Winter storm may have caused damage to homes in Middle Tennessee - WSMV Nashville

LEBANON, TN (WSMV) - The Winter storms this week might be gone, but the damage it leaves behind is just around the corner.

At SERVPRO in Wilson County, they're getting calls left and right concerning water damage restoration. Up to four to five inches of snowfall in Lebanon this week could cause much harm to houses in the next few days.

"Getting a lot (of calls) on frozen pipes, a lot of ice dams," Mike Isaacson, Owner of SERVPRO of Wilson County, said

"It's probably dominated 80-85 percent of our week," Chris Burnett, Operations Manager of SERVPRO of Wilson County, said.

The ice dams are formed when the snow melts unevenly on a roof and refreezes into a dam at the edge of the roof. The ice dams can cause not only damage to your roof but also the inside of your home.

"The ice melts on top of the roofline and slowly leaks into roofing components, and at night it refreezes, causing ice to expand, causing damage to a roofing structure," Isaacson said. "The drainage systems typically get frozen up, and whenever water sits instead of drains and seeps into the house, that is when it causes damage."

Restoration could take around five days to finish properly.

"For an ice dam in a roof, we might be in the home for two to three hours," Burnett said. "May have a dry out period of two to three days and last day come to pick it up. Hope to be in and out five days total."

People cannot prevent this type of water damage, but they can identify the issue sooner rather than later.

"Typically, we are hearing from a lot of roofers if you are trying to remove damage or chip ice out that it will cause more damage," Isaacson said. "Couple things to look for inside the house are going to be water spots in sealings, want to definitely check external walls, want to look for signs for water where the floor is buckling, anything out of the ordinary you want to keep lookout for."

People do not want to leave a piece of your property unattended to and at the mercy of the elements.

"Get to where you work, get to where you live. Check it out and do a very thorough scan. Check attic and crawl space," Isaacson said.