How to Prepare Your Home for Winter: Part II

Today we’re back with more tips on how to prevent your home from being damaged by winter weather.

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Welcome to part two of our series on how to protect your home during the winter months. If you missed part one, click here to get caught up. Today, Tony Campanella joins us once more to give some advice on how to make sure cold weather doesn’t adversely affect your home.  

Water damage is a constant danger that houses face, and during the winter, this danger takes the form of ice damming. Ice damming occurs through the entire system of the exterior of our roofs. As ice thaws out, it goes behind the gutter and into the wood board that supports the gutter system. That water then runs down the length of either the roof trusses or the floor joists in your home, depending on how the gutter system is built. This creates damage on the interior of your home along the drywall where the downspout and the gutters are attached to the property.

You can prevent this from happening by keeping your gutters clear of any debris. You want to do this not just for the sake of ice damming, but for any potential water accumulation. If your gutters are clogged, debris will overflow toward the downspout. If the hole of your downspout is clogged, the whole system won’t work. Any accumulated moisture will have nowhere to go. In addition to keeping your gutters clear of debris, another important thing to do is channel the water coming down from the downspout at least eight to 12 feet away from the perimeter of your home.

Keep your gutters clean and clear.

Snow accumulation atop your roof is another potential problem winter poses. Roofs in our area are engineered to withstand roughly 150 pounds of weight per square foot, so you shouldn’t have much of an issue unless you have a flatter roof. If this is the case, you may want to use a broom or a roof rake to sweep that snow off.

Carbon monoxide-related disasters are another danger to take seriously. Nowadays, you can buy carbon monoxide detectors that can plug into any outlet for roughly $50. If you have a gas furnace, make sure you place your carbon monoxide detector in that area, because that would be the first place to detect an incomplete combustion.

One more useful tip is to change your air filters on your furnace and replace the batteries in your smoke detectors once every three months. You can never be too careful, and this kind of schedule is a good system to have in place.

If you need any more advice or information from Tony, you can call him at (301) 437-9229 or email him at tonycampanella@gmail.com. If you have any questions for me, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help!

How to Prepare Your Home for Winter: Part 1

I’m here with Tony Campanella for part one of our two-part “How to prepare your home for winter” series. Today, we’re talking about how to prevent burst pipes.

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I am looking forward to 2017, and I think it is going to be a fantastic year for real estate. However, heading into 2017, it’s going to start getting really chilly at night. It won’t be long before we have ice and snow, and people need to know how to properly prepare their homes for winter.

So today, I’m here with Tony Campanella of Campanella Construction Company for part one of our two-part “How to prepare your home for winter” series to talk about the best ways you can prepare your home for winter. Tony has a lot of experience dealing with the aftermath that comes from improperly preparing your home for winter and has some tips to avoid those costly repairs.

The most common winter-related issues are burst pipes. On the outside of your home is a hose bib which is attached to piping inside your home. The biggest mistake most people make as cold weather approaches is failing to disconnect the hose from the bib. You have to make sure that’s the first thing you do.

Next, you need to turn the internal valve off, which will typically be where your main water supply line comes into your home or inside an interior bib.

There is going to be water left over in the pipe that leads to the exterior bib, so next you want to go back outside and open the exterior valve to drain out that excess water.

Make sure to drain the excess water!

There is actually a product on the market that makes this process go very smoothly. It’s a freezeless wall faucet called a sillcock. When you shut the outside valve off using a sillcock, the interior valve gets shut off simultaneously. However, don’t forget to let out that excess water!

If you don’t remember to drain your pipes, your pipes have a good chance of bursting. Burst pipes are so dangerous because you won’t know they have burst until after the water thaws and starts coming out of your pipes at a rate of five to seven gallons per minute. You could be looking at an enormous flood if a burst pipe goes undetected.

If you have any further questions for Tony, you can reach him at (301-437-9229) or email him at tonycampanella56@gmail.com.

Be on the lookout for part two in our series on how to prepare your home for winter. In the meantime, if you have any other questions, feel free to give us a call. We'd be happy to help.