Preparing the dacha for winter: work on the garden plot, warming the summer frame country house for living in the cold

Action plan

To keep your property and summer cottages safe and sound, it’s not enough just to put things in order in the rooms and hang a huge padlock on the door of the house. At the dacha, a lot of other worries await you: you need to prepare the land on the site for winter, protect bushes and fruit trees from rodents, and plant winter crops. A garden house requires special attention, which requires careful preparation for wintering.

Thinking about how to prepare your cottage for the upcoming winter, all work can be divided into internal and external.

Internal work

The optimal work plan for the house:

1. Restoring order in the premises, carrying out wet cleaning.
2. We check the windows. Carefully close them, if necessary – caulk the cracks and seal them from drafts.
3. Big Wash. Be sure to wash all textiles, including bedspreads, curtains, and bedding.
4. Moth protection. Place special tablets in chests of drawers and cabinets, especially if you store woolen items.
5. I wash dishes. We carefully clean all kitchen utensils, if possible, hide them in boxes.
6. Protecting furniture. We cover it with a film or special protective covers.
7. Cooking electrical appliances. Disconnect them from power, wipe from dust. If there is such an opportunity, we take them away from the country house, since there is a high probability of their failure due to dampness.
8. We remove or pour products with a long shelf life into sealed containers: pasta, cereals, sugar.
9. We protect the house from rodents – we lay out branches of wormwood in the rooms.

The more attractive your site and house looks from the outside, the more temptation it will cause to visit it from possible uninvited guests. The winter months are especially dangerous for summer cottages, even for those located in the Moscow region, since it is at this time that the number of thefts increases. But even the loss of property is not the main danger. Sometimes, as a result of the visit of thieves, you can completely lose your country house. Therefore, if installing an alarm or paying for the work of a watchman is not yet in your plans, insure your property against theft and accident. The most valuable things can be hidden by first organizing a special cache.

If not all construction work has been completed yet, and you have a supply of any building materials (wooden beams or bricks), try to hide them away from prying eyes.

If your house has a cellar, then it needs to be cleaned and disinfected. Even if this room is not used for storing crops, it still needs to be prepared for winter, since most problems with the house begin with the cellar.

Be sure to think about whether you plan to come to the country during the winter months. If the walls of the house are reliably insulated and a heating system is provided, a short-term stay in a country house will be appropriate. In this case, it is worth taking care of the advance preparation of firewood, unless, of course, you have a stove rather than steam heating.

outdoor work

The most important stage in preparing a summer cottage for winter, along with autumn work on the beds, is the insulation of the facades of outbuildings and especially a residential house. This is necessary so that the room retains heat during the winter months (if you plan to winter here). In addition, you probably store the harvested crop of vegetables and fruits, which do not need to get acquainted with winter frosts. It is possible to provide thermal insulation of a country house with the help of mineral wool or to sheathe the frame building from the outside with foam sheets. It is unnecessary to remind you that you have to carry out insulation work only once, the main thing is to do it reliably and efficiently.

Now we check the roof: are there any places where the roof has leaked, have wooden elements started to rot anywhere, has mold appeared. If any problems are found, immediately fix them, as the roof can leak during short-term winter thaws or when snow melts in the spring, and this will inevitably affect the quality of the entire roof structure.

Another important point is the likely presence of wasp nests in the attic of the house. As a rule, these uninvited guests appear at the most unexpected moment. If there are any, get rid of them immediately, as in the autumn the insects are in a state of inhibition, and it will be easier to do this.

Gutters, which must be thoroughly cleaned of fallen leaves and small debris, also deserve attention. You can cover them with tin sheets or even remove them – so they will be protected from ice and large snow masses.

Explore canopies and awnings separately. Remember that a layer of snow 50 cm thick exerts a pressure of approximately 60 kg per square meter. If you are not sure that the visors will withstand such a load, it is better to remove them.

If you leave the dacha before spring, and do not plan to visit it in the winter, take care of the windows. It is better to close them tightly with wooden shields so that the glass does not break with sharp gusts of winter wind. Carefully caulk and seal all the cracks so that the draft does not chill the walls: because of this, condensation may appear on the inner surfaces of the house and, as a result, fungus.

Video “Rules for preparing the cottage for winter”

From this video you will learn how to properly prepare the cottage for the winter period.

Not forget!

In addition to the mandatory preparatory work in the house on the eve of winter, you need to remember some more important nuances:

1. When leaving the cottage for a long time, be sure to turn off the gas and turn off the electricity for safety reasons.
2. If the house has running water, it is also turned off, and all the water in the system is drained. We leave all ball valves of the plumbing system slightly ajar so that the remaining water does not split them. The same applies to automatic irrigation systems.
3. If one of your dacha neighbors stays over the winter, be sure to exchange contacts and ask them to look after the site.
4. Be sure to check the health of the heating system to avoid unpleasant surprises during winter visits.
5. Be sure to lubricate all locks and locking structures to protect them from moisture. Those of them that are on the street will be useful to protect with a simple cap cut from a plastic bottle.

The set of mandatory actions in terms of preparing a country house for wintering is not at all complicated. But in the spring you will return to a clean and tidy house, where there is no damp smell and no other problems.

Do not neglect these works, since it depends on them how well your dacha will spend the long winter alone, and how it will meet you in the spring.