Most people only worry about the snow and ice melting and causing water damage in the spring, but what is it doing to your home during winter? The fact of the matter is that the cold temperatures cause the groundwater to freeze, which can be damaging to your home’s foundation. There are a couple of different factors that could harm the walls of the foundation.
Frost Heave: To understand frost heaves, you first need to understand ice lenses. An ice lens forms when the groundwater is continually supplied to the upper layer of soil that is at freezing temperature. As water continues to flow to the ice lens, the lens grows upward toward the surface and lifts the soil, foundation, or pavement with it: a frost heave. This displacement of the surface above the lens can distort the ground and is a major cause for pothole creation during the winter. Frost heaves generally affect sidewalks or roads, but they can affect homes
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As you may recall from any chemistry class you have ever taken, the freezing of water in the soil simply causes the ground to expand in all directions due to the expansion of a water molecule when it freezes. The expansion causes excess pressure to be applied to your home’s foundation. The pressure can cause your foundation to crack and will make it more susceptible to leak during the spring when the snow melts. In the next few months, the temperature will vary from slightly above freezing to well below freezing. As the temperature rises and the snow melts, the water will begin to enter the cracks already formed in your foundation. When the temperature, then, drops below freezing again, the water in the cracks will refreeze, expand, and create larger fractures in the foundation’s walls. This process can continue throughout the next few months, but you may not notice it until a leak begins when the snow is
If you live in a place that gets cold in the winter, you've probably seen trucks out spreading a mixture of sand and salt on the streets after a snowfall to help de-ice the road. Have you ever wondered how this works? This basic
The pothole predicament wouldn't be so problematic if it weren't for the weather - and like a bottlenecked traffic jam in the middle of rush hour, there's no getting around Mother Nature. Potholes are a function of the changeable nature of temperatures and seasonal patterns. Whenever it rains, water collects, adding to the wetness that's already found in the ground. When the excess moisture enters some of the microscopic cracks in road pavement, dipping temperatures leads to freezing. That liquid turns into a solid and expands, just like an ice cube does or a soda can left in the freezer for too
The breaking of continental ice from Greenland and the Antarctic has been slowly breaking off and melting for a long time. The continental ice which has broken off melts faster and faster as it drifts towards the equator, eventually deposing all the fresh water ice into the ocean. This process, which would slowly drown the coastlines of the entire world, including Canada, is very dangerous for the survival of human civilizations. Due to Canada’s larger and more exposed urban coastal regions, it will suffer a harder blow than most other countries. Islands like Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia will be hit particularly hard, losing a lot of its farmland and coastal towns due to the melting and breaking off of continental ice. The continental ice
Moreover, the cracking of the ice is portrayed to be an “avalanche” or produce “cracking”
unusual flow of warm air from the south has caused the ice to melt at an alarming rate, so
In an all-too-common scenario, an expanse of asphalt pavement disappears under a blanket of snow and ice. When the thaw arrives, the property owner is shocked to discover that potholes have formed in the pavement. Buried under the winter storm, the pavement was not even bearing traffic, so what caused the potholes to develop overnight? The answer to that question can be found by examining how potholes form.
As all long-time residents know, Michigan winters can be brutal. However, even during a "normal" winter, you can expect average temperatures that are below freezing for three months out of the year and snowfall totals ranging between 44 inches and 55 inches. Keeping your pavement clear throughout the winter typically involves frequent applications of salt or chemical deicers as well as repeated snowplowing. Between the freeze/thaw cycle, the potential damage from snowplows and the corrosive actions of deicing materials, your asphalt pavement can take a beating. If you want to minimize the damage that winter can cause, you should make sure that you have cracks repaired before the arrival of cold weather.
To prevent freezing to death Canadians are forced to blast their heaters, making their gas bills sky-rocket. Along with the cold comes the ice and snow and you know what that means. No, I do not mean snowmen and ice skating I mean Shoveling! Shoveling snow is a horrific task for all Canadians for a number of reasons.
Ice dams occur when there is hot air from the building hitting the roof, causing snow to melt. Once the snow melts but then the air causes it to freeze, you end up with ice on your roof. This prevents snow and rain from running off the roof properly, and can cause damage to the shingles
ice dams prevented by spray foam insulationIf your home does not have proper and effective attic insulation, heat can escape from the living space during the cold winter months. Heat is transferred from the living space and also generated from recessed light fixtures, air ducts, furnaces and other appliances and equipment located in the attic. This heat raises the roof temperature above the freezing point, causing the snow and ice on the roof to melt and flow downward.
Ground temperatures in parts of the North are warming by one-10th of a degree after every ten years. Where ground ice contents are comparatively high, melting permafrost can have significant impacts, some of which may take not be as willingly obvious as others. On ice, you do not need a very sloped surface before you start to slip or slide and hence, that is what happens with the permafrost and overlying land, resulting in landslides in the North. Also, melting permafrost leads to subsidence, which occurs usually when permafrost thaws/melts and the soil formerly held up by the ice caves in. An example of this would be about Iqaluit’s Arctic Winter Games arena, where the floor began to sink soon after the building opened in October 2001. It is predicted that permafrost area may decrease by approximately thirty-seven to eighty-one percent by the end of the century! As temperatures keep getting warmer, permafrost will continue to thaw. Moreover, changes in permafrost have unpleasant results for infrastructure designed for permafrost conditions. Eventually, pipelines, airstrips and roads need to be changed because they depend on permafrost for structural integrity. The estimated costs to upgrade and fix buildings or infra-structure in Canada’s North could range from $250 million to $420 million. All these current/predicted changes due to melting permafrost has resulted in a huge or major burden on the government resources.100 and 1000 of people in North Canada live on permafrost. Once the frozen water turns into water, it makes it quite difficult for the people in the towns to find drinking water. To conclude, melting permafrost in North Canada has resulted in landslides, subsidence, damage to infra-structure and people are facing trouble in accessing
During the winter months, snow and ice is a common problem. Not only does it make the roads slick and dangerous, it also coats your vehicle. While removing snow and ice might seem like an easy task, it can become difficult. Removing snow and ice the wrong way can easily cause your windshield to crack.
When it came to the circumstance of their deaths both were tragic and preventable. Chris died doing what he loved best which was being in the ocean. He died due to drowning in the ocean floor of the Maldives. He was honored to be a very positive and influential person when it came to influencing others on working on how to achieve your goals. Frosty was one of the closest people to jay and it must have been hard to lose someone you’ve worked with and mentored for a long time. Chris tragically died from not being as prepared as he could have been in the wild. His death was poisoning due to him eating some potato seeds. The seeds causing paralysis in his legs which made it harder for him to gather food which caused him to ultimately starve. Jays
Exsudoporus frostii, Frost's bolete, is a fungus first described in 1874. The mushrooms it produces have tubes and pores instead of gills on the underside of their caps. E. frostii is distributed in the eastern United States from Maine to Georgia and Arizona, and south to Mexico and Costa Rica. It is typically found associating with hardwood trees, especially oak. Its mushrooms can be recognized by their dark red sticky caps, the red pores, the network-like pattern of the stem, and a variable blue-staining reaction after tissue injury. Another characteristic of young, moist fruit bodies is the amber-colored drops exuded on the pore surface. Although the mushrooms are considered edible, they are generally not recommended for consumption because
Ice is one of the first indicators of global warming actually occuring and it is important for research to be done on these layers of before they disappear. The recession of glaciers and the fragmentation of ice caps has been a clear sign to many that rising temperatures are having an impact, even on our very lives.