New York Renovator

I was shocked to hear of a huge storm coming tomorrow. I guess I have been too busy to listen to the news and weather much. WHOA! It’s been a while. Now THIS is a storm– we’re expected to get clobbered with a foot or two of snow. It may disrupt things for half a day, lol. We live in Upstate New York, so snow is something we kind of expect for half the year, give or take a month. No need to frantically shop for groceries or life insurance rate– we’ll be OK.

Still… it’s February. I was so hoping for an early spring. It may come just yet… but we’re never sitting easy until late April. And I think it was last year that we got snow in May. :S

My weatherman has been warning us from time to time of “tropical systems” creeping up into the Northern/Western Hemisphere. While hurricanes rarely hit the Northeast (they DO strike us, though– check out this post about the most damaging one to ever hit the U.S., in 1938), they usually do affect our weather. But this post isn’t for those of us in the Northeast; it’s for my many readers in the South, who are in the midst of hurricane season right now. I have never been through a hurricane, but it must be a horribly harrowing experience. The photos I have seen on the hurricane-chasers’digital cameras and videos are scary enough!

Bob Vila has a great article about getting your garage doors storm ready. I think it’s very timely!

Hurricanes have taught us that garage doors are possibly a home’s greatest danger zone in a high-wind event. Bracing garage doors against failure has become the focus of code officials and manufacturers as buildings are built better to resist damaging winds.

…In the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew’s devastation in 1992 the building codes in many coastal counties and storm-threatened areas made a leap in stringency. One of the most important changes in code concerned the biggest hole in our homes—the garage door. Failure of the garage door in a hurricane leaves a breach in the house envelope that can be as big as 300 square feet. Experts conclude that the resulting change in pressure can blow a roof off the house or create other tears and fissures in the home that allow rains and water to invade and damage or ruin drywall.

Basically, your garage door needs vertical AND horizontal bracing along the interior of the door. You can buy a new garage door specially built for hurricanes, build the bracing yourself, or buy kits to “retro-fit” your garage door to bring it up to standards. Of course, the bracing is only as good as the structure you are attaching it TO. Check out Vila’s article for more info!

The United States is in the midst of another hurricane season. New York State was completely drenched by Hurricane Bill (THREE inches of rain in two hours!) and my yard looked like a lake again…. I can’t complain, really- other areas suffered flash flooding and there were multiple car accidents from it. And my area is not anywhere slammed as hard as folks along the coastal areas…. yow. I don’t know HOW you guys in those areas deal with this, year after year, having to nail plywood to your windows, secure your POS systems, and batten down the hatches, only to see the ocean swirling in…. *shudder*

So it is with some fascination that I found this brief video by BBC, about how a hurricane forms. Very interesting…. so a hurricane is formed by a little African girl playing in the sand, eh? lol

:S

Here we are, one week from Memorial Day, and it is FREEZING this week. We’ve had a handful of frost warnings (and frosty nights)… at a time when my furnace is put to sleep for the season, it’s still chugging away. So where’s all this hot air that we usually experience a week before the month of June, our big month for picnics and engagement rings?!

Our weather here has been wacky lately. This week, we’ve had 4-5 frost warnings, two flood warnings, and a tornado warning! And a few tornadoes did touch down in Upstate NY– a few near Binghamton, NY, and two in Madison County next to my location. One guy was hurt.

New York State seems to go through bursts of wacky weather, anyway. By Wednesday/Thursday, we’ll be be near 90 degrees! No wonder New Yorkers are always so crotchety; just when we think we’ve had time to adjust to one thing, another thing hits us! lol.

Well, I’m grateful that these kind of occurrences are sporadic. And like I always say, New York is a fine state if you are looking for a milder climate, compared to other states that have frequent mudslides, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, droughts, etc. Here in New York State, the only real natural catastrophe we have is the politicians.

There has been a persistent, nasty smell of mildew in the house this week. Its DRIVING ME CRAZY! I have a sensitive sense of smell, and it’s unbearable to smell the mildew. I’m ready to claw the walls out.

I dealt with this last year, when we completely gutted and renovated the living room. But now the smell is back… and I can’t locate where it is coming from. I strongly suspect it may be an ice dam somewhere.

I wrote about ice dams here, last year. Ice dams are formed on the roof of a house, when melting water builds up beneath a blockage of ice. They are very common here in Northeast, where we might have a daytime temperature of 40 degrees F (melting the ice enough to get the water flowing) and then a night time drop to 10 degrees (causing a freeze). This freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw cycle wreaks havoc on the roof, particularly on the gabled and steep-roofed areas of our homes. Older homes are especially susceptible, because they were built before insulation and before the standardized sealing of air leaks and soffits. And then there is my house, which is like Swiss cheese.
Moreover, the knuckleheads who insulated the attic here completely filled in the soffits with dusty fiberglass cellulose, sealing off the air flow and creating a tropical rainforest in the attic. It would have been better if they never insulated at all, than to have insulated incorrectly. Because now we are stuck with a ton of problems and a sticky, gooey, cellulose insulation cleanup, too. *sigh*

So there’s moisture somewhere in the walls again. For all I know, we could have ice dams leaking into all the corners of the walls! Gah! I have the windows wide open today (its 15 degrees outside) to air the house out. We’re going to have to gear up with our icebreaker merinos and shovels, and get the ice off the roof today, too. I don’t know what else to do, besides claw down the walls…

In the Bible, in the Old Testament, it says to rip a house down if mildew is found, and rebuild from scratch. I am THIS CLOSE right now. Somedays I look at this place and wonder how on earth I’m going to get it all done, and still be sane (and not go bankrupt!) at the same time. GRRRRRR!

There’s a great website called InspectAPedia if you want to learn more about ice dams and how to treat/prevent them. The site also has other helpful articles, too.

Photos from Frugal Yankee.

Weird. It’s WEIRD, people. Lake effect is that weird weather pattern that swoops down from the Great Lakes (Erie and Ontario) onto the unsuspecting citizens of Upstate New York.

About 15 minutes after I posted this post with this photo– showing ZERO visibility during heavy snow squalls with vicious winds…

This appeared out my window. Five minutes later. Wild!

Before:

After:

There’s an old saying here in Upstate: If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes. LOL!

Snow, snow, snow. After a fast of snow for November and early December, it’s come strong and sudden. Winter storm alerts are popping up everywhere. Last Wednesday we were hit (5 inches+), then Sunday (5+), and now, today (6-8 iches expected). And guess what? We’ve got more up and coming for Wednesday (sleet! yuk!) and Friday.

I looked out my window about a half-hour ago, and saw this unwelcome site:

When I went on the front porch to take photos, I couldn’t see past 50 yards. Driving is terrible. It’s 15 degrees F here right now, but the wind is whipping around so the wind chill is about 25-below-zero. BRRRR!

The mailmen are out in this today. They are always getting stuck in the snow. Please be sure to shovel out your mailboxes, eh?