Shutting Down the Cottage Water System for Winter
October is shutdown season. The order to do it in, the parts freezing water destroys first, and what to check before anyone drinks the water in spring.
By Danny Lachhman · Owner, 360WATER Systems Inc. · Orangeville, Ontario
If your cottage or rural property sits unheated over the winter, the water treatment equipment needs the same respect as the plumbing — frozen water doesn’t care whether it’s in a pipe, a filter housing, or a softener tank. It expands, and something splits.
The Shutdown, in Order
- Shut the water off at the source (well pump off, or town supply closed) and open taps to drain the lines down, including the lowest points.
- Put the softener and filters on bypass, then drain them. Filter housings come right off and get emptied — housings are thin plastic and are usually the first casualty of a freeze. A softener doesn’t need to be bone dry, but it should be drained as far as it will go.
- Drain the RO system — storage tank emptied, filters out. If you’re shutting down for the whole season, the membrane comes out, goes into a sealed bag with a little water, and lives in the fridge until spring; a dried-out membrane is a dead one.
- Drain the UV chamber. The quartz sleeve inside is glass in everything but name, and a frozen chamber can crack it.
- Traps and toilet: plumbing antifreeze — the non-toxic pink propylene glycol kind, never automotive antifreeze — into every trap and the toilet bowl and tank.
Keeping the Heat On Instead?
That works until the power goes out during the coldest night of the year, which is exactly when it goes out. Plenty of people winterize anyway as insurance. Your call — but make it a decision, not a default.
In Spring
Put it back together, sanitize before drinking, replace the filters you pulled, and get a bacteria sample to the public health unit before the well water goes in anyone’s glass. Testing is free through public health in Ontario, and after a winter of sitting, it’s not optional in our book.
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