Farm Project #20 Winterize

 Farm Project #20:  Winterize

After hosting the annual deer hunt which, this year, was pretty nice weather, it is time to winterize and close up the farm, ending another summer season.

Starting on Sunday, when some hunters are heading home, but Julius was still tenting out by the fire pit, Cathy and I put tarps over the patio doors, put the grille in the garage, and I began draining water lines in the house while she began putting some kitchen and bathroom things that are subject to freezing, into a couple of plastic crates that we store in the pump room where it doesn't get super cold.

The water heater has to drain through a hose into the floor drain under the bed.  While that is happening, I open all the spigots in the house so the head of water leaving the heater sucks all the water down that it can, which is most of it.  

I pull the clothes dryer forward so that I can squeeze in behind it and detach the feed tubes to the washer.  I also flush toilets upstairs and down and drain the little valve behind the downstairs toilet which empties a low spot covered up by shower tiles that would freeze and burst behind the wall if I didn't.

Then I hook up the Binks compressor to the spigot below the pressure tank and turn it on, roaming all over the house seeing to it that each outlet drains until air and bubbles only come out of it.

The outside lines have already been drained and blown out, and the valves closed to them.

Then some RV anti-freeze in every drain and toilet, some into the clotheswasher and the drain and spin cycle run for a couple minutes to get it into the lines.  I would do the same to the dishwasher upstairs but it hasn't been turned on all summer since I fixed and reinstalled it.

Took the battery out of the VW in the garage and put it in the back pump room up on the ammo crate.  I did this last year with the Subaru and it had held nicely thru the winter.  Popped right on in the spring without needing to be jumped.

Then we locked up and left until next spring when we open back up.  This saves a tremendous amount of heating cost and leaves the place worry free of anything catastrophic happening in our absence.