The holiday season offers some of the happiest times of the year, from decorating the house to spending time with family and friends. But, if you’re not careful, keeping your home comfortable and stringing up Christmas lights on your roof can quickly become a headache and costly. To make sure everything goes off without a hitch over your winter, we’ve outlined some helpful holiday season roofing tips to keep you and your roof safe from start to finish.
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Winter
When winter weather comes in, many homes struggle to efficiently maintain the comfort your heating system provides. This inefficiency can easily drive your utility costs up throughout the colder months. To keep the cold outside and your family inside warm, we recommend two main roofing practices as a start.
Ensure Proper Roof Ventilation
The purpose of roof ventilation is to manage the temperature and airflow within your attic and ensure that your conditioned air isn’t losing its comfort by coming into contact with a hot or cold roof. Further, a properly ventilated roof helps to minimize hot and cold spots throughout your attic, eliminating the potential for frost. Ventilation also helps to do this for your home, making a warm upstairs and frigid downstairs a thing of the past.
To learn more about roof ventilation and why it’s significant for your roof, read our blog designated to discuss proprietary ventilation benefits.
Evaluate Your Insulation
Just like you pull out your oversized, insulated jackets in the winter, your home is looking to do the same. Especially in older homes, inadequate insulation makes it difficult to keep your home warm throughout the colder months. While your ceiling should be insulated rather than your roof, this critical step works with your roof ventilation to regulate indoor temperatures to keep your attic and roof from bearing temperature extremes.
Stringing Up Lights Without Racking Up Damages
Christmas lights are a holiday staple, strung up along the roofs of residential homes across the country. Unfortunately, damaged roofs are commonly a New Year’s staple once the lights come down. Ensuring that you’re decorating your home for the holidays the right way can save you both repair costs and headaches come January.
Select Decor Thoughtfully
When planning your holiday rooftop extravaganza, consider your roof’s structure. To decorate your roof safely, you might need to pass on the full-size sled and reindeer. Heavy decorations can often put more weight on your roof than it can bear. The average home may not be equipped with the proper weight-bearing structures to allow for such heavy decor. Over time, this unsupported weight will damage your roof, leading to roof repairs and re-roofing needs down the road.
Use Plastic Clips
There is no more critical tip for decorating your roof than to advise against using nails or staples to secure decor. Using these may seem like a simple, fast way to hang up Christmas decorations and lights, but you’ll be leaving behind roof damage. The safest way to hang lights is by stringing them through plastic clips attached to your gutters, eaves, and shingles. If you have a non-traditional home with a flat roof that lacks gutters and eaves, use parrot clips to secure decorations.
Patience and Care Go A Long Way
While putting these clips and lights on your roof, try to avoid doing so at peak hours of sunlight and heat. Walking on your shingles while they’re heated makes them more vulnerable to damage. When you get on top of your house to decorate, make sure to wear smooth, non-abrasive shoes, like sneakers. Further, once your lights are up, make sure to practice proper cord safety. Never coil cords tightly around themselves while in use or place them under rugs.
When it comes to taking down holiday decorations, most homeowners can hurry through this process, letting any mishaps be “next year’s problem.” However, when it comes to your roof, avoiding damages that can incur by hastily yanking down holiday lights is worth the extra patience. When removing your holiday lights, be sure to remove them from the clips without pulling on the clips themselves, as doing so can damage the attached shingle, eave, or gutter.
Step Into Christmas With Clean Gutters
The laborious chores of owning a home can often persuade homeowners to put off their regularly scheduled maintenance. After all, isn’t that the purpose of the year’s annual lump sum of spring cleaning? However, procrastination is no friend of your home, especially when it comes to preserving your roof.
When leaves and debris clog your gutters, the path that rainwater typically takes to run off your home’s roof is blocked. As water overflows from your gutters, it can damage both the exterior and interior of your home. This still water causes roof rot and leaks. Especially in Florida, where heavy winds and storms pass through regularly, gutters may need cleaning more frequently. At a minimum, ensure that your gutters are cleared at least twice a year.
It’s the Most Wonderful Time Of The Year For Roof Inspections
Especially in Florida, where roofs are subjected to heavy rain and harsh sunlight, the home’s structure can be quickly damaged if a roof is not safe and secure. Structural repairs are some of the costliest unexpected expenses homeowners can face.
Once problems with your roof become obvious to the untrained eye, it’s often too late to avoid costly repairs. Unwrap the situation early to keep your roof healthy with a professional roof inspection. When roofing concerns are addressed before they become serious problems, you help your roof last longer. If you notice any signs of developing roof problems while up on your housetop, call for service sooner rather than later.
Don’t Let a Roofing Issue Be the Grinch That Ruins Your Christmas
At McFall Residential Roofing, we know that your home is the heartbeat of your family, making it ever so important to have a lasting, quality roof to protect it. Whether your roof needs an inspection, repairs, or a new installation, McFall Residential Roofing is here to help. Reach out to our team if you have any questions about how to keep your roof safe and schedule your roofing service today!
