Five Things To Do To Prepare Your Roof For The Holidays

For most of the year, most people rarely – if ever – go up on their roof, unless there’s a serious problem. However, each year around the holidays, that changes. Each December, millions of people across the country head up to their roofs to hang lights, inflatables, and other festive decorations. In fact, we have a whole other blog about the best way to safely hang lights on your home! However, while most people are up there, all they do is hang decorations, which is a bit of a missed opportunity. Because it’s the season for holiday decorating, we put together our list of five things that you should do to prepare your roof for the holidays!

1.     Inspect Your Roof

One of the easiest and most beneficial things you can do while you’re already up on your roof is to do a brief inspection to make sure that your roof is in good condition. We recommend that any homeowner should visually inspect their roof once a year to check for things like pooling water, slipped tiles or shingles, and other potential roofing issues. This inspection can take less than five minutes, and all you need to do is take a good look at the entire surface of your roof.

2.    Check Your Gutters

While you’re up on your roof to hang lights, you should also take a few extra minutes to make sure that your gutters are in good condition. Make sure to look inside for leaf debris, as in the fall when trees begin to shed their leaves, many can end up in your gutters, blocking the flow of water and clogging them. You can avoid this problem by going in and pulling any debris out of your gutter. This can help your gutters last longer, as well as make them more effective at keeping water from building up on your roof.

3.    Don’t Cause Additional Damage

Unfortunately, in our excitement to decorate for the holidays, we can sometimes damage the roof by accident, leading to potentially costly repairs. To avoid this, make sure to limit your time on the roof – the longer you’re up there, the more foot traffic your roof is being exposed to, which can speed up wear and tear. Additionally, you should make sure to never put nails or staples of any kind through your roofing materials – this creates a hole directly from the top of your roof and into the structure of your home. Even if it does not penetrate all the way, this can still give water an easy way to enter your home and cause damage. If possible, always hang any lights from nails that you have already installed for that purpose to limit the number of holes you’re putting in your wood. Additionally, limit the amount of extra weight that your decorations put on your roof. While most roofs can withstand the weight of lights and inflatables, heavier decorations can cause damage to your shingles, crack tiles, and even cause a shingle to slip.

4.   Take Proper Safety Precautions

Roofing is a dangerous business, and when you go up on your roof, a simple slip or trip can turn into an extremely dangerous fall. Always have someone else present while you’re hanging decorations so that they can get help in an emergency. Additionally, make sure to get help if you need. An extra person can hold a ladder for you, hand lights and decorations over to you, and dramatically reduce the risk of personal injury while you’re up on the roof. Always remember to step carefully, especially if you’re going onto any kind of angled roof.

5.    Think About How You Will Take Your Decorations Down

Too often we see damage that is caused not by putting decorations up but taking them down. Always keep in mind that you need to be able to remove your decorations once the holiday season is over – a process which can cause more roofing damage. The safest way to do this is to install a set of hooks into the wood of the eaves of your roof, which you can reuse year after year. This way, you are not constantly installing and uninstalling sets of nails, which can quickly cause damage to your fascia and result in an expensive wood replacement.

At Resilient Roofing, we’re all for decorating your roof for the holidays – it’s a fun, exciting way of celebrating, and as long as you’re careful, chances of roofing damage are low. If you have any questions about your roof, feel free to call us to schedule a meeting with a licensed and insured roofing expert. While we can’t help you hang your holiday decorations, we can help you with slipped shingles, broken tiles, roof repairs or replacements, and basically any other roofing needs you might have. We’ve been serving San Diego for over 55 years, and we’d love the opportunity to help you too.