Closing Up Your Hamptons House for Winter: What to Automate and What Still Needs a Person

Why closing up matters more than it used to

A summer house on the East End can sit empty for weeks at a time between November and April. Most of what goes wrong in that time is ordinary: a furnace stops, an oil tank runs low, a supply line under a sink gives way, a storm knocks out power for a day and a half. Usually the damage isn't caused by the event itself. It's caused by how long the event goes unnoticed.

Water is the expensive one. According to the Insurance Information Institute, water damage and freezing made up 22.6% of homeowners insurance losses in 2023, and the average claim in that category from 2019 to 2023 was about $15,400. In an empty house, a slow leak that starts on a Tuesday and is found the following weekend is a very different claim from one caught in the first ten minutes.

So the goal of closing up isn't to make the house invulnerable. It's to make sure the house tells you, quickly and reliably, when something changes, and that someone can act on it.

The closing-up checklist

Here is everything worth handling before you leave, split into what you do once by hand and what monitoring can watch for you all winter.

Heat: 55°F is the floor, not the plan

Insurers such as Amica recommend keeping a vacant home at 55°F or higher in winter. Amica also points out that homeowners policies typically cover freeze damage only if reasonable care was taken to keep the house heated, so the thermostat setting matters for more than the pipes. Check the exact wording of your own policy with your insurer.

The catch is that a thermostat only tells you the temperature where the thermostat is. In older East End houses the coldest plumbing is often in places the thermostat never sees: a kitchen sink on an exterior wall, a crawl space under an addition, a pipe run through an unheated garage. And a 55°F setting does nothing if the furnace has stopped, the oil has run out or the power is off.

That is why the most useful heat alert comes from small, independent temperature sensors placed in those cold spots. A sensible starting point is an alert if any of them drops below 45°F, and an urgent alert below 40°F. That gives you time to call a service company before water starts to freeze. Your installer can adjust those numbers once you see how each spot behaves in a cold snap.

Water: leak sensors plus a shutoff valve

You have two broad options for the water supply.

• Shut off and drain. If the house will be unheated, or empty for most of the winter, have the plumbing shut off and drained or blown out. This is the most protective option, and it is what Amica recommends when heat won't be maintained.
• Keep the water on, with protection. If you keep the heat on and want the house usable for a weekend visit, put a leak sensor at every place water can escape (under each sink, behind the washer and dishwasher, beside the water heater and boiler, near the main line) and install an automatic shutoff valve on the main supply.

An automatic shutoff valve closes the water main when it detects a leak or unusual flow. Some models also watch pressure and temperature on the supply line. Moen's Flo device, for example, can be opened and closed from Home Assistant through its official integration, though that integration works through Moen's cloud rather than directly inside the house. That's worth knowing when you plan for internet outages.

Before you decide, check two things with your plumber: whether the house has a fire sprinkler system or a boiler that needs a water supply, and whether the irrigation system has its own feed. Shutting the wrong valve can create a different problem.

Humidity: the quiet problem in a closed-up house

A house that's closed up near the water can get damp, especially in basements and closets. The EPA recommends keeping indoor humidity below 60%, and ideally between 30% and 50%, to keep mold from getting started. A humidity sensor in the basement and one on the main floor, with an alert above 60%, will tell you if a dehumidifier has stopped or a drain has backed up. If the dehumidifier is on a smart plug, an automation can turn it on when humidity rises and off again when it drops.

Power, generators and fuel

Winter storms on the East End regularly take out power. If you have a standby generator, its own monitoring is the first line of defense. Generac's Mobile Link, for example, sends alerts when the generator runs or needs attention, lets you check exercise schedules, and offers a cellular accessory so you can still monitor it during an outage.

Fuel is the other half. A generator or furnace running on an empty oil or propane tank doesn't protect anything, so a tank-level monitor (or at least automatic delivery) belongs on the checklist. Generac also offers a fuel monitor that reports through the same app.

A whole-house setup brings these together. A single message, "Power out since 6:10 a.m., generator running, house at 61°F, tank at 48%", is easier to act on than four apps and four logins.

The weak link: your internet connection

Here's the gap most checklists skip. Many smart-home devices depend on the manufacturer's cloud, so when the house loses power or internet they go quiet. That is exactly when you need them most.

Three things close that gap:

1. A local hub. A hub such as Home Assistant runs automations inside the house, so "close the water valve if a leak sensor trips" still works without an internet connection.
2. A battery backup (UPS) for the hub, modem and router, so they ride out short outages and keep reporting.
3. A cellular backup connection, so alerts reach your phone even when the home internet is down.

We cover network setup in more detail on our network and security page.

Who responds when something goes wrong?

An alert is only useful if someone can act on it. Before you leave:

• Agree with your caretaker, or a neighbor, who gets which alerts and how quickly they can get to the house. On Shelter Island, that includes ferry timing; on the North Fork and in the Hamptons, winter traffic is light but distances add up.
• Give each person their own door code rather than sharing one, so you know who came and went, and so you can remove access later without changing everyone's code.
• Decide the escalation: for example, a leak alert goes to you and the caretaker at once, and a temperature alert goes to you first, then to the caretaker if nobody responds within 30 minutes.
• Write down where the water main, electrical panel and generator transfer switch are, and leave that note in the house.

Our guide to smart homes for house managers and caretakers goes deeper on access and permissions.

A one-hour departure routine

1. Walk the house and test every leak sensor by touching it with a damp cloth. Make sure the alert arrives.
2. Check the batteries in every sensor, and replace any below half.
3. Set the thermostat, and confirm the cold-spot sensors are reporting.
4. Close or confirm the water plan: drained, or on with the shutoff valve armed.
5. Turn on the dehumidifier and confirm the humidity alert threshold.
6. Confirm the generator, fuel level and internet backup are reporting.
7. Switch the house to away mode: lights on a schedule, cameras on, door alerts active.
8. Send the caretaker a short note with the plan and the escalation order.

Where Kotoh Home fits

Everything above can be pieced together from individual devices and apps. What we add is one private assistant that watches all of it and that you can simply text. "Is the house OK?" gets you a plain answer covering temperature in every zone, humidity, power, fuel and the last time a door opened. It runs on a dedicated computer inside the house, so the routine checks keep working even when the internet doesn't.

If you want this set up before the first freeze, our second-home monitoring service covers the sensors, the shutoff valve and the alerts. A care plan keeps it tested and updated through the winter. For a closer look at which sensors to buy and where to put them, read our guide to freeze, leak and power alerts for second homes.