Drywall Cedar Rapids
Will Snow Cause Drywall Damage in Your Home?
Though you may not think about snow being an issue for your home structure, there is a chance it may affect your interior in ways you wouldn’t expect. For example, many people experience damaged drywall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa during snowstorms. This challenging situation often requires professional drywall and insulation services to keep your home safe.
How Snow Can Get in Your Home
While you may not think that snow would cause any issues with your drywall, this situation may be more common than you would think. For example, your children may bring snow in on their shoes as they come indoors. You may also find that snow from outside of the house leaks into the house from a colder attic or other areas.
However, the most common reason that snow may end up in your home is a window left open or a storm causing a crack in your windows that let in snow. When the snow starts getting in through these cracks, your walls will be heavily exposed to cold snow. And while it is true that this problem is quite rare and may seem easy enough to manage, it can become an issue over a reasonably short time.
Whatever the cause, it is possible for snow to get into your home and onto your walls. And when it gets onto your walls, it may end up causing many types of damage. Therefore, you need to do what you can to protect your home from this issue and to ensure that it is safe. First of all, you should understand what kind of damage this problem may cause and how to manage it properly.
Damage Caused By Snow
Even if your drywall contacts snow only for a brief period, there is still a chance that it could end up suffering from water-based damage. Though this type of problem is usually more of an issue when you have water leaks from your attic or higher up on your home, you may still experience many concerns if you aren’t careful. These specific situations develop based on a variety of different factors.
For example, water may cause damage to your wall panels by warping them and making it more difficult for them to set correctly. You may also experience more widespread problems, such as issues with nails, caused by water soaking into your panels and causing other concerns. Perhaps the worst of these situations is the development of mold fed by melting snow inside of your home.
As any drywall insulation and services professional will tell you, mold growth occurs if the water is allowed to sit and attract spores. In many cases, mold is typically an issue that can cause a variety of different problematic issues. For example, people may experience allergic reactions and other problems due to water exposure. As a result, you need to know how to check your walls for severe water damage.
Checking Your Walls for Issues
If you believe that snow has gotten on your walls and may have melted there, you must make sure to check the panels for moisture exposure as soon as possible. This situation is typically not a difficult one to address because you should have a pretty quick idea of how much water has gotten on your walls. In most cases, snow exposure is very quick, though even brief contact may cause some issues.
The first step here is to check all of your walls for signs of any moisture. Most hardware stores should have what is known as a non-penetrating moisture meter for walls. This meter will gauge how much water is in your walls very quickly. You can also poke holes around the base of your drywall after removing your baseboards. If you see any softness here, you have a water issue.
At this point, you need to insert a penetrating moisture meter into the wall or make a hole near the bottom of your wall at the baseboards. Doing so should give you an idea of how far the water has absorbed. Very brief snow exposure shouldn’t cause too many problems in this situation, thankfully, but can be a concern if you don’t take steps to manage it properly by eliminating this moisture.
Repair Steps to Take
In situations where water damage and mold have made your drywall unusable, you need to do what you can to fix your home as quickly as possible. The truth is that you can’t let mold and damaged panels stay in your home. Even letting them stick around briefly can cause a variety of health issues and cause further damage throughout your walls that cannot be tolerated or accepted for very long.
As a result, you need to do what you can to manage this problem quickly and efficiently. The easiest way to do so is to remove the wall materials as they are damaged, particularly moldy parts. Can you perform this removal on your own? Some might have those skills, but most will not. Put simply, trying to remove moldy wall panels from your home may cause a support problem that puts you at risk.
And removing the wall materials is simply not enough. You’ll need to replace them to ensure that they are reliable and support your home and its innate structure. Unfortunately, trying to perform these repairs without input from drywall and insulation services professional is likely to make your home less safe, putting your family at risk. So there’s really no excuse not to resort to expert assistance in this situation.
Don’t Let Snow Affect Your Home
As you can see, snow-damaged walls are no laughing matter. Thankfully, quality drywall and insulation services can help you withstand the snow with little difficulty. So if you want to make sure your home is secure and safe, contact us at Dan Gardner Drywall at your earliest convenience. Our experts have years of experience and will help you get the high-quality and robust walls that your home deserves.