Archive for category Home Safe
Preparing Your Home for Winter
Posted by admin in Home Repairs, Home Safe on December 1, 2010
If you live in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern portion of the United States, you know each winter season brings harsh and potentially damaging snowfalls, ice storms and freezing rain. Extreme winter weather can shut down your community and leave you without power or access to roads. Another damaging but often overlooked result of extreme winter weather is gutter damage from heavy snowfalls and ice dams.
Ice dams form in the winter and are a potential menace that may require you to replace your home’s gutters in the springtime.
How does an ice dam form?
* An ice dam forms when the snow that accumulates on your roof begins to melt from the bottom up
* Heat escaping from your roof melts the lower layer of the snow while sub-freezing air temperatures keep the top layer frozen
* Water then drains down to your gutters and, upon touching your frozen rain gutters, freezes instead of properly draining down your downspouts. The frozen runoff fills the gutter, seals off the down spouts, and forms an ice dam
An ice dam will contract and expand as temperatures change, damaging your gutters and, in worst case scenarios, rendering your gutters inoperable. As the ice dam slowly thaws and melts, water can seep beneath your shingles, tar paper, and eventually into the supporting plywood, wreaking havoc with your roof, fascia, and soffit. So replacing your gutters may just be part of the problem caused by ice dams – you may be looking at damage to your home’s walls and foundation.
Another potential problem to consider is the strain that just one snowfall can put on your home’s gutters. Even gutters that are adequately installed, using the proper materials and size for your region, can succumb to the weight of snow and ice, and break off the side of your house, or become damaged to the point where they no longer function properly.
To prepare your home’s gutters for winter make sure they are routinely cleaned out and that you have adequate insulation beneath your roof. An improperly insulated roof will allow heat to seep out, increasing the chance of ice dams forming in your gutters. A clogged gutter with leaves and other debris will accelerate the creation of damaging ice dams. If cleaning your gutters is too difficult, dangerous or time consuming, consider investing in a gutter protection system. A gutter protection system will keep leaves and other debris from getting into your gutters in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
Who Needs a Home Safe
Don’t fall into a trap that a lot of people do when considering purchasing a home safe. Most people think that their home safe is simply for guarding your valuables, especially cash, or maybe if you own a gun and you want to make sure that they all safe and secure and away from the prying eyes of intruders.
But there are a lot of other reasons to invest in a good home safe. Perhaps as a kid you collected old comic books. Did you know that as time has passed, many of these old issues have become extremely valuable? Though a thief likely wouldn’t have a clue as to the value of aged comic books, these in all likelihood have an extreme sentimental value to you. Think how you would feel if your home was consumed by fire and you collection of books that you had since a little kid, went up in smoke.
When you think about it, pretty well any force of nature, be it a flood, a hurricane, perhaps a tornado can do severe damage to your property and in some instances you can lose everything. Think how glad you would be if the sole surviving item from one of these disasters was your solidly built home safe complete with all your prized possessions safe and sound. Read the rest of this entry »