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Okay. Great, because I really love a lot of light coming in so that means a lot of windows. Also looking at homes with what they call three season rooms. I see a lot of homes also have sky lights for a little extra solar heat. Do these cause any problems in the winter or from melting snow?
Three season rooms are generally sun rooms that do not have a heat source. Therefore, they can only be used during the "warmer" seasons.
Skylights are not my favorite. They can often develop leaks and have to be replaced. Sun rooms can really help warm things up in the winter through passive solar gain in the winter, though.
Sky lights are a sin in NH. A place for snow to gather on the high side, where it will ice dam and water will run up hill under flashing, and leak into any room so equipped. The plastic types should be illegal! These are weak to begin with and degrade with UV light quickly. The type that open are just NUTS!
Valley rooves are a sin, leaving places to collect snow.
A gable roof should be no less than 12/12 pitch (1 foot up in 1 foot back) or 12 inches up for each 12 inches back) if 3 tab shingles of any type are used.
A pitch of 10/12 is ok with metal roofing, which can be in some colors.
I am not sure if Ongalene (sp) is still made which was a plastic like material made in similar sheets as metal, and was slippery.
Steel in any kind will out last alumium of any kind here.
If you are just loaded with expendable cash copper roofing is the very best.
Slate would be next best, but I doubt it would be easy to find anyone who still does it.
Not this winter, but the 2 before were heavy snow years. Roof shovelers get apx $50.00 an hour, in part because not many can dig 8 hours a day.
In those 2 years anyone who didn't get the snow load off the roof risked a total loss of structures, and many fell in.
The best rooves shed all the snow shortly after it falls.
No doors should be below any sheding roof as well. In other words your doors need to be at the gable ends, not under them. Any doors under a gable run, like mud rooms, doors need a roof of their own and that makes a valley.
All the time people from 'away' come here and build what they used to have common in some place not the 'Snow Belt', and can pay a heavy price or total loss.
Another common error is having a external chimney at the edge of a roof line, where snow will be held back. If nothing is done to remove the snow load there the chimney often time will break supports and fall down.
Decks can be another problem. When under a gable run the snow will shed onto them, and the weight can be more than the deck frame can stand.. Bye Bye Deck.
Decks should be built with a slight angle AWAY from the main building... The decking should be spaced enough apart water melt can run thru, which is a wider gap than a womans stiletto heal. A lot of deck builders use a gap of about 1/8th inch which is common in other souther states, but isn't the best idea in NH.
To give you some idea of the snow, 2 winters back in the un-plowed and no maintinace field out back the snow for a good long time was 6 foot 6 inches deep.
This winter I am not sure of total snow fall, but the first snow here will be the last snow here to melt. The past 2 days have been typical January Thaw, and some snpw loss occured. To us this is mid winter, and we expect more snow yet. There might be 16 inches outside right now.
On this property are out buildings not built right to be here, and twice so far I have had to shovel roofs. No Fun.
Okay. Great, because I really love a lot of light coming in so that means a lot of windows. Also looking at homes with what they call three season rooms. I see a lot of homes also have sky lights for a little extra solar heat. Do these cause any problems in the winter or from melting snow?
The key to everything is that things are properly designed, sealed, and operating. For example: an Ice Dam is a non-issue if you have enough/proper Ice/Water Shield under the shingles but an even better bet is a properly designed home so ice dam creation is minimized to begin with.
Mac (above) mentions the tips for completely worry-free living in more extreme areas of the state (so don't panic); but keep in mind that the most common source of home damage in NH is water intrusion...
Do what Mac recommends. My front door is on a side with the roof over head. I went inside two winters ago, closed the door and watched 2' of snow fall on the stoop. I could have been standing there. Had to go 'round the building to shovel the stuff away fron the door.
Why do they build so many 'Colonial' style homes which seem to be a New England design with the front doorways right there under the roof line instead of the side with the peak? Or at least putting a little entry way roof over it? I always found that weird. It seems like more then half those for sale in NH are this design. It apparently is very popular.
BF I like to keep things simple, and working for me, rather than working for them.
This mid-western barn here, is most certainly a Royal Pain. That roof feels like shoveling off an airport. So far this year the snows have been meger sort of, and with just the barn I have only raked the lower edges where I can reach. To me that's bad enough, as it takes about 1 hour per side to just rake.
The winter before the whole thing had to be shoveled off twice, and the year before that thrice. Plus raking.
The last clearing, the first year, snow was from the ground to 8 inches higher than the edge of the roof. The last section I was standing in broke and slid and I fell up hill!; landing higher than the edge of the roof.
That part is funny, but none of that shoveling was. I'ld give you a measurement, but it depresses me too much. What could be a great barn is a time killer, because no thinking went into facing the sun, the ways the snow would come off, and where that snow should go after it is off.
If that barn were mine i would tear it down and move and turn it, create a 12/12 pitch. I hate buildings that make you work for them.
If this barn were in a southern climate it might be great. It is dry and airey, and in shade most of summer keeping it cool, but is in shade in winter too here, making it icey where the doors are and making it neccessary to clear them too.
The doors are too close to the ground, for a neat look, but they too make forced labor anytime there is snow and for long after since the cement apron freezes water faster than if there were no apron at all.
The barn was built too low to the ground, so there is no choice to taking ground away. That would make a nice covered pond. I guess the skeeters might like that.
Both of those winters hundreds of places caved in.. House trailers on blocks tipped over. They get too much weight on top and over they go face side or back side down. Boom all done..
Other many poorly designed buildings, plenty good enough for no snow failed.
Snow and a home to me is a major thing to think about before there is snow.
Yards and fencing matter too.
