Winter Weather Challenges - How's Your Home Holding Up in Unusual Cold, Snow, and Ice?

Rate It Green Members and Friends -  

How’s your winter going? I sure hope you’re comfortable and safe and have not experienced negative effects from recent volatile weather patterns.  For my part, we got a pretty nasty ice dam as a post vacation present recently.  I heard a funny noise, and when I went to investigate what sounded a bit like a laptop notification or crinkly paper unraveling perhaps, I quickly realized nope that’s the sound of … dripping water.  It sure was, and out came the buckets and towels.  We’d just come home from a ski trip with no snow to a land and a roof full of snow and ice. 

The thing is, we’re maintainers.  We had the roof raked after this big storm, and heck, we’ve replaced much of our roofing over the years as needed.  Where we thought ice dams were most likely to form we opted to install ice and water shield all the way up to the roof peak.  The few ice dams where we have repaired in the past never dared come back.  After 20 years in our home, we’ve got almost all new appliances now, and we just completed a giant HVAC project to install heat pumps, new furnaces, and to replace and repair our ERVs and dedicated humidity equipment.  We even have a new septic system and made drainage improvements to keep excess well water from the road. I sure felt we’d earned a period of home repair quiet.  Nature didn’t agree, and apparently our house didn’t side with us.  Take a look at our story, and see what you think the problem is/was and what we should do. This is super current; I will listen eagerly and appreciate the conversation! 

So this month, I’ve clearly got winter on my mind.  I am thinking about resilience, but I do know it doesn’t always help to hear, “Here’s what you might have done,” when it’s already too late.  Take a look below to read about some short and long term ideas on what we can do to be proactive where we can about cold and ice, and also to react and just “deal” when necessary too.  We've got a variety of content below, starting with a call to share how heat pumps are doing in the snow, safety tips for those not used to cold weather, equipment and appliances for getting through outages and emergencies, and examples and information about heat pumps and the snow.
 

• How are your Heat Pumps Doing this Winter: The Good, the Bad, & The Ugly?
• Matt Hoot's Top Winter Storm and Freezing Temperature Safety Tips 
• Ice Dams - Frustrating, Expensive, and Sometimes a Mystery
• Hot and Cold Outdoor Water through the Winter - Aquor's Hose Bibb, Installed
• Plug-and-Play Battery-Powered Generators, for Power Outages (and more) 
• Impulse Labs Induction Cooktops - Keep Cooking During Power Outages
• Mini Split Compressor Placement in Cold Climates (Think about Snow and other Conditions)
• Heat Pumps and Cold Weather - Q&A / Myth Busting
• Mini Split Cold Weather Design Advice and Guidelines, with Mitsubishi

I’d love to hear your stories, examples, and ideas for lessons learned - and more things we can all do individually or collectively to fare better in the cold now, and also to protect our homes for next winter!  Let’s all learn from each other - these conversations are why we’re all here, to grow and support each other as a community, and hopefully to share these ideas and help more people as well. 

Also, see below if you'd like to meet Matt Hoots of Sawhorse Inc. at IBS 2026 in Orlando!  

Thank you for all you do,

Allison Friedman
Founder, Rate It Green

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Click to view the full Rate It Green February 2026 newsletter.