Closing Up a Lakes Region Home: Gutters Before You Leave

An empty house changes the gutter plan in a few plain ways. Nobody sees the leaf pile that built up in November. Nobody knocks down an icicle, notices a sag after a heavy storm or checks whether a downspout is draining on a January thaw.

Why does an empty house need a different gutter plan?

A year-round home gets small corrections all winter. A seasonal one gets none. Whatever state the gutters are in on the closing day is the state they stay in until April.

That is a good reason to treat closing day as the last maintenance visit. Second homes around Meredith Bay and lake properties in Wolfeboro fit that pattern. The median home in Meredith was built in 1975 and in Wolfeboro in 1982 (American Community Survey, 2020-24), so many are old enough to have tired gutters. Both towns sit well north of our Hampstead base.

The seasonal pattern is not a small one. Meredith's draft 2024 master plan estimates about 2,100 housing units in town that are vacant at least six months of the year, and says about 92 percent of them, roughly 1,943 units, are seasonal or recreational. It ranks Meredith fourth in Belknap County for seasonal units, behind Center Harbor, Alton and Gilford. In those neighborhoods, closing day is a routine event, and the gutters are on the list whether or not anyone writes it down.

How long is the gap?

Longer than it feels in October. The ice on Lake Winnipesaukee is declared out when the MS Mount Washington can reach all five of its ports, including Meredith and Wolfeboro, and the recorded dates fall mostly in April, with the earliest on March 17, 2024. A house closed in mid-October and reopened by Memorial Day sits unwatched for more than seven months. Whatever is loose on closing day carries a full winter of freeze-thaw and snow with no one to catch it.

The closing checklist, in order

Do these in sequence, starting about two weeks before you leave:

1. Trim. Cut back branches that overhang the roof once the leaves are down.
2. Clean. Clear the gutters and downspouts after the last leaves fall. Flush each downspout with a hose.
3. Check pitch. Run water down each run and look for standing puddles.
4. Tighten. Test every hanger by hand and replace any that move.
5. Extend. Add or reposition downspout extensions, so melt leaves the foundation.
6. Photograph. Take pictures of every run, so you have a before view in April.

Do not reverse steps one and two. A gutter cleaned before the branches are trimmed will take new debris within days.

What to fix now, and what can wait

Watch the weather as well as the calendar. In the Lakes Region, which is cooler and farther north than Hampstead, leaves can come down earlier, so look at the branches and not the date on the wall.

What happens to ice and snow at a house nobody heats?

An ice dam begins as attic heat melts roof snow, which then freezes again at the cold eave. A house kept at a low temperature loses less heat than one kept at 68°F, so ice dams may form less often. They can still happen, especially over a heated room, a chimney or a poorly sealed attic hatch.

Snow load is the other worry. A roof with nobody to watch it can collect a heavy pack by February, and a thaw then drops it all at once. Insulation and ventilation are what cure ice dams, and that is work for an insulation or roofing contractor. We handle the gutter side.

Which downspout and gutter details matter most?

The details that matter at a seasonal house are small ones:

• Outlets. A single plugged outlet backs the whole run up.
• Downspout bottoms. Frozen water splits a downspout that was left full.
• Snow guards. Useful above entries and decks where sliding snow lands.
• Gutter lowering. On some roofs, lowering the gutter lets snow clear it instead of hitting it.
• Screens and guards. They keep leaves out but still need a spring check.

Snow guards deserve a second look at a house you leave. A guard holds snow on the roof and lets it melt or release in small pieces, so the roof has to carry that snow. Our page on snow guards covers what we can look at, and any guard layout should be given to you in writing. Put them where a slide would land on a door, a deck stair or a boat-launch path, not across the whole roof out of habit.

What a crew would tell a snowbird

From our crew: the gutter you cannot reach in January is the one to fix in October. Anything marginal, such as a loose hanger, a dripping seam or a run with a dip, is much cheaper to deal with now than after it has carried ice all winter.

We would also say to be honest about the roof. A pine-covered lot will need cleaning later than a bare one, because pines keep dropping into November. If the closing date is fixed, schedule the cleaning for the last week and ask for the downspouts to be flushed.

What to check when you reopen in spring

Walk the house before the first big rain. Look for runs that dip or pull away, seams that dripped overnight and downspouts split at the bottom. Check the ground under each outlet for new channels or gravel washed out of place.

Then clean out whatever came down over winter, since melt carries needles, grit and seed pods into the gutter. A spring flush with the hose tells you at once whether the downspouts are clear. Compare what you see with the photos from closing day. Any change is worth a call before summer storms.

Who looks in while you are away?

A caretaker, a neighbor or a property manager can check the roof from the ground after a big storm. Give them a short list:

• Look for icicles longer than a forearm or a gutter that has pulled from the house
• Check that downspout outlets are not sealed by ice or buried in drift
• Take a photo and send it to you, so you can decide whether to call anyone

Tell them when to look. A good trigger is any storm that leaves 6 inches or more of snow, which is near the weather service's heavy-snow mark as the Meredith master plan describes it, and any thaw followed by a hard freeze. Two quick ground checks in winter beat none.

Do not ask anyone to climb a ladder in winter. Ice sliding from a roof can badly injure someone, so keep entrances clear.

Booking work 60-plus miles from our base

Meredith is roughly 1 hour 30 minutes from Hampstead by our estimate, and Wolfeboro roughly 1 hour 25 minutes. A visit that far north needs planning. We book it ahead, and it may share a day with other nearby jobs, so call early in the fall, not the week you close.

Ice dam prevention is not a service we have confirmed, so call and ask what we could quote for your roof. See our winter gutter protection overview and the page on ice dam prevention. Any price from us is written, and it comes after we see the roof. To plan a closing-week visit, call (208) 464-4195 as early in the fall as you can.