A power outage at home is an inconvenience. At a cottage nobody’s at, it can turn into a real mess. The heat stops, the pipes start to cool, and you might not find out for days.
Most of that can be headed off in the fall with a bit of planning. Here’s where to start.
What goes down with the power
Cottages lean on electricity for a lot more than the lights. When it drops, the furnace fan or heat pump stops, even if the fuel is propane or oil. The well pump goes, and your running water with it. So does the internet connection, along with every alert that travels over it. Any thermostat, sensor or camera that isn’t on backup power goes dark too.
That last one trips people up. The app just shows the cottage as offline, and there’s no way to tell why.
How long they last
Most outages are short. The lights blink and come back. But freezing rain, sleet, and high winds can damage power lines and equipment across a whole area, and some outages last days, or even weeks.
A short outage rarely matters at a cottage. A long one in the middle of a cold snap can freeze a building nobody is watching.
Drained or heated?
The big call is whether you drain the place or keep it heated. Drain it, and there’s very little water left to freeze. Keep it heated and it stays comfortable, but everything hinges on the heat never stopping. Summit Logic has a winter shutdown guide that weighs both approaches and covers freeze sensors, leak alerts and an automatic water shut-off valve.
Pick one and commit to it. Doing half of each is where the trouble starts.
If you’re not sure which way to go, think about how often you actually come up in winter. A place you visit most weekends is a different case from one that sits empty until May.
Test your alerts
An alert is only useful if it reaches you, and during an outage that’s the tricky part. Before you close up, cut the power to the network equipment and see what your phone does. If it goes quiet, you’ve found what needs fixing before winter rather than after the first storm.
Use the federal checklist
Public Safety Canada’s Get Prepared guidance is a solid starting point for any property. Among other things, it suggests you learn how to shut off the water system and drain the plumbing, since pipes can freeze during winter outages.
It covers generators, too. Portable fuel-burning generators should run at least 6 metres from any building. A backup generator can only connect to a home’s wiring through an approved transfer panel and switch, installed by a qualified electrician. And never plug a generator into a wall outlet.
Line up local help
Technology can tell you something’s wrong. It can’t fix it. Before winter, work out who can get to the cottage after a storm and how they’ll get in. Find the main water shut-off and keep a photo of it on your phone. Save the numbers for your fuel supplier and your hydro utility while you’re at it.
After a big storm, check the cottage in your app. If it’s showing offline, call someone local before assuming the worst, and ask them to check the heat and look for water on the floor.
Outages come with rural winters, especially in cottage country. You can’t stop them. What you can do is decide ahead of time what happens when one hits, and that turns a potential disaster into a phone call.