Designing a Home for the Snow, Part 1
As the sparkling snow settles on the slope below me, I spot a silhouette with an arm waving.
He’s ok. I’d just learned a lesson about how critical it is to understand where snow collects and what can happen next. Working on the ski patrol, our team was mitigating avalanche hazards. The winds on the ridge had built up a large cornice of overhanging snow, and we were using explosives to collapse the cornice before the ski area opened. My partner wanted a photo, so he waited where he could watch the slope. When the explosives detonated, the snow broke under his feet, and he tumbled into the slope with the avalanche we’d triggered.
I’ve lived, worked, and played in snow country most of my life. The lessons I’ve learned are rarely as dramatic as the ones above, but they’ve all fed my curiosity about how to design, build, and live in the snow. This is the first in a series of posts we will share this winter about designing a home for the snow.
Where Does Snow Come From?
Rarely do we get to watch snowflakes descend lazily from the skies in the Sierra Nevada Mountains where I live. Winds drive storms, storms make snow—when it’s snowing, it’s blowing.
When designing a home for the snow, start by researching where the snow comes from and how it collects on your site.
What are the predominant storm and wind directions in the winter?
How does the local topography affect the winds and snowfall?
Are there landforms or trees around the site that determine how the snow collects?
For example, the predominant wind direction for storms here is from the southwest. The valley I live in runs east-west and redirects the winds to come down the valley out of the west. An outcropping in the valley will be stripped of snow on the west side, and that snow will be deposited in the low point to the east. A stand of trees might slow the wind, allowing snow to collect, too.
Your home will become another feature on the site, altering these patterns. The winds will move around your home, stripping snow from the windward side and depositing it on the leeward side. Designing a home that functions well in the snow starts with understanding these local conditions.
Where Does Snow Go?
After a storm passes, snow continues to blow and drift in the wind. It will melt in the sun or warm air and re-freeze when it turns cold again. Snow will consolidate, slide, creep, and glide. It also gets piled up by plows, blowers, and shovelers. It slides off sloped roofs and falls out of trees. All this moving, changing, melting, and freezing can do a lot of damage to a building and create dangerous conditions for the people living in it. Damage and danger can be avoided by anticipating these dynamics. It will also make your home easier and more enjoyable to live in!
Designing in the snow begins with the right questions. Here are a few we use to get started:
Can the driveway and entry be placed where they collect the least snow and they get sun? What other areas of the house would benefit from a similar orientation?
What areas require snow removal during the winter? Where will that snow go?
Is the roof sloped enough that snow will slide off? If it does slide off, is that safe? Will it block windows or pathways? Or do we need a solution that keeps the snow on the roof?
Where does the snowmelt go? Can it drip freely from the roof edge? Or does it need to be collected? Can it be directed away from areas of travel?
What will happen when the snowmelt re-freezes? How do we keep it from forming ice dams, clogging drainage, doing damage, or creating a hazard?
Coming Up
We’ve learned a lot working in the snows of Tahoe, the Cascades, Lake Michigan, Sun Valley, and Hudson Valley. Our collaborators have, too. We recently sat down with some of them to discuss the most important things to consider before building in snow country. As we shared experiences working on homes in the snow, I realized I couldn’t contain my excitement about it! In future posts, we’ll dig into those topics, including planning for snow removal, roof shapes for snow, avoiding damage from ice, and low-maintenance building materials. I look forward to sharing what we learn.
p.s. If you share our excitement for snow, look out for recommendations at the end of each post.
Our friend, neighbor, and client, Steven Siig, produced and co-directed an award-winning feature-length documentary, Buried - The 1982 Alpine Meadows Avalanche. https://www.buriedfilm.com/
It is available on Netflix, Amazon Video, and Apple TV and is worth a watch!
The project we worked on with Siig and his team is the as-yet-unbuilt Truckee Art Haus Theater