It’s that time of year again. The days are getting shorter and cooler. To ensure that your house remains in prime condition over the winter, a good weekend spent on preventative maintenance is a great investment. By making a thorough inspection of your home inside and out you can detect and repair problems before they become issues. This can save you time and costly headaches down the road. If there are repairs below beyond your comfort zone, hire a licensed Contractor to handle the job.
GUTTERS AND DOWNSPOUTS
Ignore problems with your gutters and it can lead to water penetration, settlement of the foundation, wood rot, and pest infestation.
1. Keep ahead of the leaves and debris filling up in your gutters throughout fall
2. Check those gutter support brackets to make sure they are secure and that water is not sneaking down behind the gutter.
3. Does your home have trees constantly filling your gutters with leaves every fall? Install gutter guards.
4. Drain your gutters at least 5′-6′ away from the foundation. This dumps the water out past the disturbed soil. If your gutter downspout extensions or splash blocks aren’t long enough, replace them. This will help prevent settlement of your foundation, driveway, patio, and sidewalks and water penetration into your basement.
5. Seal up any cracks in the driveway, sidewalks, and patio with expansive concrete caulk.
WOOD OR HARDBOARD SIDING
1. Identify where all of your penetrations are in the siding, such as at the A/C refrigerant line, sump discharge line, etc. and make sure they are sealed.
2. Wood trim around windows and doors, corner seams, vertical lap joints, and vertical seams are common areas where caulk cracks open. If you find any, remove the old caulk and seal it again using paintable caulk.
3. On hardboard panel siding, the base edge is sometimes never painted or the paint will crack open. If the base edge is swelled or slightly rotted, now is a great time to install Cedar trim. Bevel the top edge of the Cedar trim at a 45 degree angle and nail it to the bottom edge of the panel siding making sure the trim hangs down about “. Caulk the top of the board, prime, and paint. This will prevent the siding from drawing any more water from capillary action and rotting.
4. Rotted hardboard panel or lap siding should be replaced.
5. Make sure you stay up with keeping the base edge sealed and painted. Most new construction will fail to have the base edge painted where the lower roof meets an upper wall.
6. Look for peeling or cracking paint. Stay on top of painting your siding. Typical exterior paint usually lasts 4-6 years. There is some high-end paint that goes on like thick mud that lasts upwards of 20-30 years.
WINDOWS AND DOORS: AIR LEAKS
1. Caulk any visible gaps around the window frames inside and out.
2. Repair any damaged or loose door frames, window locks or latches.
3. Check around all exterior doors for gaps. If it’s sunny look for daylight around the door. Install weather stripping to prevent drafts and lower heating bills.
4. With older windows, you’ll want to look for gaps and weather strip as needed.
5. Stain on the bottom edge of wood casement windows notoriously wears off, if it was even stained in the first place. If left exposed, it doesn’t take long for the wood to rot out. While the weather is still nice, open the windows and stain the exposed wood.
HEATING SYSTEMS
The majority of homeowners can’t remember the last time they changed their furnace filter, let alone paid a professional to service it. When you neglect your furnace, it tends to lose efficiency and may even develop a crack in the heat exchanger.
1. Hire a licensed HVAC Company to come in to clean, service, and evaluate your heating system.
2. Replace the filter in your furnace on a regular basis. This is the #1 cause of cracked heat exchangers.
3. Any place where the duct work comes together, they can leak. Take time identifying leaky areas here and seal up with duct mastiff. Your utility bills will thank you later. On my inspections, I’ve found duct work entirely disconnected and blowing conditioned air into the crawlspace and attic areas.
PLUMBING SYSTEM
1. In your unconditioned spaces, take time to make sure the pipes are well insulated. If you find them without insulation, then insulate them. One tell-tale sign is if your supply lines produced icy cold water in the winter months, those lines are at risk of freezing. Bathrooms built over cantilevered walls or over decks are particularly prone to the freezing problem. It’s critical that house wrap sealed properly here to stop air flow and that the walls are thoroughly insulated to help keep the conditioned space warm.
