Spring startup is where you find out whether the fall shutdown worked. Do it slowly and you discover a hairline crack while standing next to it with a valve in your hand. Do it fast and you discover it as a stain spreading across a finished ceiling. The difference is about twenty minutes of patience.
This is the step people skip and it’s the one that saves houses. Before you touch a valve, walk every accessible run of pipe with a flashlight — basement, crawlspace, under sinks, behind the water heater, wherever supply lines are visible.
You’re looking for a bulge or a longitudinal split in copper or PEX, a fitting that’s been pushed apart, and green or white staining on copper, which is corrosion from a leak that already happened. A pipe that froze and cracked usually looks wrong before it’s pressurized. Ten minutes here is worth more than everything else on this page.
While you’re at it, look for evidence of the other winter tenants. Mice chew, squirrels get into crawlspaces, and both of them find insulation on pipes attractive.
Every faucet and both shower valves you left open in October. Reassemble and tighten any filter housings you left loose, put the water softener back out of bypass, and reconnect washing machine hoses and the ice maker line. If you have a lake-draw system, reset the intake and foot valve and prime the jet pump before switching it on.
Close the water heater drain valve. Every year somebody doesn’t.
Open the main valve or switch the well pump breaker on gradually, and have someone standing at the lowest point of the system — usually the basement or crawlspace — while you do it.
A slow fill does two things. It lets you hear water going somewhere it shouldn’t, which is remarkably audible in an empty house. And it limits how much water escapes before you can close the valve again. A wide-open fill on a house with one cracked line means several hundred gallons through a ceiling before anyone notices.
On a well, watch the pressure gauge come up. It should rise steadily and the pump should shut off at its cut-out pressure. If it keeps running and never reaches pressure, shut it down — either there’s a leak somewhere or the pump isn’t delivering, and running a pump dry destroys it.
This is the most common expensive mistake in a spring startup, and it’s entirely avoidable. Fill the tank completely and purge the air out by running a hot tap until it flows steadily with no sputtering. Only then restore power or fuel.
An electric element energized in a dry or partially filled tank burns out in seconds. It’s a cheap part and an annoying, avoidable service call.
Run every fixture — hot and cold, several minutes each. Flush every toilet repeatedly until the pink is gone from the bowl and tank. Run the dishwasher and washing machine empty. RV antifreeze is non-toxic but it tastes terrible and there’s no reason to leave it in the system.
If the well has sat unused all winter, run the water for a while before drinking it, and consider having it tested — a season of stagnation in a well and a distribution system is a reasonable prompt for a bacteria test, and NHDES-accredited labs make it easy.
Slow leaks announce themselves late. Go back under every sink, look at the water heater base, check around the pressure tank and every fitting you touched, and look at the ceilings below any second-floor plumbing. Then do it again the next morning before you relax.
A weeping fitting that shows nothing in the first ten minutes will show a puddle by morning, and finding it on day one beats finding it in July.
Then you’re opening a building whose state you don’t actually know, and you should be more careful, not less. Was the softener bypassed? Is the water heater drain valve closed? Was anything left charged deliberately? This is exactly why we leave a written record on every shutdown we do — and why it’s worth asking for one from whoever closed your place.
If you don’t have that record, go slower, walk everything twice, and treat every valve as unknown until you’ve confirmed it.
Once the risk of a hard freeze has passed for your location — generally after mid-April in the valley towns and later on the higher ground and the north-facing shores. Opening early and getting caught by a late freeze in an unheated building puts you right back where you started, with a fully charged system this time.
Usually not, at first. A system that sat all winter will push out sediment and discolored water for a few minutes. Run every tap until it clears. If it doesn’t clear after ten minutes, or if only the hot is discolored, that’s worth looking into — see the well water guide.
After a full season of disuse it’s a reasonable habit, particularly for bacteria. NHDES-accredited labs handle it inexpensively and it’s a sensible baseline for a house that’s about to have guests in it all summer.
Yes, and it’s the most common way people do it — we open the place a few days before the first weekend so any problem gets found and fixed before the family is standing in the driveway. Most owners book the fall shutdown and the spring startup at the same time.
A careful startup is the cheapest way to find a winter crack before it finds your ceiling. Tell us when you want the place ready.
A careful startup is the cheapest way to find a winter crack before it finds your ceiling. Tell us when you want it ready.
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