How Winter Storms Can Damage Your Roofing and Siding

Wintertime storms heading your way? Snowy, icy weather can cause major siding and roof damage to Detroit and Ann Arbor homes, so it’s important to know how to safeguard your assets. That starts with understanding how wintery aspects can effects your home, and how to location complications suitable absent prior to they can do more hurt.

Here’s what you want to know.

How Wintertime Weather conditions Has an effect on Your Roof and Siding 

Chilly weather conditions is specifically severe on residences because there are so lots of techniques it can use down your roof shingles, gutters, and siding. 

Major Snow 

A light dusting of snow can seem quite and come to feel festive—but when winter season provides numerous inches of the damp snow that’s widespread in this article in Michigan, your household can be at possibility. 

• An normal snow weighs about a single pound per inch, but damp snow has more drinking water written content, so it’s heavier.
• A sturdy, properly-crafted roof can cope with about 20 kilos of pounds, but an older or weakened roof is considerably less resilient.
• Hefty snow and ice can cause a weak roof to cave in.
• Even a handful of inches of snow can soften into cracked roof shingles, producing h2o damage.

Suggestion:  Rather than allow for snow to pile on the roof, sweep it off gently with a snow rake. (Or employ a seasoned professional to do it for you.)

Wind 

If the increased Detroit spot is experiencing blizzard conditions, then that implies your roof and siding may well be at chance of all the destruction that high winds can result in. 

• Falling objects (these as hefty branches) can crack roof shingles, tear off gutters, and perhaps even crack by into the attic.
• Roof shingles, flashing and other roofing aspects could be pulled up and blown absent.
• Siding boards can loosen, exposing the structural elements underneath.
• Wind-blown debris can strike siding, ensuing in breakage.

Tip: To assist avert such troubles, retailer absent loose outside furnishings to safeguard siding from impacts. Trim tree branches nicely away from your roof ahead of wintertime arrives.

Ice Dams and Icicles 

As temperatures increase and slide throughout the winter season, you may perhaps conclude up with ice forming atop your roof. Freezing rain and sleet can also add to as well a lot ice atop your roof. The solar and your home’s warmth soften snow and ice through the working day, then the h2o refreezes at night. This leads to plenty of complications.

• Ice dams can type at the edge of the roof, blocking gutters and forcing precipitation to continue being on the roof, top to leaks.
• Gutters can get crammed with significant ice until they collapse below the weight.
• Substantial icicles can type, then loosen and drop, posing a risk to any person who walks beneath them.
• Ice dams and icicles can also weaken and crack roof shingles.

Suggestion:  Gutter guards can help reduce ice from freezing inside of gutter units. Good roof insulation can enable stop ice dams and icicles from forming.

Excess Humidity and Leaks 

Finally, the most significant worry about snow, ice, freezing rain, sleet, and winter season winds is that these elements can expose you to high-priced h2o hurt.

• Winter weather conditions can loosen, crack and split roofing and siding, leaving your home’s construction susceptible to humidity intrusion.
• Snow, ice, and weighty branches can result in holes in your roof, letting precipitation to get into your attic.
• Loose or weakened roofing and siding can expose insulation to dampness, which can wreck it.
• Humidity leaks also guide to issues with mold and mildew, which harm your assets, promote wooden rot, and make your home’s air harmful to breathe.

Idea:  Right maintenance of your roof and siding can enable hold your residence temperature-tight and watertight.

How to Look at Your House for Storm Damage   

When your roofing and siding are marred, your residence can be at possibility of highly-priced issues, including:

• Hazardous wood rot
• Structural damage
• Publicity to leaks
• Higher heating and cooling expenditures
• Unhealthy indoor air good quality

Follow this useful checklist for inspecting your house for issues brought about by wintertime weather.

Inspect the Roof 

There are two techniques to test a roof for winter season destruction:

1. Check out the roof safely from the floor. Get binoculars and walk a length from your residence to get a great look at of the roof. Research for missing roof shingles, unfastened flashing, and bald places.
2. Retain the services of a pro roofer to climb atop the roof. It is most effective to deliver in a pro, due to the fact they have the tools required to do the inspection securely, in particular for the duration of winter season when your roofing is additional slippery. And they know what to glance for as they assess what your roof requires.

Glance All over the Attic 

Because roofing troubles typically show up inside your home, it’s crucial to do a look at of the attic. Look for indicators that h2o is sneaking in:

• Daylight or sky seen via the roofing
• Moist insulation
• Mould places
• Musty odors
• Rotted wood

Take a look at Siding 

Stroll all around the house’s perimeter, seeking at your siding boards. Based on irrespective of whether you have wood, brick, vinyl, or fiber cement, distinctive troubles can crop up. If there’s damage, you will probably see a single or much more of these siding issues:

• Broken, cracked or unfastened boards
• Warping or rippling
• Peeling, effervescent paint
• Wood rot
• Streaks of rust
• Missing mortar or caulking

Search for Other Challenges 

Complete your inspection by staying certain gutters, home windows, doors, and landscaping are all in right condition.

Take care of Exterior Problems ASAP! 

Whatsoever you do, never ignore the matters that have to have fixing. The for a longer time you let a trouble keep on being unaddressed, the worse it gets—and you’ll conclusion up with a lot more costly and time-consuming harm to offer with. Have your residence repairs finished speedily, by neighborhood gurus with a monitor history of delighting their clients.

Continue to keep Your Household Safe with Lasting Roofing and Siding

Secure your home from Michigan’s harsh wintertime storms, and give it a facelift with stunning roofing and siding possibilities mounted by the professionals at John McCarter Building. Find how our roof mend/alternative and siding set up providers can change your property into a lovely, quick to treatment for oasis in the higher Detroit place.