Waiting On Winter

 While it may beat the alternative, the current situation around here is waiting to see what winter is going to do.  

I've been here for 60 winters now, and I have noticed that there are patterns.  Not the sort that the more knowledgeable weather forecasters (and others) talk about.  What I've seen tends to carry through, which pretty much is the way the winter weather starts tends to define the entire winter.  

Some of that is weather, and most of it is the after-effects of the weather.  Last year started slow but big - and ended up with our third-snowiest winter, ending up with just short of eight feet of snow.  We tend to average five feet a year, but before you snort and laugh, that does not mean every flat surface is covered to that depth.  

In a typical winter, we start with some snow, then some melts, more snow arrives, and snow, as you know if you know, is mostly air.  That's right.  Snowflakes are relatively flat, if you look at the individual flake, but they can clump up and create these larger blobs.  When that happens, the snow tends to be fluffy.  Gravity, however, dislikes fluff.  Which means that snow does tend to compact.  

As a young boy, and by that I mean around 12-13, we once had a winter where we got several feet of snow, which was one day topped by a rain-storm.  Rain on snow has two effects.  The first is it does tend to melt the upper layer of snow by soaking it, reducing the fluff, or loft, if you prefer the more technical term.  Rain falling in January, however, is a bit of a problem, because we have further cold temperatures, with our average daytime high not exceeding freezing until April.  So rain on top of snow creates a layer of ice.

What was remarkable to me at that age was that the ice was often thick enough to hold my weight.  That is, I could step onto it, and I would not sink two feet to a more solid footing.  But in the average winter, snow that is not removed to someplace else can compact.  The more pressure, the more compact.  Which makes the surface pretty treacherous.  

And where I live now has a couple of rather large issues.  First is the poorly constructed roof.  As in, the bad airflow in the attic.  If you live in warmer climates and never experienced a winter of heavy snow, good for you.  But take a look at the average roof.  Most homes have what are called Eaves.  These are the part of the home where the roof sticks out beyond the outside wall of the house.

As we have figured out, within my life time, there's a bit of a trick there.  If you have a house in snow country, the snow will accumulate on your roof.  If your home is older and the attic/roof insulation has not been properly addressed, there is this thing called an ice dam.  When you heat your home, some of that heat escapes into your attic.  What heat does to snow is to turn it from, as scientists would properly say, one state to another.  Water exists as vapor, liquid, or solid, and snow and ice form that solid group.  Now, when water is warm enough to change from snow, it also becomes far more susceptible to gravity.  Which means water, much like other liquids, looks to flow down hill.  Roofs are, in this neck of the woods, either sloped or likely to leak.  

So when the water flows down, it flows until it reaches a point where it cools below 32 degrees.  And if your home is poorly insulated, that heat in your attic will rise, which means the top of your attic - the point closest to the peak - will be warmest.  The attic cools until you get to the point where there's no more warm house beneath it - or the area above the eaves.  So the water flows downhill until reaching a freezing point.  Which is typically near, if not slightly past, the exterior walls of the home.

And if you have ever seen a properly assembled dam, they tend to hold water.  Which is exactly what an Ice Dam does.  On your roof.  Which means that while water likes to run downhill, it does tend to stop at a dam.  Even an ice dam.  Which builds up an ever-larger ridge of frozen water that blocks water from flowing.

So now we get to the point where we look at the typical roof.  There's a wooden structure, usually, though it may contain some metal.  But on top of that last layer of wood, there's usually a "membrane" layer.  This is most often something called "tar paper".  It is a material which is designed to block most water flow as it passes from top to bottom of the roof.  It's put on the roof by starting at the bottom, lowest layer, with a flat strip placed along the edge.  Another strip is laid down, slightly overlapping the first, so that each subsequent layer does the same thing.  Water moving downhill will tend to continue, even on top of tar paper.  The tar paper is then topped by shingles, usually, which are the thicker layer that contains some grit and some waterproof material.  ALL of this stuff is attached to your roof by nails.

Which is where, looking at the idea, you realize that if your house was flipped upside down and set into a body of water, it might float for a second or two, but if the water is not moving, or is allowed to accumulate, it's eventually going to find the smallest of small holes that will let it through.  Which brings water into your home.  

