Maintenance4 min read
Winter here does not create many new problems. It finds the ones that were already there and makes them expensive. An hour spent walking around the house in the autumn is the cheapest maintenance available.
Start at the roof. Look for lifted, cracked, or missing shingles, and check the flashing around chimneys and valleys. Clear the gutters — blocked gutters are how ice dams form, and ice dams push water back under the shingles and into the ceiling below.
Then the walls. Check caulking around windows and doors, look for soft trim, and press on any area of siding that has been repainted more often than the rest. Drafts you can feel are usually a seal that has failed and can be fixed in an afternoon.
Finally the deck and steps. Loose rails and lifting boards get worse under snow load and ice, and they are the parts of the house people actually put their weight on.
If the walk-around turns up something you would rather not go up a ladder for, call us. We answer emergency calls 24 hours a day for damage that cannot wait.
