Jim Rooney, On the Level columnist (Courtesy photo)

My question is about winterizing our house for this winter while we are away. We have baseboard hot water heat and plan to leave the temperature set at around 55 degrees. We are on well water and I would like to know if it is OK to shut the water off by turning power off to the pump, or do we need to leave the water on for the hot water heating system? Given the high price of heating oil, does it make sense to just turn the heat off and winterize all the water pipes? We do have a neighbor who will be looking in on the house periodically while we are away.

I hesitate to advocate winterizing a modern house the way we traditionally know and understand the term. Completely shutting down and draining a hot water heating system, plus the water heater and interior plumbing lines and, with a well, draining any well equipment that may be in danger of freezing, such as pressure tanks and conditioning systems, to me is a sure recipe for trouble.

Boilers (that's what the water heating device supplying your baseboard heaters is called even though it doesn't produce steam) don't like to go cold. Metals shrink and gaskets get loose and they end up leaking. And even a teaspoon of water left in a water line in the wrong place can freeze and cause trouble that you only find when you turn things back on.

That's why when you enter a professionally and traditionally winterized house you see big red warning signs on all of the plumbing fixtures warning you that it has been turned off and drained down and returning it to service requires special attention. Foreclosed houses are always shut down, both water and electricity, and that can hurt a house. I won't turn water or power back on if I encounter them off during an inspection and I've been in situations where someone who didn't know what they were doing took it upon themselves to turn the water back on. A disaster ensued with open valves all over the place spewing water where it had to be mopped up. Close the house back up and it becomes a mold factory.

Additionally, houses themselves don't like to get cold. It takes a while but all the construction materials get cold and some may begin to change shape. Shrinking and cracking wood and drywall takes place and things don't necessarily return to their original shape when they warm back up.

I told my thrifty sister this who has a vacation home in Vermont that she would close down between visits during the winter months. It wasn't so much the cracking materials that changed her mind but the experience of returning to a cold house and, even with the furnace going full blast, having it take up to six hours to finally warm the house all the way to a comfort level that finally got her attention.

Now they drain the water system down, put antifreeze in traps and toilets and leave the furnace set at 48ºF. She tells me she can get back on line in about an hour now. Vermont winters routinely get well below zero so we can count ourselves lucky as zero is rare here but it does get cold. Houses begin to become at risk of interior freezing when the thermometer gets to about 25ºF and lower outside, assuming no wind for an around the clock period. Houses will pick up a solar heat gain during the day that helps them through the night.

Given what can go wrong by completely winterizing your house by turning the boiler off and draining it down versus the cost of keeping the system at a bare minimum is for me a no-brainer. The cost and hassle of repairing what may happen makes the cost of oil look pretty cheap. And yes, you do need to keep supply water going to the boiler. The boiler probably has a low-water cut-off in the event its water level decreases for some reason and a malfunction is the only reason I can think that would cause that.

Your ace in the hole is the neighbor who will be looking in from time to time. Make sure your neighbor has any of the contact numbers, such as your boiler service provider, plumber and especially you in the event calls need to be made. And when you come home remember to treat this friendly neighbor to dinner in appreciation. That's money well spent.

Keep the mail coming. If you've got a question, tip, or comment let me know. Write "On The Level," c/o The Capital, P.O. Box 3407, Annapolis, MD 21403 or e-mail me at inspektor@aol.com.