Did the winter storm this weekend leave piles of snow on your roof? Why it's imperative you address it NOW

MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- If you want to avoid thousands of dollars in damage to your home -- now is the time to take care of a winter housekeeping task! Several inches of snow fell this past weekend in southeastern Wisconsin -- and it's important to get all that snow off your roof!

When the snow falls, the first thing we do is grab the shovel or snowblower and clear our driveway and sidewalk -- but sometimes, we forget to look up.

"People are waiting. They think 'we should wait until it starts melting' and that's, like I said, that's where the problem comes in then because you're kind of waiting too long, you know? You don't want this to melt. You want to get rid of this before this turns into a big problem," Sheldon Gasek, owner of Best-Handyman said.

Gasek spends his winters clearing snow from roofs in and around the Milwaukee area. He says once you've got six or more inches of snow -- you're starting to put your roof at risk.

"A lot of times that snow melts and then when it melts it ends up leaking into the soffit and once it goes into the soffit then it eventually works its way into the ceiling," Gasek said.

And when it does, it can mean damage into the thousands of dollars.

"You'll have the icicle problem then too, so the icicles will form and then they'll end up hanging on your gutters --eventually ripping them off," Gasek said.

Gasek says you can clear your roof yourself. A roof rake runs between $50 to $75. Or, you can hire someone like Gasek to do it for you. Either say, Gasek says you don't have to clear your entire roof.

"You only need to go double whatever your soffit is, so if it's a 12-inch soffit, you only need to go about two feet up," Gasek said.

If you got snow dumped on your home this past weekend, Gasek says now is the time to address your roof -- BEFORE the snow starts to melt.

"Once it starts melting then we're going to run into those icicle problems and the ice damming and it's only going to escalate into a bigger problem," Gasek said.

Gasek says homeowners with valley or lower-sloped roofs should pay particular attention to snow buildup, as those styles are more susceptible to having snow piles just sitting there.