Winter weather – why in the midst of spring and summer’s heat are we talking winter? Because when it comes to the roof of your home, any damages created by Edmonton’s harsh winters are visible now and need to be repaired before the next winter season to prevent further damage, failure, and a potential loss of valuables in your home from water damage.
Edmonton has a prairie-steppe type climate – usually enjoying sunny weather, even in winter – and it is also notoriously difficult to predict in detail from day to day. Edmonton endures very cold winters, with quite a long snow season. Even in summer, Edmonton’s nights are rather cool. Snow depths of greater than 1 cm are seen on about 141 days each year in Edmonton.
Water in general is a trouble-maker for roofs, especially when the temperatures dip below freezing. Liquid water present when the mercury is hovering around freezing can be the worst offender. The more freeze/thaw cycles, the worse it can be for built materials outside. There’s not much to be done about freeze/thaw, except keep up on proper maintenance.
Significant ice build-up in one area of the roof could cause load issues or could damage or stress local components, like roof flashings and tie-ins to roof accessories. Areas where the roof adjoins a solid wall, or where there is a lower roof such as awnings or canopies, are especially susceptible to accumulation.
A weather event with damage that is tricky to diagnose on the roof is hail. The damage can be hard to see and may take a while to manifest itself – making now the perfect time to check, budget, and develop a work plan around repairs or replacement of your roofing material. With an asphalt shingle, a modified-bitumen roof, or a built-up roof, a large enough piece of hail can lead to long-term problems and a shorter service life of your roof system.
Because a lot of the damage a roof undergoes as part of habitual exposure to the elements is cumulative, incremental or takes a while to reveal itself, it’s important to create a system to track what is happening on the roof. This includes maintaining records of visual assessments with accompanying notes, creating a baseline against which to evaluate changes.
To know if your Edmonton roof needs replacing, check your eavestroughs for large accumulations of asphalt granules and for bare spots on shingles where granules have fallen off. Inspect the roof for torn or missing shingles and check to see if there is any buckling in the middle of the shingle or curling along its edges.
At A. Clark Roofing & Siding LP, we’ve been repairing and replacing roofs in in Edmonton and St. Albert for over 60 years, backed by a 5-year workmanship warranty and an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau. If you have any questions regarding roof repair or our services, call us at 780.465.7571.