Making Those Spring Repairs To Your Home

Now that spring has finally arrived people are now slowly taking worrisome peaks around the outside of their homes, scared of what they will find. What do they find? All kinds of things and none of them are good.

With the long drawn out winter that we just experienced there are more chance that something has gone wrong on the outside of your home. Some of the things you already know about, you knew about them before the winter and decided to wait, some of them you found out about in the winter and some you just noticed for the first time this spring. Which ever it is they need to be repaired and usually they need a professional to do the repairs.

One thing that usually happens is that you hire someone to come and do an exterior or interior repair and they end up finding more things that are wrong, things that you didn't know where a problem; 1. because you didn't know to look for them, 2. because they were hidden from your inspections that are usually from the ground and are only a quick look.

The amount of things that can be wrong are lengthy;

• Damaged or plugged eavetroughs. The plugged eavetrough are usually the precursor to the damaged eavetrough. Cleaning them out will help prevent the damage or destruction of them later.
• Facia damage. Some times facia can be damaged from high winds, can be damaged if eavetrough are ripped off the house from snow and ice, sometime wood facia become meals for animals trying to get into your attic.
• Soffit damage. Wind can damage soffits, water can rot wood soffits and animals can eat through them to get into your attic to survive the winter.
• Siding. Wind, water and animals can damage siding. Also time and UV light are hard on siding, taking the paint off and exposing it to rot, rotents and bugs.
• Caulking. Caulking can be damaged or can fail after a long winter, this can allow water penetration around windows, chimneys, doors, siding corners and many other places.
• Shingles. Winter can be particularly hard on shingled roofs, snow and ice buildup and high winds can remove shingles or wear them thin. A lot of time you don't even know they are missing until the snow has melted off the roof. High steep roofs, roofs with water proofing under the shingles will resist water penetration but if not repaired will leak eventually.
• Foundation problems. Nobody really knows how dry their basement is until they have a big melt followed by a bigger rain storm, this is when you find out if your foundations waterproofing works, if the water runs away from the house or the window wells allow too much water around the foundation.
• Sump Pump. Most people have no idea how well their sump pump works, they only know when it stops working. Then of course its to late.
• Decks. Decks are something that take a lot of abuse throughout the winter, they usually have no roof or protection over top of them and they sit off the ground allowing the snow and wind to blow right underneath them. This can cause damage to the foundations and to the wood tops as well, damage and rot that you don't see until all the snow is removed.

Its human nature that once the weather starts to finally warm up people start calling around looking for people to come out and make these repairs, the earlier you call the better chance you will have to finding a good contractor to do the work and also getting scheduled in before they are completely booked for the entire spring and summer season.

The biggest mistake you can make is choose your contractor on price alone, remember you get what you pay for. Good quality contractors are not cheap, but their work is second to none and comes with a warranty, its worth paying that little extra.

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.