Prevention starts with some basic steps

It’s great seeing more recognition and conversation in the real estate industry about the impacts of climate change on housing. An article showed up in my email recently from RISMedia about protecting your home from rain damage.  Intense storms and rain damage is the biggest climate threat to my home state of Georgia and we have recently experienced multiple week-long stretches of rainy days. So I appreciated this timely article.  

While the headline grabbed my attention, I felt the article fell flat as the solutions in the article were geared toward costly repairs of your home from the effects of rain damage, rather than prevention. As the article suggests, we have opportunities to minimize damage before a storm hits. I’d suggest the following actions that homeowners can and should do sooner rather than later. Some of these are cheap or even free. 

1.) Clean your gutters, and install gutter guards to prevent debris from clogging and overflowing your gutters. You may even want to get a larger size gutter to handle more intense rainfalls. 

2.) Trim back trees and shrubs close to the house or that overhang the roof.  Not only can these be damaged during a storm and damage the roof (leak! I had this happen to my own home), they can also shed leaves and other debris that clog gutters or create dams on your roof causing water to flow into your attic. 

3.) Drainage and grading.  Waterproofing is the knee jerk reaction, but proper drainage is the first step to make sure water is moved away from your home rather than puddling or flowing into your home. Drains can be added off the downspouts, and at gathering spots for water. You may already have drainage, but is your current system designed to handle deluges that fall during increasingly strong storms? 

All in all, I thank RISMedia for including this topic in their publication and would love to provide additional discussion for future articles.