I figured this would be a great place to ask this question, so here it goes. My wife and I have a cabin up in the mountains that we rent out to help offset our costs. This cabin is 3 stories and has 2 bathrooms. It does NOT have central heat/air, but instead has several space heaters as well as propane heaters. We will be renting it sometimes this winter, however it will also be sitting for several weeks completely empty. The cabin is older and the pipes are routed everywhere, including outside walls as well as in the basement/crawlspace area. The previous owners said that they often had a hard time keeping the pipes from freezing when they were living there full time. It would be very costly, and perhaps a bit risky, to run the space heaters and propane heaters while the cabin is unoccupied. Plus, I am not sure that heat would be sufficient to protect the pipes in the outside walls as well as in the crawlspace. We do have a caretaker who cleans the cabin after the renters leave and can do things for us like shut off/turn on the water for renters. This is what we are thinking, and please feel free to advise if you think it isn't enough. 1) purchase RV antifreeze from Wally World 2) after renters leave, have caretaker shut off the water, then open all faucets including outside hose bibb (lowest point in the cabin) 3) flush toilets after water is shut off 4) pour antifreeze in every drain (sinks+showers) as well as in each toilet Before the next renters arrive, have him go back to the cabin and turn the water on, then flush toilets/run water to flush out antifreeze. Thoughts?

We live in a 1960’s ranch house on a concrete slab and decided to renovate the laundry room. The laundry tub (thus washer) was draining into a floor drain through a flex-hose stuck through the grate. Pulled out the vinyl tile, found major mold underneath around the drain. Pulled out the rotten drywall next to it (exterior wall), sill-plate was rotten completely. Although I am pretty handy, I had to get fixed by someone since it is a load bearing wall (costly!). We want to prevent any such damage in the future. Both floor and wall will be tiled. I put on Hardie cement-wall around to prepare for tiling, now tackling the drain issue. The picture shows what is there. The valves are for washer and for an outside faucet, the culprit for all the damage was a bad stem on the valve (somehow it was bent?) which dripped for years. The drain does have a vapor trap (about 1.5 feet down) since I can see standing water in it. The drain works fine. The room has a very slight slope (towards that corner) but I do not think it was meant to be for drainage. At most it is like 1/8” per foot, and even that is quite irregular. But around that area (about 3x3 feet), there is some slope which I can use. So I am thinking of giving more slope away from wall towards the drain (as much I can afford under the tile) with some thinset and use a paint on water proof membrane (such as Redgard from HD, or Watertight from Lowes). Is this a good idea? Incidentally, I see some kind of plastic membrane (polyethylene sheet?) embedded under the concrete slab (may be at ½” depth) as the red arrow in the picture shows, but it does not look like waterproofing. If I try to waterproof now, how do I tap into existing drain hole, clamping drains are just to large to fit in there. We really do not need to water-proof the entire floor, only enough to alert us if there is a similar leak in the future (even that is questionable since I probably can not slope more than the tile thickness which means I will not see surface water for small drips.) Will waterproof membrane make things worse? (Can't upload jpeg image ???)