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Weatherproofing Your HomeBy Jim Sulski Summary:Cold weather, wind, water and other common weather hazards will take their toll on your home. Here are tips on protecting your home's integrety. Extreme weather seasons can wear on a house.
As a result, homeowners need to be concerned about the day-to-day things weather-wise and that without taking the proper protection, a home can fall victim to the weather. Truthfully, there's not much you can do about the type of weather damage inflicted by tornadoes and other hard storms. You can't stop a tornado. But home building officials say there are steps homeowners can take to beat back cold weather. The first step is to make sure a home is well sealed to prevent any water infiltration. A majority of the problems out there usually relate to water damage and rot when what should have been a more impervious surface has taken on snow and ice buildup and water over a period of time. That results in deterioration of materials that need to be replaced. If wood rot on a home goes unchecked, it could cause structural problems. Rot is a living organism that's basically fungal spores, which lives off of wet wood. The longer those spores grow, the more they destroy the wood and the deeper moisture can get into the wood. Rot can cause windows to leak into a home and in extreme cases, can cause a house to sag or fall down as it attacks its structural integrity. What works here is making sure that all of a home's roof tiles are in place and properly secured. This is especially important on the ends of roofs to prevent what's known as ice damming, which occurs during the cold weather months. Ice creeps back up from a blocked gutter, gets under the roof tiles, pushes them up and pulls the nails out. Then, water starts to leak into the attic through the nail holes. Also, exterior siding should be free of missing pieces, holes, gaps and loose pieces to prevent the entry of water. Also important is making sure the perimeter of doors and windows are caulked and that chimney, exhaust fans and pipes leaving the roof of the house are properly flashed. That's where the problems are really going to start showing up. Most problems happen because of a lack of maintenance, say officials, who say need to be maintained like everything else. Wind - with our without rain - can also cause major damage to the typical home, say the experts. The national building code standards adopted by most municipalities require construction techniques that allow homes to withstand up to 80 miles per hour wind loads. Under those requirements, most towns have never had a roof fly off or a house fall down because of wind. If a house is built according to the codes, there usually aren't problems.
© by Jim Sulski. All rights reserved. July 20, 2005. NOTE: This column is distributed by Real Estate Matters Syndicate, PO Box 366, Glencoe, Illinois, 60022. This column may not be resold, reprinted, resyndicated or redistributed without written permission from the publisher. © 2005 by Ilyce R. Glink. Distributed by Real Estate Matters Syndicate. |
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