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Winterizing the cottage

Case study 3: what about venting?

By Charles Long

Ian Coristine has two cottages on the St. Lawrence: one is an island, and the other is a mainland cottage that sits on the riverbank at Jones Creek, providing easy access to the island. The island cottage was built in 1917 and couldn’t be winterized effectively without destroying the character that makes it so special.

The mainland building, however, has possibilities for winterization. “Twenty-five thousand and a lot of TLC fixed it up enough to rent out all summer. In summer, I’d rather be out on the island,” Coristine says. “As long as I’m the landlord, nobody gives me funny looks for trekking across the lawn with a load of groceries on my way to the island.” In the winter, he lives in Hudson, Que., but he’s beginning to yearn for some cold-season time in the Thousand Islands.

The mainland place has a bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bath in the central section, and three more bedrooms in a wing of their own. The former owners made some use of the cottage in winter, probably without water, since the system is housed in an unprotected shed outside. There are baseboard heaters and Coristine thinks there might be some insulation in the walls, but has no idea how much.

For his limited needs, Coristine is considering leaving the baseboard heaters for standby heat, and adding a propane fireplace for comfort temperatures. He has also thought about ways to close off the three-bedroom wing, heating the main section while leaving the extra bedrooms to chill.

The challenge in closing off any one part of a building for winter use is to prevent air leakage from the heated section into the unheated portion; it’s not just the heat loss, it’s the humidity problem again. 

At a minimum, Coristine should frame in the open end of the hall that leads into the bedroom wing, and hang a tight-fitting exterior door with sill, jambs, and weatherstripping. For a little more mess and money, he could also insulate the partition wall between the two sections: inject foam between the studs, or pull off the drywall on the living room side and install batts and vapour barrier. It’s not as if he has any sentimental attachment to the drywall, and it isn’t hard to replace.

That still leaves the possibility of air transfer via the connecting attic or the crawl space. Both should be vented in any case. If the vents are adequate, most of the warm air that escapes from the living area should vent to the outdoors rather than into the closed bedroom wing. And while he’s in the attic checking the vents, Coristine might also check the depth of insulation between the ceiling joists. It’s an unused attic and a simple task to spread a deeper layer of loose-fill insulation. He just has to be careful not to block those vents at the soffit or on the roof.

Back in the living section, he’ll want to do a thorough round of draft-proofing: caulking around windows and doors and along baseboards. Leaky doors will need weatherstripping, and drafty windows may need new seals around the parts that open; those vinyl or fibre strips never last as long as the windows. Draft-proofing is an effective first step in any winterizing project. It’s cheap, simple DIY, and if you don’t get all the drafts on the first attempt, the overlooked areas will make themselves apparent on the first winter visit.

Finally, Coristine will want to check the bathroom and kitchen vents, and remind any renters to use them, whether or not they create a little draft. The fans exhaust humid air, and it’s worth some heat loss to prevent rot and mould in the walls. The high-end fix for heat loss during venting is a heat exchanger, in which incoming cold air is warmed by the exhaust. Whether it’s worth spending $500 and up on the hardware alone is between you and your cottage budget. The traditional approach to a weekend’s worth of built-up humidity is a thorough airing at the end of a winter visit – with fans if you have them. It’s low-budget and low-tech. And for the occasional use of a hard-to-retrofit cottage, good ventila-tion may be good enough. The trade-off remains the additional cost of heating versus the cost of winterizing renovations.

 

Photo: Eden Robbins

 

Winter 2007 coverAdapted from an article originally published in the Winter 2007 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

Copyright © 2007 by Cottage Life. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any article, photograph, or artwork, for other than personal use, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the publisher is strictly forbidden.