Avoid Water Damage at Home When A Storm Is Headed Your Way

There are going to be times in your life when you will need to pay close attention to your surroundings and be prepared for dangers that may be just around the corner. If you are a home owner, then you will have even more responsibilities to consider when a threat may be headed in your direction. Severe weather can bring great risks with it, and while the most important thing is the safety of you and your family, there are things to consider regarding your home's safety as well. If you do not plan well for a severe storm that may be headed your way, the result could possibly be water damage taking place inside your home.
Fortunately, there are some things that you can do to prepare your home to weather the harsh conditions that come with a severe storm. How drastic the length of the measures you will go to prepare will depend heavily on the level of threat the storm poses. Before you begin the preparation process, you will want to check your local weather reports and determine how vulnerable your home may be based on the effects it is having on nearby areas and the strength that people are claiming it has. This will help you decide how extensive your preparation process will need to be.
Preparing for a storm that has been deemed light gives you an excuse to go around your home and double check things that you should be staying on top of anyways. You need to be sure that the weatherstripping around your doors and thresholds are present and in good shape. You want to be sure that all of your windows are closed and sealed well. Look for any small holes or cracks in the glass. This can contribute to a much larger problem down the road as damaged glass is a lot easier to break up under the pressure of heavy rains and strong winds. Be sure that everything in your attic is sealed off from the outside of the roof and water tight. If you know that you have a storm traveling in your direction, you may want to place some towels down over the floors by any entrances that may be used by yourself or others living in your home.
If a storm is headed in your direction and there have been warnings issued regarding the severity of it, then you need to be sure that everything mentioned above is done with the addition of taking some more drastic preventative measures. Most severe storms bring two extreme threats into play, strong winds and heavy rain. These winds can sometimes pick objects up from the ground and turn them into high speed projectiles, becoming extremely dangerous and even deadly if you find yourself outside or close to a window inside. Since your windows are very vulnerable to this type of threat, you may want to consider cutting sheets of plywood and placing them over all of the windows in your house until the storm has safely blown over. The heavy rains that will come can cause some serious issues as well in the form of flash flooding. If rain water comes down too fast to drain well, it is possible that flooding can occur in your home as a result. Besides making sure that you have effective drains around your home that are free of any debris that may prevent them from doing their job well, you may want to consider building a barrier with sandbags. Over the years, thousands of people have saved their homes from suffering from the terrible effects of water damage by fillings bags with sand and stacking them in the form of a wall around the entire perimeter of their homes. This has proven to be one of the most effective ways to prevent flood waters from destroying a home, or at least reducing the amount of water that can actually penetrate the walls.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jose_A._Dykema





No comments:

Post a Comment