It’s time to prepare your home for cold weather. Following these home improvement steps will help make your home cozier and more affordable when the temperatures drop.
3 Things Homeowners Often Overlook
As a homeowner, there are a lot of things that require your attention or regular maintenance. Most of these items, like mowing the yard, taking out the trash, or cleaning off the sidewalks, may seem obvious. Others can be a little easier to ignore. But sometimes the maintenance tasks that are the easiest to overlook are the most important. Here are a few home maintenance items that shouldn’t be overlooked to prevent more serious problems in the future. [Read more…]
How to Prevent Ice Dams on Your Roof
Ice dams are caused when melted snow refreezes along the edge of a roof, preventing water from draining. Water backs up behind the ice dam, essentially sitting on your roof and causing some not-so-good problems!
Many times, we’ve had customers call us thinking their gutters were causing the icicles and ice dams. This is not the case. The actual culprit may surprise you.
Your attic!
A warm attic is the cause of ice dams during the winter months. As heat from inside your home rises, it warms the shingles on your roof, causing the snow to melt. As the melted snow runs off the roof, it will typically refreeze once it gets past the outside walls of your house (the roof overhang) where it is no longer being heated. This refreezing process is the perfect condition for ice dams to form.
Here are some reasons why your attic may be heating up during the winter:
- Drop down attic stairs
- Lack of insulation allowing heat to rise through your ceiling
- Air handler and air duct vents in your attic
- Lack of ventilation which allows heat to become trapped in the attic
- Cathedral ceilings with improper insulation
- Recessed lights, or light canisters in the ceiling below attic
- Metal pipe chimneys
How can you prevent ice dams in the future?
The best prevention against ice dams is to ensure that your attic temperature is as close to the outside temperature as possible. If ice dams do occur, you want to be sure that your roof is protected from water seepage as much as possible. Newer roofs, by code, now have an ice and water barrier to prevent ice dam water from penetrating your house. When we install a GAF roof, our Master Elite roofers will always put an ice and water barrier on the eaves, gables, hips, ridges and valleys of your home.
Have you experienced water damage to your roof due to ice dams? Call us today to schedule a free, in-home consultation!
Why Your House May Need Step & Kick-out Flashing
One of the problems often found on homes is water damage inside the walls of the home. While a homeowner may think this serious problem results from a gutter issue, it’s actually due to improper flashing installation.
Step flashing is installed where a roof joins up to a wall. It looks like individual pieces of L-shaped metal and goes against the wall and under each application of roofing shingle. It’s applied on the outside of a brick house, while applied under exteriors such as stucco and siding.
It’s extremely important that the installer pulls the last piece of step flashing out from behind the siding, so that water is not channeled behind the siding, which would allow water to go to the inside walls of the home.
A piece of kickout flashing should be applied under the last piece of step flashing, tilted away from the wall. This extra preventive step will push water away from the outside of your wall, eliminating streaks caused by water stains, as well as mold, mildew and potential rot.
