By the second week of September the light changes up here. The lake goes quiet on weekdays, the maples on the ridge start turning, and every camp owner in the Adirondacks starts the same mental list: dock out, water off, boat wrapped, camp closed.
Somewhere on that list — usually too far down it — is the electrical system.
We open and close camps across the North Country, and here’s the pattern we see every single spring: the camps that were closed carefully in September open in May with a flipped breaker and a sigh of relief. The camps that were closed in a hurry open with a burned-out well pump, a chewed wire inside a wall, or a frost-burst pipe that a fifty-dollar monitoring setup would have caught in January. The difference between those two springs is about twenty minutes of electrical work in the fall.
So here’s the checklist — the actual sequence we run, in the order we run it.
What order should you shut down camp electrical?
Loads first, panel last. It sounds fussy, but the order matters.
Start by turning off and unplugging appliances — the fridge (door propped open), the water heater, the toaster that’s been on that counter since 1987. Then the water heater breaker specifically, because a water heater energized with the tank drained will destroy its elements in minutes next spring when someone flips the main before the plumbing is filled.
Then the well pump — and only after the plumbing is drained. A submersible pump that cycles against drained lines can run dry, and a dry-running pump is a dead pump. They are not cheap, and the failure announces itself at the worst possible moment: opening weekend, house full of family, no water.
Only then do you open the branch breakers you’re killing for the season.
And label everything. Take a marker and a piece of tape and note which breakers wintered live and why. Next May, you — or your kids, or whoever draws the short straw for opening duty — should be able to stand in front of that panel and know exactly what’s what. Half the camps we service have a panel labeled in three generations of handwriting, and we love that, but at least make sure the current generation’s notes are accurate.
What should stay on at a closed camp all winter?
Not everything gets shut down. Most winterized camps in our area keep a few circuits alive:
- Heat tape and pipe freeze protection on any plumbing that stays wet — the water line from the drilled well, the crawlspace run that always freezes first
- A sump pump, if the crawlspace or basement takes water during thaws — and around here, January thaws are a real thing
- Minimal heat, if you keep the building above freezing rather than doing a full drain-down
- Security lighting or cameras, if you run them
Here’s the rule we push hard: anything that stays energized all winter deserves two things. Its own clearly labeled circuit, and some way for you to know it’s still working. Because a heat tape circuit that trips in a December storm protects nothing for the next four months, and you’ll find out about it in the spring, expensively.
That second part used to require a caretaker. Now it’s a monitoring setup — freeze alerts, power-failure notifications, a leak sensor by the water heater — that texts your phone when something changes at camp. Of all the technology that’s come to seasonal homes in the last decade, this is the piece we recommend most often, because it converts silent winter failures into Tuesday-afternoon phone calls.
The mouse problem (it’s bigger than you think)
Let’s talk about the North Country’s most reliable electricians: mice.
They move into closed camps in October, they work all winter, and their specialty is stripping insulation off wiring for nesting material. We open camps every spring with chew damage, and the pattern is always the same — under the kitchen sink, behind the fridge, along the sill plates, anywhere a cable passes through a warm cavity.
Here’s why this belongs on the electrical checklist and not just the pest one: a chewed cord on a dead circuit is a repair. A chewed cord on a live circuit is a fire risk with five uninterrupted months to develop, in a building nobody visits. That’s the nightmare scenario, and it’s why we unplug everything that can possibly be unplugged at closing — lamps, appliances, the ancient chest freezer in the boathouse, all of it.
While you’re at it, walk the exterior and foam or steel-wool the gaps where cables and pipes enter the building. That’s the front door for mice, and closing it in September is worth more than any amount of springtime regret.
Test the GFCIs before you leave
Every ground-fault outlet in the camp gets its test button pressed at closing — kitchen, bathroom, exterior, boathouse, and especially the dock circuits. Press test, it should snap off. Press reset, power returns.
A GFCI that won’t trip in September will not protect anyone in June, and these devices genuinely age — cold, damp winters are hard on them, and the ones in boathouses live the hardest life of any electrical device you own. Fall is when you have time to replace a failed one. June, when the dock is busy and the grandkids are swimming, is not.
Give the panel five honest minutes
Open the panel door and just look. Rust streaks. Water staining. Chewed insulation. Breakers that wiggle in the bus. A faint smell of anything.
Camp panels live in damp, unheated space and age faster than house panels — a fifteen-year-old panel at camp can look like a forty-year-old panel in town. If yours is a fuse box, or shows corrosion, or was installed when your grandfather owned the place, put a panel evaluation on the winter project list. Off-season is exactly when that work should happen: we can schedule it properly, the camp is empty, and it doesn’t eat a week of your July.
Docks and boathouses get a real disconnect
Circuits feeding removable docks should be properly disconnected for the season — not just switched off at a breaker someone might flip. Ice moves docks, ice moves conduit, and re-energizing shore power in the spring should be a deliberate decision made after someone has looked at the wiring, not a default that happens because the main went on.
The boathouse follows the same rules as the camp: unplug everything, test the GFCIs, kill every circuit that doesn’t have a winter job.
Frequently asked, every September
Can I just flip the main breaker off and call it done? You can, and plenty of people do — but you lose the winter circuits (heat tape, sump, monitoring), and you skip the inspection value of doing it circuit by circuit. The staged shutdown is how problems get found in September instead of May.
Should the fridge stay running all winter? We’d rather it didn’t. An empty fridge burning power in an empty building is pure cost and a small ongoing risk. Empty it, unplug it, prop the door. The beer will survive being bought fresh in the spring.
What does professional camp closing cost? Less than one dry-run well pump — that’s the honest frame. We run this exact checklist, note anything winter is going to make worse, and you get a short written report instead of a spring surprise.
Or just make it a standing appointment
The camps we care for around Lake Placid, Saranac Lake, and the lake country beyond are on a standing schedule — we open them in spring, close them in fall, and the owners get a report and zero surprises.
If your camp is anywhere in the Tri-Lakes, the High Peaks, or the Champlain Valley, that’s a list worth being on. Call before the snow flies — September’s checklist is a lot more pleasant than November’s.