Closing a Tuftonboro camp or lake house for the winter, or opening it back up in the spring — done methodically, documented in writing, so nothing gets missed and nothing splits in February.
Tuftonboro is one of the least developed towns on Lake Winnipesaukee, and that’s deliberate — it has miles of shoreline along 19 Mile Bay and the Melvin Village area with no town water system and no commercial strip. The town center at Center Tuftonboro, the village at Melvin, and Mirror Lake are the population clusters; the rest is woods, water, and long driveways off Route 109 and Route 171.
Water here is private. Nearly every property is on a drilled well, though parts of Tuftonboro fall within the Lakes Region Water Company franchise area. Either way, the winter reality is the same: a high share of the housing is seasonal, closed in the fall, and reopened in the spring, and the well system has to be shut down properly rather than just having the faucets left open.
The lakefront housing here skews toward older family camps and mid-century cottages rather than new construction, which means simpler systems but also older, more improvised ones — supply lines run under floors, an addition plumbed off a fitting that was never meant to carry it, a bathroom in a former porch. When we winterize a Tuftonboro camp for the first time, we spend real time tracing the system, because the layout is rarely what you’d guess from the floor plan.
Mirror Lake and the inland ponds add a second ring of camps, and the roads back there are narrow, wooded, and not all plowed. Fall scheduling matters more here than almost anywhere: once the private roads go soft or the snow comes, access gets genuinely difficult.
Book your Tuftonboro shutdown for early-to-mid October, not November. Once the private roads back off 109 get soft or snowed in, a job that takes ninety minutes in good weather turns into a half-day — if we can get in at all.
Shutting down a seasonal house properly is not turning off a valve and opening the faucets. On a well system the pump is shut down, the pressure tank drained, the pump line relieved, and the whole distribution system blown out with compressed air at low, controlled pressure — because water left standing in a horizontal run is exactly where a pipe splits. Water heaters are drained. Every trap gets non-toxic RV antifreeze: sinks, tubs, showers, floor drains, and each toilet, with the tank and bowl emptied and treated.
Then the list nobody remembers. Whole-house filters and water softener tanks hold water and crack. Ice makers have a supply line and a reservoir. Dishwashers and washing machines hold water in the pump housing. Outdoor showers, dock hose bibs, boathouse sinks, wet bars, and irrigation zones all need to be drained separately. On a lake-draw system the foot valve and line have to come out of the water before ice-in.
We finish with a written record of what was drained, what was left charged, and where antifreeze went — so whoever opens the house in the spring, including a different person entirely, knows exactly what they’re walking into.
A standard Lakes Region camp winterization typically runs $175–$450 depending on the number of fixtures, whether it’s a well or town supply, and the extras (filters, softener, irrigation, boathouse). Spring startup runs similar. Booking both together is the way most owners do it.
Aim to be done by the end of October. The first hard freeze in the Lakes Region can arrive in early November and does not wait for your schedule. Waterfront and private-road properties should book earlier still, because access gets harder once the roads soften or the snow starts.
You can, and for a house you visit in winter it is often the better choice — but it is only as reliable as your power and your furnace. Most homeowner policies require a minimum interior temperature, commonly 55°F, or a shut-off water supply in a vacant home. If you leave heat on, add a low-temperature alarm so a heat failure does not become a burst pipe you find in April.
Water softeners and whole-house filter housings, ice maker lines, dishwasher and washing machine pump housings, and outdoor showers or dock hose bibs. All of them hold water, all of them crack, and none of them drain when you open the faucets. A written fixture list is the only reliable fix.
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