Winterising Your Holiday Home

We want you to return to your holiday home in 2024 relaxed and ready to enjoy another season. Remember it is better to prevent an incident than perform what could be an expensive clean up or fix afterwards.

We have put together some top tips and a checklist to help keep your holiday home safe this winter:

1. Book a drain down to be performed on your holiday home, remember if water is present it can freeze, remove it and nothing can freeze.
2. Turn your stopcock off every time you leave your holiday home between 31 October and 1 March or whatever your insurance requires. By leaving your stopcock on, you are unlikely to be insured against any damage arising from the bursting or overflowing of water pipes.
3. Close all windows and skylights securely to minimise moisture getting into your holiday home.
4. Empty and clean out fridges and freezers, disconnect from the power supply and leave the doors ajar to enable fresh air circulation.
5. Leave internal doors open to allow airflow through your holiday home, this will help prevent condensation building up.
6. Stack any removable upholstery and mattresses away from the outer walls and place in the middle of the room.
7. Ensure you have removed or secured any furniture on your decking to prevent it getting blown away/or stolen over the winter months.
8. Place moisture traps around the rooms of your holiday home as this will help extract condensation in the air and reduce the likelihood of condensation or mould build-up. Bowls of salt can be used for this purpose however many supermarkets have cheap moisture traps available which will perform the same task.
9. For security, remove all valuables and leave cupboards and curtains open. Place a sign in the window to say no valuables have been left in your holiday home.
10. Have your combination boiler or water heaters serviced, this will help prevent any unexpected breakdowns when you return in the spring.

Please remember that during the closed period we may have to disrupt the services to your holiday home for essential maintenance which means it may be without gas and/or electricity at some point.

Regards,

Dave Black, Group Head of Health Safety and Estates