Summer is almost over — how to prepare your cabin for winter

How to safely close your summer cabin for winter: water and pipes, heating, roof and deck, and what to sort out indoors before you lock the door for the season.

Summer is almost over — how to prepare your cabin for winter

The season is winding down, and for most summer cabins that means several months of standing empty. Close it down properly and you'll find it in good shape come spring. Skip it, or do it half-heartedly, and burst pipes from frost are the most common — and most expensive — consequence.

Here's the checklist for putting your cabin into winter hibernation.

Water and pipes — the most important step

Frost damage to pipes is by far the most common winter problem for summer cabins without year-round heating.

Shut the main stopcock and drain all water from the pipe system, including the water heater.
Open the taps — kitchen, bathroom, outdoor tap — so any remaining water has somewhere to expand without splitting the pipe.
Toilet: empty the cistern, and consider adding a little antifreeze to the trap so it doesn't dry out and let smells in.
Drain the water heater completely — it holds a lot of water and is expensive to replace.
If the cabin has piped water from a well or shared system, check whether there are separate shut-off routines — these vary between systems.

Heating and electricity

How you handle power depends on whether you want the cabin fully switched off or lightly frost-protected. That's a genuine cost trade-off — see running costs on an empty cabin for a closer look.

Whichever you choose:

Check that any thermostat-controlled heaters are set to a sensible frost-guard temperature, not fully off.
Unplug everything else that doesn't need to stay on — coffee maker, TV, chargers.

Outside: roof, gutters and deck

Clear gutters and downpipes of leaves before the frost arrives, so water doesn't freeze and force the gutter loose.
Check the roof for loose tiles or damage from the summer's weather — easier to spot and fix now than after a heavy snow winter.
Bring in or secure outdoor furniture, the grill and other loose items that could be caught by wind or sit under snow all winter and rust.
Shut off outdoor taps and disconnect hoses.

Indoors: food, waste and pests

Empty the fridge and freezer, and leave the doors ajar so mould doesn't form over winter. Switch off their power if they're not needed for frost protection of something else.
Take or throw away all food that could attract pests — mice are the classic problem in a cabin left standing empty.
Empty the bins and check there are no food scraps elsewhere in the cabin.
Close windows and doors properly, and check that trim and weatherstripping are intact — that's also where mice find their way in.

Insurance and checking in

Two things are easy to overlook because they're not a physical checklist item: whether your insurance actually covers a cabin left unused for months, and who checks in while you're away. Both deserve their own read:

The counterpart to this list

This checklist is for closing the cabin for the season. In spring, when it's time to open it back up, a different list applies — the complete checklist for preparing your summer cabin for the season. Worth bookmarking both; you'll need them every spring and every autumn.

Keep track of the closing routine every year

A winter closing is easy to do differently from one year to the next — what got checked, what got put off, what needs remembering next time. Digital Hyttebok lets you write down what was done, year after year, and put maintenance items straight into the plan — so autumn's closing doesn't rely on memory alone.