I thought when you de-winterise the house simply by turning on the water. i’m confused.
rewardiflost: If you’re going to turn on the water, then the house is no longer “winterized” . If you are done with winter, and it is your house, then carefully bring the water back up to pressure. There’s air in the lines, so you may get “water hammer” until you refill all the lines.
cecilkorik: You are correct, that is how you de-winterize the house. The problem is, the owners do not want the house to be accidentally de-winterized without their knowledge. What would happen? Water would get into the pipes and then it would freeze and then the pipes would burst and then it would melt and then there would be a flood.
“Do not turn on water” implies the unwritten continuation “until the person who added this sign says it is safe to do so”. It is the owner’s right alone to decide when to de-winterize their house, not any potential visitors.
The warning is for if someone who is not familiar with three-season cottages or does not realize that the house is not fully winterized happens to end up in the house. It is common when owners are away to turn the water off, whether your cottage is winterized or not. Any visitors, however they might’ve ended up there, may know this and they may turn the water back on temporarily, for example to wash their hands or flush the toilet, and then shut it back off again to “leave it the way they found it”, not realizing that their “temporary” change has permanent effects by refilling all the water lines that had been carefully drained before that. They may not understand that they can cause enormous, potentially catastrophic damage to the house with their actions.
Habfan18: If you don’t rewinterize after, the water in the plumbing lines could freeze causing them to burst and eventually you’ll have quite the mess on your hands. Lots of water damage if the property isn’t regularly inspected.
mynameisalso: In every drain is a little u bend. Water sits at the bottom of the U. If it freezes it burst pipes. This is a shitty part about buying bank owned properties. There’s also water in toilet tanks, water heater, and toilets. I it freezes it could be tens of thousands in damage.
Imagine a shitter froze and cracked and ran for a month. The water bill alone could be 4 figures, and the water damage I could not imagine.
FWIW I bought a house like this but I totally gutted it.
Before
https://youtu.be/LgZjWNcBm5o
After