2. Remove all garden hoses. If water is trapped in even a frost-free spigot, it can freeze and burst.
3. Don’t forget to winterize your sprinkler system. Gravity drain systems are simple. All you do is make sure the exterior valves are turned diagonally and open up the drain valve. You may have to hire a professional if your sprinkler system needs to be blown out with an air compressor.
FIREPLACES AND CHIMNEYS
In 2009, 21.3% of the chimney systems I inspected had a breached liner. These liners were either cracked, shifted, or had deteriorated mortar joints. All of these situations can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning or risk catching your home on fire. I also found numerous chimneys with inadequate or cracked crowns, missing caps, heavy creosote buildup, and deteriorated brick. Before using your fireplace or stove this winter, please have it thoroughly evaluated by a Certified Chimney Sweep. To find one in your area, go to the Chimney Safety Institute of America’s website at www.csia.org.
SMOKE AND CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTORS
Make sure you have smoke and carbon monoxide detectors installed on every level of the home. Change the batteries in all the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and check them frequently. Make sure you install CO detectors with peak level buttons so you can check the highest level since the last time you pushed the button as manufacturers have them calibrated to go off at 50-70 ppm of CO gas when long-term exposure to only 8 ppm can be deadly.
YOUR DRYER VENT
1. Cleaning your dryer vent can be easily done by disconnecting the ends, carry the entire piping out into your yard, and hose the insides out. Seeing how much lint piles up on your yard is eye-opening. If you’re not able to remove your dryer vent because it’s encased in a finished wall or ceiling, then take a leaf blower, hook it up to the dryer end, and turn it on. That blast of air will force much of the lint out.
2. Unplug your dryer, then slide the lint trap out and remove the screws holding the insert that your lint trap slides into. Once this is off, reach your hand into the bottom of the dryer and remove all of the excess lint you can grab. I did this on ours and removed about a basketball sized pile of lint that had been trapped inside the channel of the dryer!
3. The lint trap itself will develop a film on the screen over time. This blocks airflow and will make your dryer run longer to dry out each load. Wash the screen off with soapy water. Don’t believe me that the film is there? Lay the lint trap under your faucet and watch it hold water!
4. Animal guards or mesh on the end of the dryer vent is dangerous. It builds up with lint quickly and can clog the line. The proper end should only be a free moving flopper.
YOUR ATTIC VENTILATION
For proper attic ventilation, the square footage for the intake vents needs to equal the exhaust vents. Rule of thumb is a home should have a soffit vent every 8′. Continuous soffit vents for intake and continuous ridge vents work best. In 2009, 49% of the homes I inspected had inadequate attic ventilation. Poor attic ventilation leads to higher utility bills, moisture building up in the attic space, faster wear-n-tear on your shingles, and it also voids your manufacturer’s warranty on those shingles. I’ve ran across moisture so heavy in attics that the entire bottom side of the roof deck was black with mold!
1. For homes with soffit vents, you want to make sure they are kept free of debris. To remove some, all you need is a screwdriver. On the ground, hose them down. Before you put them back, check that air channel to make sure it’s still open. There should be a 1″ gap between the roof deck and the insulation leading into the attic space. If it’s closed off, the soffit vent can’t do it’s job. Take a broom handle and slide it up in to make the air channel. If you can’t remove the soffit vent, take a leaf blower and blow into the vents.
2. Take time to venture through your attic. Look for areas of mold growth, darkened areas, stains running down your rafters, rust on nails, and smell for any musty odors. If you find any of these, you probably have inadequate attic ventilation. In the winter, the easiest way to determine this is if you see any frost on the nails, rafters, or roof deck. Poor attic ventilation should be corrected by a licensed Roofing Contractor. Each roof and attic are different and the proper repairs will vary. Some may be as easy as adding more soffit vents, while others can be quite complicated.
YOUR HOME’S CRAWLSPACE VENTILATION
1. At the end of Fall, close up your crawlspace vents. This prevents cold air from entering and freezing your pipes and helps keep the rooms above the crawlspace warmer.
2. When the harsh winter is over, open the vents back up so the moisture doesn’t build up in the crawlspace during the Spring, Summer, and Fall.
To learn more about attic ventilation issues, go to Omaha Home Inspection and check out our articles, sign up for our newsletter, and look through our photo galleries.
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