An ice dam forms a lake of water behind it, which then seeps into the walls and downward, causing rot and mold to grow within the walls where you rarely see it.  You might see the effects of this water by spots on your ceiling, water patterns in the walls staining the paint, or other issues.  Our primary manifestation of the problem happens right over our front door.  Water tends to flow down onto our front concrete step, a structure that is six steps high, and can be terribly treacherous.  We don't like that.  

But then we get to problems two through eight here.  Ice on a front step you use regularly is a huge problem.  We don't use the front door nearly as often now that we're not hopping into cars to head to the office, but we still go in and out - and get deliveries. So there are three methods for dealing with ice.  The first is to chop it loose.  And I have several ice choppers - essentially a handle with a metal blade on the tip.  Banging that down into the ice does tend to break it up, and lets me sweep or shovel it away.  But it's labor intensive.  The next method is to melt the ice using chemicals.  We don't take the dogs out the front door, so we can use standard road salt.  Or what I do is buy water softener rock salt, typically under $4 a 50-pound bag, though I'm sure that's gone up this year, and I can get a few weeks or months out of a bag, depending on the weather.  And that does tend to be what I use a lot on the front step.

The third option is to use heat.  I do have a sort of flame thrower tool, which was designed to be used to burn out stumps or weeds, along with melting ice.  It attaches to a propane tank, and I drag that along with me as I melt the sidewalk ice.  It does tend to turn the ice pretty quickly from solid to vapor, which is much less expensive than the pet-friendly ice melt we use on the side door.  As Rock salt tends to be sharp it can cut dog's paws, so we don't use it on the side door sidewalk.  We use the stuff that costs $10 for 20 pounds.  But I don't use much.

The problem with melting the snow and ice becomes, once again, water flow.  I live on a hill, which helps a bit.  Unfortunately, there are spots in my driveway that slope towards the house.  Fortunately, they do turn around, so in other words, I have a low spot about halfway down my driveway, which can form a lake, or a sheet of solid ice.  So I have to be careful with it.  And because melted ice can return to a solid form, the front step in front of my house is starting to show it's age.  Tiny cracks in concrete allow water to get in, then when it re-freezes, it expands, splitting the concrete further.  I've got some larger cracks in the step, which is a pile of concrete blocks, most likely filled with dirt, and topped with a layer of concrete.  There are growing voids on the north side of the step on my driveway, at the second-to-top step, and a crack right through the middle of the top step.  So some day I may step out the front door and drop an additional eight or so inches, unexpected.  I hope not, but it's going to happen if nothing gets done.

Now, I'm sure, someone out there is wondering what we do to prevent ice.  That's a relatively new invention called air flow.  Yes, that's sarcasm, heavy grade, there.  It's a pretty simple thing we figured out how to do.  BEFORE we insulate and close up the attic, what they've learned to do is increase airflow in the attic.  It starts, top down, from the roof peak.  At the very top of the roof, the ridge, we now place a special type of roof shingle.  Instead of completely sealing the attic, it allows air to escape the attic and leave.

Wait, I hear a few complain, isn't that adding to global warming?  Well, it would be, if we weren't using other air.  Huh?  Well, we're not letting hot air out of the attic.  Back to the eaves, if your home has been built or the roof upgraded in the last 10-20 years by a good, reputable builder, you may notice a strip of vents or holes in the edge of your eaves, on the bottom.  That's where the air comes in.  Exactly. We have learned that if we keep the top part of the roof - you know, the top part in contact with the snow - cooler, the snow won't melt.  Or it won't melt until the air temperature gets warmer.  Then snow can melt like it normally does - from the top down.  Which means that it will leave your roof by dripping right off the edge, because the edge of the roof and snowbank is the same temperature as elsewhere.  This means that cool air, flowing upwards into your roof and out at the top, prevents the snow from melting from the bottom up.  

So that's the good news.  And when they re-did the siding on this building about 3 years ago, they put new cladding on the eaves, including these nice little strips of sheet metal with little holes poked in it.  Doesn't much help since the eaves do not have those vents into the attic and up to the ridge - which does not have ridge vents, but a flat layer of shingles.  

But we're still snow-free, so I'm going to enjoy our temperatures, which this week are reported to hit the low-to-mid sixties.  As our average daily air temperature this time of year is heading into the low 40s, I'll take upper 50s when I can get outside, like I have to today to get the more delicate outdoor furniture stored in our storage locker down the hill because it will last longer if we don't bury it in solid water for a few months, then try to dry it out to use it.