News
1/4/2009
How often should I paint the outside of my house?
There's no easy answer to this question as there are many contributing factors towards how long paint lasts. Darker colors will fade. Poorly prepared surfaces will, crack and peel. Older weathered wood won't hold paint like new wood. Southern exposures won't last as long as northern exposures.
These as well as the quality of paint used on past jobs are all contributing factors. The best answer is to paint before it's really bad.
The majority of the time spent on exterior painting is in surface preparation, sanding, patching etc. If you paint every 4-6 years, there will be less time spent on the prep work than if you paint every 10-15 years. It's also wise to touch-up the problem areas such as south facing window sills as often as every one to two years.
Maintaining your paint Job will not only keep your home always looking it's best, it will also reduce the risk of dry-rot, termites and other costly problems that come from neglect.
About Roof Leaks
A roof leak can be caused by some defect of the roofing material, or a defective installation. It can also be caused by problems with siding material above the roof line, windows above the roof line, an incorrect gutter installation, even a defective chimney pan or cap. The point is that a roof leak may not be a roof leak at all, but something other than the roof. The challenge in repairing a leak is finding its source. It starts on the outside and ends up inside on ceilings, walls, and floors; but the pathway between where it starts and where it ends is the problem, because it is invisible, hidden under the shingles, felt or plywood. Herein lies the challenge.
Roof repairmen search for obvious and visible defects and causes of leaks, such as defective flashings, holes, torn or missing shingles, broken seals and incorrect connections between the roof and penetrations. Having identified the defect, the repairman completes the repairs, thus eliminating these defects as a source of leak. Usually the repairs eliminate the leak, and the job is successfully completed at a fraction of the cost.
Sometimes, however, even after repairing such obvious defects, the leak may still persist, which if all previous repairs have been done correctly, indicate that the leak is coming from some non obvious invisible hidden source. An example of this would be a hole or a tear under a shingle, which cannot be seen. To find this would require the time consuming and painstaking job of lifting each and every shingle to see what lies beneath. Having previously eliminated the obvious, additional and more complicated investigative work now needs to be done to both find the source, and to repair it.
