3 Ways Winter Affects Your Home
Winter is here. Grab your jackets, hats, snow boots, scarves, gloves! Grab all the gear! Our subzero temperatures are on our doorstep! All that gear keeps you warm because the extreme cold has an effect on us. We shake, we get frostbite, hypothermia, etc. A common question is how does winter and those low, low temperatures affect your home? The foundation and structure of your home is crucial, it literally holds the building up! Here are 3 ways winter affects your home!
- For starters extremely cold weather is not good for pre-existing cracks in your foundation. As temperatures fall it causes the ground to freeze. The freezing soil may expand and push on walls to create cracks or possibly make them larger. This depends on how saturated the soil is when it freezes. Another problem comes in the Spring when the weather begins to warm up and the ground begins to thaw. Pre-existing cracks will then expand making them bigger and deeper ultimately allowing more water into your basement as snow begins to melt and rainy season starts. Winter can also cause new cracks! As the soil around your homes freezes, expanding water pushes upward, resulting in what is called a frost heave. This is not something that causes cracks right away, but after years and years, this up and down motion can create cracks in your foundation.
- With the cold air and the freezing ground cracks are not the only concern. This same recipe of events can cause a home’s foundation to settle or sink. These two terms are used interchangeably and mean that the home has gradually sunken into the ground overtime. Settling occurs when the soil beneath the foundation begins to shift. A tell tale sign of this is foundation cracks! Fancy that. Another sign is doors or windows that stick or don’t open and close properly, gaps between windows and walls, even slanted floors.
- Another wintery issue to consider is ice dams. Ice can accumulate on a roof during really cold temperatures. Rising heat from inside the home can cause that ice to melt brining the water down to the eaves, the part of the roof that meets or overhangs the walls of a building. Guess what? The eaves are not kept warm by the internal heat of your home so the water refreezes and eventually builds up into a dam! This dam blocks water from flowing off of the roof and into the gutter. Once water is fluid it will find anywhere to go and will instead seep down your home and into the ground or possibly your basement.
The good news, there are experts you can call to check your homes foundation structural issues and fix any cracks before winter comes to head off the seepage before it happens. Taking good care of your foundation is a great way to keep your home healthy during those cold winter months.
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