If you have a question about your home or building in general, go ahead and ask. I’ll post your question here and provide an answer. I’ll do my best to protect whatever personal or confidential information you supply, but I do want to make sure that others can benefit from my answering your question as well.
Questions and Answers
Q: I have a leak in my home’s exterior. It’s been there for a while, but I didn’t know it until the water showed up inside. How could I have prevented this from becoming so bad?
I often tell people, “Be a student of your home.” Go outside, walk around it, and look for telltale signs of problems. The job of the exterior of your home is to protect the interior. If there are breaches, the earlier you detect them, the better. As a homeowner, it may be difficult to see tiny details that end up making a world of difference on the inside of your home. However, I’ve been dealing in construction since 1976, so these signs stick out like a sore thumb when I’m examining a construction unit.
Q: I see water staining on my interior. Why can’t I just have someone seal the leak from the outside, and have the drywall inside repaired? Won’t that fix the problem?
It took a while for the water to get clear into the drywall. In the process, water had to leak through studs, insulation, and other barriers, leaving moisture damage through and through. That means in the cavity of the wall, there is great opportunity for microbial action, and continued rotting inside. Also, if you ‘plug’ one leak on the exterior, you are likely to just divert the water into another area that is also deficient, and another leak will occur. I often hear, “I had a leak over here and fixed it, but now there’s a new one over there.” Taking the time and effort to correct a deficiency will save you time, money, effort, and headaches down the road.
Q: How do your services differ from other companies’ offers for a “free home inspection?”
Typically, a “free home inspection” means that a company will send a representative to your home, do a cursory examination, and hand you a quote to do work on your home. The person who arrives may be a sales representative, not someone with years of experience with exteriors. I will provide you with pages of photo documentation and narratives that give an unbiased view of your home’s condition, what building defects exist, and what is required to ensure that you have an exterior building envelope that fully functions to protect the rest of the structure, contents, and members of the household.
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