Hello,

We have a second home that we shut down for the winter, usually in Nov.. We were planning on doing it in 2 weeks.

It’s gonna drop down to -5C/23F on Wednesday. Should I be worried. Looks like just the one night of below freezing temps. Home is a 2 story log cabin built on an exposed concrete block basement with dirt floor.

 

Is there heat?

Even if not one night of mild temps should be ok, it's when it gets down in the -XX temps that one night can cause issues!

But would not wait much longer!

 

Anybody know what US State or Canadian Province Aelk799 is located in ?

Before I moved here to Vermont, I used to have a Hunting Lodge for vacationing and I would use the calendar to time when it was necessary to drain the water lines and toilet tank . . . . and that had to be before Armistice Day (November 11th).

One time came up here from Massachusetts at that time and found a couple small islands of ice floating in the toilet bowl and in the toilet's tank . . . . that indicated to me that waiting any longer could cause problems; so I didn't risk it.

My place was off-the -grid and only had heat when I was there: wood heat by fireplace, wood cook stove, wood hot water heater, indoor barbeque, and water pumped up by a gasoline to a holding tank above the ceiling for gravity feed water . . . not something I wanted to turn into ice.

 

No heat. Located in Ontario, Canada.

 

I agree with Marq. It's rare for freezing to occur over one night of cold. Mostly because the daytime temps are well above freezing, warming up the house, pipes and water. So it's really only below freezing for a couple hours.

You can always leave the water dripping a bit to keep it moving and less likely to freeze.