GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – February thaw brought many people outside to clean up the snow- again.
“Just shoveling the snow, and the ice and the water,” said Jerome Sanapaw. “To get it out, so we don’t slip.”
Many others did the same thing today as water pooled in some areas. Sanapaw, of Green Bay, knows this winter thaw will be short-lived and temperatures will drop again.
“It’s going to freeze up and obviously getting all icy,” said Sanapaw.
“Nobody wants to stand outside and watch water drip off their roof,” said Greg Schultz. But that’s exactly what he recommends doing. “Check your gutters and check for leaks at the corners, and there is one over here that is dripping, so it’s going to get cold again, you’re going to have ice on your sidewalks.”
Schultz, the owner of Safeguard Home Inspections, showed us around a property Sunday and pointed out common problems homeowners should look for. He says when temperatures drop, after heavy snow or a cold spell, it’s a good time to look for things that need to be fixed around your home.
“Take a look and see if you have big pools around your house, and you know, that’s something, there isn’t a lot you can do with it in the winter, but once the weather warms up in the spring you can try to build that up a little bit and try to get that sloping away,” said Schultz.
He looks at things like the furnace exhaust, gutters, and windows for condensation. But he says the parts of your home most important to check on are those you don’t look at every day.
“It’s a pretty good idea to pop your head into your attic every once in a while and just make sure it looks like dry wood. Especially in the winter, you shouldn’t see any frost that’s an indication that you’re losing heat,” he said.
He also recommends checking around the home’s foundation.
“If you start to see horizontal cracks that’s the sign of an obvious problem. If you start to see bowing in your wall, that’s when you need to get a professional in there,” said Schultz.
The key, he says, is spotting any these before they break.
“If you bought a new house, you would wash it when it got dirty, you would do all the maintenance. You really need to do that with your house,” said Schultz.
