Depending on where you live, you may experience heavy winter snowfall, lake-effect snow and icy conditions, especially in mountain ranges and near large lakes. Winter storms may bring scenic snowfall, but they can also lead to potentially hazardous conditions from snow and ice buildup. Protect your property with prevention measures and learn how to remove ice and snow safely and naturally.
Snow and Ice Management: Why It’s Important to Protect Your Home
It turns out that allowing ice and snow to accumulate on your property can lead to structural dangers, including roof collapse, which may occur if snow weight stresses roofs beyond their capacity. Additionally, ice buildup can break gutters, leading to overflow near the house. Finally, when icy snow melts into soil, it can lead to freeze-thaw cycles that can cause cracks in the foundation of your home, destabilizing it structurally over time.
Nor is your deck immune to snow and ice damage, since snow saturation can cause natural wood to warp or rot. This can also affect the fences on your property, which may eventually collapse from snow moisture damage. What if you have a lot of trees on your property? Snow and ice accumulation may cause branches to break and fall, which could harm people directly and possibly damage necessary structures, such as power lines.
In addition to serious potential damage to your home and property, your personal safety and that of your family may also be at risk. Primary concerns are accidental falls on icy, slippery sidewalks and driveway surfaces, but equally worrisome is impaired ventilation in your home. If snow piled against the house starts to block crucial vents for your furnace, dryer, range hood and air exchanger, you and your loved ones may be vulnerable to dangerous carbon monoxide poisoning.
How to Prevent Problems on Your Property
Now for some good news! There is much you can do to prevent these daunting snow and ice-related problems and stay ahead of this annual winter challenge. The key is being proactive. Proper snow management helps you keep steps, paths and driveways clear, rather than becoming danger zones. This will save you money over time and help you protect the structural integrity of your home, including foundation, deck, roof and fencing. You and your family will also be safer inside your home with preventive winter care to ensure heathy air ventilation.
If you are ready to address this problem, it helps to first adopt a prevention mindset, as it is easier to prevent snow/ice accumulation problems in the first place than to fix them after the fact. That’s because snow is much easier to contend with than ice, so keeping drifts clear is all about working smarter rather than harder. Whether you are working on preventing snow/ice build-up on your property or need to manage a frosty accumulation, these tips can help:
Keep your roof clear
For preventive snow removal, start by clearing your roof before snow piles up too high, or hire this job out. You will find that a snow rake―also called a roof rake―is invaluable. This is a long-handled tool with a wide blade used from the ground to pull snow off the edges of your roof. A snow/roof rake allows you to prevent ice dam formation and potentially dangerous snow/ice buildup without having to contend with a ladder.
An ice dam is a ridge of ice that forms at the edge of a roof, blocking meltwater from draining, forcing it under shingles where it can leak into your home, damaging walls, ceilings and insulation. Ice dams are caused by a cycle of accumulated snow melting on warmer parts of the roof and refreezing at the cold eaves. The heat from your home creates uneven roof temperatures, triggering this process, especially in cold climates with snow.
Make sure vents are unobstructed
Vents to your home’s exterior can easily be blocked by snow and ice, dangerously compromising the purity of your indoor air supply. Blocked home vents create severe dangers, trapping indoor air which can remain stagnant if windows are closed, as is often the case in cold weather. The greatest danger is carbon monoxide (CO) accumulating inside. Since it is deadly but odorless, you may be unaware of it. This is an even greater concern for children and pets, given their smaller size and body weight.
Compromised home ventilation due to ice and snow can also lead to other costly problems such as furnace or appliance shutdowns, lack of heat and potential fire hazards from gas backup, which would force you to take additional measures, such as clearing exhaust/intake pipes for furnaces, water heaters and dryers after snowfall to prevent poisoning, system failure or other serious issues.
Protect your property foundation
Clear snow piles away from the foundation of your home to avoid problems associated with the melt/thaw cycle that results in stubborn ice build-up. Again, allowing ice and snow to accumulate on your property potentially creates structural issues from foundation to rooftop. For best results, stay on top of modest snow drifts before they harden to ice.
Winter-proof your trees
Make a point of proactively trimming trees each year as needed to help reduce the risk of rotten or damaged branches breaking off in storms or when weighed down by snow which could be very damaging to your property and the safety of your family and guests.
How to Remove Ice Safely
If snow and ice have already accumulated on your property, no worries. There are quite a few solutions for de-icing your space, though some are safer than others for your family, your pets, your garden and local wildlife. For example, calcium chloride, rock salt and chemical de-icers are all commonly used to manage ice on roads and driveways, but they can all be hazardous to pets as well as plants and trees, and they are also easily washed away in the next storm.
Homemade ice melt
Healthier options for you and your family when it comes to coping with residual ice might include sawdust, gravel, kitty litter or coffee grounds. Other natural de-icing remedies include a vinegar and hot water mix, or beet juice mixed with salt brine, but some of these options may be prohibitive in terms of cost and practicality.
So, now that you better understand your snow and ice management options, what makes the most sense to you? It seems that here, as with so many areas of life, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. In other words, ongoing vigilance in consistently removing snow before it accumulates and enters a melt-thaw cycle leading to the formation of stubborn ice is arguably the cheapest, most effective, safest and most property-protective solution if you can actualize it. Happy winter!
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