As we've discussed in the past on this blog, spring is National Electrical Safety Month, and now is the perfect time to brush up on the best practices and preventative measures that homeowners should take to avoid an electrical disaster. Some of these tips and tricks are generally common sense - like keeping water away from any open current, or replacing a frayed wire to avoid any sparks or arcing - while others may not be so obvious.

For example, you may not realize it, but there could be underground wires surrounding your house that could easily be compromised when you are gardening. If you have a light post in your front yard, there is likely a wire that connects it to your home's main electrical hook up, or if you have a detached garage with power in your back yard, that connection too probably runs beneath your lawn. Even some pool owners power their filters through underground wiring set ups.

Whether you are simply laying down new sod or intend to plant some shrubbery along your driveway, before taking a shovel to dirt, you want to be sure you aren't severing a wire that could make you vulnerable to potential electrocution.

Temperatures are still mild enough that you likely aren’t thinking about the implications of snow and ice just yet, but now is actually the perfect time to start considering it, and deciding what you’re going to do about it when it hits.

A driveway heating system will help you with the inconvenience of shoveling snow and the safety concerns involved with walking on icy surfaces, but what about your roof? Winters are particularly harder on roofs than any other season, especially if you have an asphalt or shingle roof.

The buildup of ice and snow adds weight to your roof that it is not designed to handle. Your roof is your home’s first line of defense against inclement weather, but it can only take so much pressure. The ice that forms in the winter creates ice dams—formed from melted snow refreezing and creating a blockage—as well as gutter ice.

Gutter ice can cause gutters to become too heavy and rip away from your home. Not only does this mean you’ll have to repair and/or replace your gutters, you may also have to contend with the property damage that this could very well leave behind.

Even without ice as a factor, snow itself poses a risk to your roof. This is especially true if you have a flat roof, or an older home with a weakened roof structure already. The problem is that as the snow builds up, it creates too much weight, and your roof can crack or even collapse under all the strain.

The solution to this problem is having roof heating cables installed. These cables do just what the name implies: they keep your roof warm so that snow and ice never have a chance to buildup. Rather, it melts upon impact and drains from your gutters and downspouts just as rainwater would.