causes of fires, giving way to careless handling of fire (2).

Location on

In the garden and garden before winter, you also need to tidy up – this will make it easier for you to work in the spring.

Flip containers

Dry all hoses and put them in the shed or house. From buckets, barrels, and water containers, drain the water and turn them upside down so that they are not attacked by snow that grows in the thaw and turns into ice.

Grease the locks

Lubricate all the locks on the house and buildings with machine oil, and pour a special liquid for locks into the key hole – it will prevent the mechanism from freezing.

To prevent water from getting into the locks in winter, put caps cut out of plastic bottles on them.

Rake up leaves and dry grass

Most gardeners open the summer season in early April, or even in the middle, when the sowing season begins. And the snow often melts in March. And at this time, neighbors or residents of the surrounding villages traditionally begin to burn dry grass.

To prevent the fire from spreading to your site, rake up all dry leaves and withered grass. Optional on the entire site – this is an excellent mulch and fertilizer (3). But along the fence – by all means!

Clean the drains

Inspect drains, drains, and drainage ditches for blockages. The same leaves could get there, the earth could fill up over the summer. And then in the spring you will have a flood on the site. Therefore, it is important to clean them thoroughly.

It is useful to put gratings over open drainage ditches so that debris does not attack them in winter.

Hang bird feeders

Did you know that one great tit eats about 350 caterpillars and cocoons per day, which it gets from under the bark of trees, in crowns and under leaves on the ground? And one pair of tits is able to clean up to 40 fruit trees from pests. We really need such helpers in the garden!

To attract these birds to the garden, hang long-playing feeders there. There are 2 easy options.

Bottle. A bottle from a cooler is ideal – its volume is 20 liters, and if you fill it with food, it will last almost until spring.

Nail a tray with sides tightly to the tree, and fix an inverted bottle above it so that there is a small gap between the neck and the tray and the food spills out in small portions.

Bag. This option is even easier. Pour seeds into a bag, tie it up and lay it on its side somewhere under a canopy so that it does not snow in winter. Make a couple of small holes (about 1 cm in diameter) in the bag on the upper side so that the birds can fish seeds out of there.

It is best to pour sunflower seeds into the bag – tits love them very much (4).

Note

In general, it is believed that in winter one must either live in a country house, or mothball it for the whole winter and not come there until spring. Rare raids have a bad effect on buildings, especially wooden ones.

During each visit, of course, you will heat the house. It will heat up and dry out. Then it cools down and dries up. And if there are several such drops during the winter, cracks and mold may appear on the walls by spring.