I was in Md during what came to be called "Storm of the Century" apx 1992/3?
I wasn't exactly in touch with the modern world then, so i didn't know that storm had a name. It was a humdinger of a blizzard even by my standards.
I had my same old plow truck, and was asked to plow a lane, during the time the state Govenor said Md was in a state of emergency, and only 4x4 could be on the road. On that lane which wasn't made for snow in the first place, one side was big oak trees and stone walled, the other side had homes and white board fences on whimpy rotting posts.
Guess which side got mashed flat.... i told the people before i did it, this would be the effect, so they were warned. Otherwise none of them would have gone any place for at least one month. That isn't what Md people are accustomed too.
As Greg said snow coming off a roof can kill you, if not and it's your car it will mash the car, crush the roof of the car and can mash the suspention. Some places both homes and business, have signs telling a reader to look out for falling ice...
Oddly these signs tend to be weather worn, and small. It makes good sence to look up when parking. And then if the ice fall is clear, someone has gotta be there to move it again. If it isn't the snow sets up to be a concrete, not much but a bucket loader can move.
Of course i don't know how it is down south. You draw a line mid way on NH and I am on about that on the east side.
Why do they build so many 'Colonial' style homes which seem to be a New England design with the front doorways right there under the roof line instead of the side with the peak? Or at least putting a little entry way roof over it? I always found that weird. It seems like more then half those for sale in NH are this design. It apparently is very popular.
Yup, they do that. The design evolved from 1/2 cape to full cape, to 'Colonial' style , to bigger and out of propotion 'Colonial' style .
Most of the real older in this style also have a mud room, or the door isn't used in winter or much of any other time for that matter.
In the case of older with a mud room, the roof line for the mud room will be a few feet lower than the main roof line.
Where there is no mud room, the door are seldom used in winter.
First built as 1/2 cape the door was one a end, usually with the chimney built behid it central in the building. When the home was added onto the door generally became in the center, due to the addition. This kept the chimney central. It lent a ballanced look too.
To one side or the other of a full cape was the parlor, in the day, and was the parlor. The other side was the living room. In back would be a kitchen and maybe another room.
Sometimes the living room went straight to the back in lieu of another room.
I remember that storm. I was commuting to Boston and the snow banks at the L’derry Park & Ride were at least 25 ft high. The snow bank on the downwind side of the house was halfway up the wall and the path was so deep in hard wind blown snow we could and did walk over the snow fence.
I dream of storms like that. Then I wake up shivering and wish I was in Baja.
You must realize that subdivisions are built as haphazardly and a cheaply as possible. Considering winter safety and convenience are not nearly as important as speed and profit. The homeowner gets to worry about those things. I thought snow in Maryland was legally limited to paper cones?
I remember that storm. I was commuting to Boston and the snow banks at the L’derry Park & Ride were at least 25 ft high. The snow bank on the downwind side of the house was halfway up the wall and the path was so deep in hard wind blown snow we could and did walk over the snow fence.
I dream of storms like that. Then I wake up shivering and wish I was in Baja.
You must realize that subdivisions are built as haphazardly and a cheaply as possible. Considering winter safety and convenience are not nearly as important as speed and profit. The homeowner gets to worry about those things. I thought snow in Maryland was legally limited to paper cones?
"I thought snow in Maryland was legally limited to paper cones?"
Yeah so do they! LOL... it was total accident I was there at all and I was one of 2 plows... The other was a WW-2 vintage jeep with a small plow of some sort. My conversation with that driver was short!
(At the top of my voice over the wind i yelled you plow to the right, and go straight, I'll plow to the left.)
This was after mashing the fence half flat on a first pass.
What happened next is another tail... I was backing out of a buddies driveway, buddies is a very loose term for new aquaintances, since I was new and living the 2nd year of tee pee dwelling.
The passanger door popped open and fire fighter jumped in. He said "I am commanderring your truck, and YOU! because i have no idea how to plow snow! DEVA is on fire!" (that add in Yankee magazine for pirate shirts was there and on fire!) I told him buckel up this is gonna be fun! He pointed the way to where a fire engine was in Middletown Md, and that was when I saw the jeep.
On the way I had the plow down, but not all the way down as the snow on the highway was already more than my truck could do.
I think I put the fear of God in the fire fighter as most of the time he couldn't see at all , and he knew i couldn't see much either!
I never did get back to the tee pee that night. I couldn't, but before I couldn't, I had picked my gal, my wife now.
Well after dark plowing that lane and killing that fence for good, I got stuck, and trying to get un-stuck I got soaked. In time i knew i was never gonna get un-stuck, so we tried walking for the tee pee, but i got lost since i couldn't see, and was better than waist deep in the white stuff.
I figured the truck still had some gas and there was a better place to be.
Well one of the lane contact folks saw my problem from his house and came to offer a room, showers, and dry clothing. Next day we squared up and we were back to tee pee living and getting in supplies for folks with out a 4x4. I still miss the WW-1 boots he loaned me that night to use.. His fire place was nice too, as was the feed bag he put out.
IN MASS much later I took my wife to a place on the coast... A tiny park near Glouster where the Wreck of the Hesperious (sp) supposedly took place, and the hill I once knew to be there was GONE.... Waves i suppose, just washed the hill into the sea.
Well Mac_Muz I never thought about the chimney being stuck on the side of the house instead of in the center. That sure would cause a problem with snow build up especially if the chimney was at the low end of the roof. Good thing to know in looking at houses. Do they use ice/water shield under the roofing paper in NH? I think the stuff is called "Grace" ice dam shield.
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I think the stuff is called "Grace" ice dam shield.
