During the winter months it is quite common for our homes to suffer from the cold, wet and frosty weather. Being exposed to such severe conditions can really take its toll on a building so you must make an effort to take care of your home.
If you don’t do this then over a number of years the amount of money needed to carry out more substantial repairs can hit your bank balance harder than an Arctic blizzard!To avoid this huge and unnecessary expense, I suggest you make an annual inspection of your home around this time of year to assess winter damage and make a list of all the problem areas so you can carry out essential maintenance work and get your house back in tip-top shape.
To help write the column this month I thought I’d walk around my home in Dorset with pen and paper to make my own annual maintenance list. It’s a typical 4-bedroom detached house in a very exposed position so it’s a perfect building to demonstrate common UK maintenance problems.
The building is rendered on the outside and painted white and it is pretty clear that the winter frost has been the building’s worst enemy. There are areas where the paintwork has peeled off the walls and allowed water to penetrate the render.
This water has then frozen inside the render, the ice expands and forces the render to crumble away from the wall. The paint and render is essential to prevent the walls from becoming damp so the render must be repaired and repainted.
If the outside of your home is brickwork similar damage can occur to the mortar joints between your bricks. Cement mortar can suffer terribly from frost damage. If this happens on your home arrange for a bricklayer to ‘rake-out’ the damaged mortar and re-point the effected areas.
Next, take a look at your windows. If they are timber windows, rather than UPVC, they must be regularly inspected as the protective paint can flake off during cold spells. Also check that all of the window seals and the putty around your glass have not fallen out. If it has, have a glazer redo the putty around the glass and once set you can give the timber frames a light sanding down and repaint.
If you have single glazed windows always check for damp damage to paint and timber inside the house. This damage is caused by high levels of condensation where warm, moist air inside your home condenses on the inside face of the cold glass. The only way you can avoid this is by providing high levels of ventilation inside your home or, if you have the budget, by installing double-glazing.
Next up, the roof. My roof is a natural slate roof. I can see that a couple of the slates are cracked and there is even one missing. This can be caused again by frost, which will find any weakness or fault in a natural material, or if over time the tile has come loose then strong winds will cause the tile to vibrate and crack. These problems are common in most roof tiles. Have a roofer come and replace the damaged tiles and to carry out an inspection to see if any other tiles need to be re-secured.
Then there is your roof guttering. My gutters are full of dead leaves that fell in the autumn. This causes the UPVC pipes to block and the water over-flows over the top of the guttering and down the face of my walls. What a mess. Worse still the water that is blocked in the gutter can freeze, expand, and cause the pipes and gutters to crack causing alot of damage. Fortunately my pipes have not cracked, but the gutters look a terrible mess. Have all guttering and pipes cleared of all debris after the autumn and before the cold weather kicks in.
To correct these minor problems on my house will take a few days work and a few hundred pounds.
Leave the problems to get worse and worse, year after year and not only will your once beautiful home look an absolute mess, but one day you will be looking at a maintenance bill of thousands of pounds! Please, please keep an eye on any problems or defects. Regular inspections and maintenance work can save you a fortune.
