Winterizing And Your Gutters – Family Roofing

Posted on by David Reid

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At Family Roofing, we take great pride in our experience, expertise, quality and customer service. It is our mission to provide excellent workmanship and complete customer satisfaction from start to completion of a project. Our reputation is based on service, safety and quality, regardless of how large or small the job.

 

 

When it comes to exterior home maintenance homeowners often do not realize there is maintenance or repair needed until they see the actual problem occur.  This can be true when dealing with your gutter system.  Your home’s exterior plays a role in protecting the inside of your home.  It is important to be proactive in its maintenance.  Checking these aspects of your home consistently is key.  Especially prior to the winter gutters season it is very important in prevention of costly and damaging problems.

Winterizing And Your Gutters

Here are some areas of your home that you should begin checking in preparation for the winter season.

  1. Drafts/insulation – Saving on your energy bill during the winter months can significantly increase your comfort, especially during frigid temperatures.  Drafts coming from windows or doors can keep the home feeling cold and damp throughout the winter prompting you to raise the heat, and increasing your energy bill.   Heat loss can also cause other expensive issues like ice damming, particularly when the heat is escaping from your attic.  The best way to prevent heat loss is by insulating and sealing areas of escape. Having an evaluation/energy audit done on your home to check for heat loss can help to better prepare you.

  2.  Gutters – During the winter, your gutter system can potentially take a beating, especially during months of heavy snow and ice.  Ice damming can occur on your gutter system due largely to heat loss from your attic.  Essentially, ice damming is when the heat in your home escapes through your attic and makes your roof warm.  After it snows, the warm part of your roof will melt the snow and ice causing water to flow down to the bottom of your roof and your gutter system, which is still cold.  Once the melted snow reaches the cold roof, some of it freezes and causes ice buildup and icicles on your roof’s edge, and your gutters.  Ice damming has serious potential to not only damage and/or pull your gutter system down, but also cause water damage.

  3. Roof – Inspecting your roof for any sort of soft spots or leaks is essential to do before winter.  A soft spot, or leaky area can mean big trouble.  Especially, once the weight of snow is added to it.  These spots could mean potential for serious leaks from this snow, or worse, collapsing of the roof due to heavy weight on an area that needs repair and cannot handle this weight.

  4. Pipes – Similar to fixing your home’s drafts and insulation, it is a good idea to insulate your pipes to prevent heat loss and slow heat transfer.  You can do this by wrapping your pipes in insulation tubes made of polyethylene or fiberglass.  If temperatures are particularly frigid, the possibility of your pipes freezing are a very real concern.  When water freezes, it expands, causing added pressure on your pipes, and the possibility of your pipes bursting.

Winter Gutter Season

Each season features it’s own source of job lists.  In spring and fall we are mostly out cleaning gutters and doing gutter guard installations.  Come winter time, those two items become nearly impossible.  Although not completely impossible, it would be far to time costly to continue to do them in winter.  Although our job list changes, winter is the only season that we gain additional gutter duties.  Cleaning out gutters gets replaced with removing snow and ice dams

Snow and ice may limit our work list but it doesn’t limit removing the gutter system.  After the gutter system is off, installing a new one is just as easy.  Because a gutter installation removes the entire gutter system, doing this type of job is possible to accomplish in the inclement weather of winter.  Gutter jobs tend to take more time in winter than other seasons.