Pink Water in the Toilet: How to Buy a Cottage Up North After It’s Been Winterized

I shoot a lot of listing photos, and one of the first things I check before I frame a bathroom is the toilet bowl. If the water in it is pink, the cottage has been winterized. Somebody drained the lines, blew them out with a compressor, and poured RV antifreeze into every trap in the house so the water sitting in the bends wouldn't freeze and crack something over the winter. (Yes, I could edit the pink out. No, I don't.)

That pink water shows up in listing photos every year from about now through April. Labor Day has come and gone, the fireworks championship wrapped up on the bay last night, Cass Street gets its second coat of cape seal on Tuesday, and the seasonal places between Cedar and Northport are about to get closed up for the year, and some already are. So if you're shopping for a cottage this fall, there's a decent chance the one you fall for has no water in the pipes, no heat on, an empty water heater, and a propane tank the owner didn't bother to fill. That changes how you write the offer.

What "winterized" means up here

For most cottages between Traverse City and Northport it means the whole plumbing system is dry. Well pump breaker off, pressure tank drained, water heater drained, every faucet opened, lines blown out, antifreeze in the traps and toilet bowls. If the place has a jet pump in a pump house instead of a submersible pump down the well, the pump casing gets drained too, because a cracked pump housing is a spring surprise nobody wants.

It usually also means the heat is off, or the thermostat is parked at 45 or so if the owner is willing to keep buying propane for an empty house. Plenty of people aren't. A cottage down a seasonal road past Maple City with an empty tank and dry lines is a normal thing to see listed in October.

None of that is a knock on the house. A cottage that got closed up properly is usually one that's been looked after. It just makes your inspection a lot harder.

What the inspector can and can't do

Michigan doesn't license home inspectors. There's no state exam and no state standard of practice. Most of the good ones up here follow InterNACHI or ASHI standards voluntarily, and both of those say the inspector isn't required to operate a system that's shut down. If the water's off, the water's off, and the report will say something like "plumbing system not inspected, winterized at time of inspection."

That one line covers the supply lines holding pressure, the drains working, the water heater, the well pump, the pressure tank, and the toilet in the loft bathroom somebody added in 1987 that may never stop running. On an old cottage those are the exact things that fail.

You have three choices, and I have an opinion about them.

Inspect the house dry and accept the plumbing as unknown. It's free and it's fast, and I would not do it on any cottage older than about 20 years. A line that was left with an inch of water in it can split over the winter and show no sign at all until somebody turns the pump back on in May. That somebody would be you.

Have the inspector pressure-test the supply lines with air. This tells you whether the lines hold, and roughly where they leak if they don't. It doesn't tell you anything about the drains, the water heater, or the well. It's the middle ground, and it's cheap (I've seen it quoted under $100 downstate, though I haven't priced it locally this year).

Have the cottage de-winterized before the inspection and re-winterized after. This is the one I'd push for on anything older or anything on a well. It's also the one that takes planning, because it means a plumber, a day on the calendar, water on at the well, and heat on in the house long enough that you're not re-freezing what you just thawed. Out-of-state inspection blogs quote about $300 for the round trip. Up here in October, when every plumber from Suttons Bay to Frankfort is booked closing other people's cottages, both the number and the wait are going to be worse. I don't know what the plumber calendar looks like in Antrim this fall, so call early, like this week early.

Who turns the water back on, and who pays

This is the part that gets negotiated, and the offer is where you do it. In our market the seller usually knows exactly who winterized the place (a lot of times it's the same plumber every October for fifteen years), and the cleanest arrangement is that the seller has that same person de-winterize for the inspection, with the buyer covering the cost if the deal dies on something other than the plumbing. There's no rule about this. It's whatever the two sides agree to, so put it in writing in the purchase agreement instead of working it out over text the night before the inspector shows up.

Two things to ask for in the offer, specifically. First, that water and heat will be on for the inspection, with the de-winterize scheduled before your inspection period starts to run, not during it. A 10-day inspection window that spends seven of those days waiting on a plumber isn't a 10-day window. Second, that if a leak shows up when the water comes back on, that's a seller repair item and not a "well, it was fine when we closed it up" conversation.

And if the seller flat refuses to turn the water on? That tells you something, and you should ask for a bigger repair holdback or a lower number to cover what you can't see.

The disclosure form has a line for this

Michigan's Seller's Disclosure Statement lists "Well & pump," "Plumbing system," and "Water heater" as separate items the seller marks yes, no, unknown, or not working. On a cottage that's been closed up since October, "unknown" is a legal answer and a common one. I wrote about how far you can trust that form a couple of weeks ago. For a winterized cottage, "unknown" on the plumbing line plus a dry inspection means nobody in the transaction has seen water run through that house since fall. Somebody should, before you own it.

Septic is its own thing. Benzie County has required a septic evaluation at sale since 1992, and a lot of those evaluations involve running water to load the system, which you can't do in a dry house. Grand Traverse's rule depends on how close you sit to the water. Either way, once you're past the village limits around Lake Leelanau or Glen Arbor, most of these places are on a well and a septic, and the de-winterize is doing double duty.

If it's already October

The timing works in your favor more than against. A seller who's already paid to close the place up and is now staring at carrying it through a Leelanau winter has a reason to deal, which I went into in the fall-buyer post. The tradeoff is that you're buying blind on the systems unless you do the work above, and a few hundred dollars and a week on the calendar is a small price against a cottage that may or may not hold water.

One more thing, since I'm the one holding the camera. If the listing photos show pink water in the bowls, the place has been winterized and the listing agent knows it. If the photos show clear water and a lit thermostat but your showing has pink water, ask when it was closed up and by whom. It's not a red flag on its own, but it's a question that deserves an answer.

Working on a cottage that's already been closed for the season, or trying to decide whether to close yours before you list it? Reach out. Janel has been through more of these October deals than she'd probably like to count, and I'm happy to talk through what the offer should say.

Taylor Brown, Realtor
Taylor@taylorbrownrealtor.com
(231) 360-1510