LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE WINTER

By: Dave Peterson, Board President

I thought it would be a good idea to recap lessons I learned during this winter before my memory fades. These are my own random thoughts:

Trees. Most trees in our area don’t like to sink roots into the saturated zone, which in the Keys is coincident with the lagoon water surface. So their root balls are shallow, and the roots spread horizontally in our sandy soil. This works ok until the tree outgrows its “foundation”; it becomes a physics problem. Early this winter we experienced extreme winds, and large trees throughout the neighborhood toppled. It was phenomenal that they nearly all fell clear of houses (and our neighbors within). Some damage was sustained, but I am not aware that anyone was hurt thankfully. But it makes me wonder how sustainable our now mature trees are, and whether we should be taking them down and starting over again with small trees. We took down one large pine between our house and our neighbor’s, but we have two more large pines to think about. We hate to lose them, but we’d also hate for them to topple in the next windstorm. Decisions…

More on Trees. The heavy snow snapped limbs from evergreens and deciduous trees alike all over the Keys. Many of these severed limbs are still hung up there, and will come down eventually. And limbs litter the ground at individual homes and in common areas. Homeowners and the TKPOA will need to address this mess (and overhead hazards) now that the snow is coming off. Until it is all cleaned up, be mindful of overhead hazards as you walk the streets!

Roof Problems. Many of us experienced roof leaks this year, and some people may have experienced structural damage from the snow and ice on the roof. For us, the last two years have brought ice damming on the roof unlike what we have experienced before. I suspect this is because of the huge (aka yuge) depth accumulations and incomplete melting cycles. The sheer volume of snow can feed a huge ice dam. I think the lesson learned is to clear roof snow more often, as much as I hate the idea. A zigzag of heat tape also works to create trenches through the ice dam so that water doesn’t pond upslope of the ice dam. But they run up the power bill. I’ll contemplate both solutions a bit more.

Side note: My neighbors have a new rooftop solar collector that was buried for nearly 3 months straight. It was good that they weren’t relying on that to heat the house and cook and everything else. Gas is good in snow country!

Sunken Boats. Now that the ice is off, there are more than a dozen sunken boats out there. Hopefully we won’t have a hazmat problem from gas and oil leakage… I suspect that this year’s issue was a combination of the heavy snow, plus incomplete melting events that re-froze in the bilge, locking up bilge pumps. It appears that the boats with shrink wrap did better than the home grown covers. But I think that the takeaway for people leaving boats in the water is (1) sail boat hulls are more resistant to ice crushing, (3) dock bubblers that keep one side ice free are a good hedge against ice crushing, (3) shrink wrap covers, and (4) you need to diligently monitor snow and bilge water accumulation.

Sunken Docks. The heavy snow weighed down our docks, then we had a rain on snow event in January that put a layer of water over the ice. Then a new layer of ice formed, and snow collected on that. Many docks were several feet down as March rolled in. Then when the ice melted, it often did so differentially, so one end of the dock would float up first, causing “wracking”, which prevents the other end from floating. Some of these can be easy to fix, and some will require a contractor. But a lot of you will be dealing with this. And there are many damaged ramps, too. The takeaway is that we need to shovel off our docks and ramps periodically in these big snow years.

More Shoveling. As if the aforementioned shoveling chores aren’t enough, there are some very important extras that we all need to think about. Your gas and electric meter need to be kept clear, along with your water shutoff valve, and your nearest fire hydrant. Nobody else will clear these things, and consequences can be severe:

• Fires happen in winter too, and if firemen have to dig out the hydrant, your house is gone

• Interior plumbing leaks happen, and you need to be able to shut the water off. The valve where the water comes into the house is the best place to do this, because the TKPOA meter box is buried under the snowplow berm.

• A buried gas meter can be an explosion hazard. Explosions are bad.

Well, that covers the main things that come to my mind. We all have a lot of work to do (and money to spend) to recover from this difficult winter. I plan to revisit my list above prior to next winter to hopefully mitigate damages and hazards.