It may not be as exciting or sexy as a new kitchen, but maintaining the exterior of your home - roofs, soffits and foundation - protects your investment.
We know that the way we live is damaging the environment and negatively affecting our health and well-being and yet we continue to produce more and more disposable products that are quick and cheap to manufacture, but need frequent replacement.
Many of us will spend our hard-earned money on replacing these cheap products instead of spending more money up front on quality products that will last longer and operate more efficiently.
With that in mind, it’s no surprise that a lot of people have their priorities backwards when it comes to their homes. An example that I see on a regular basis is someone with a luxury car in the driveway of an old, tired, inefficient home in various states of disrepair.
Now don’t get me wrong; I appreciate a nice whip as much as the next guy. But unlike our homes, which (should) increase in value over time, cars are a depreciable and eventually disposable asset. If you spend your money in the right places, your home will continue paying you back. Your car will just keep depreciating no matter what you do and will always be a liability.
At the end of the day, we build houses to shelter us from the environment, so let’s start with a look at the first line of defence — the outside of your home.
When it comes to protecting us (and in many cases our nest egg) from the weather outside, it’s the roof that does most of the work so it should be at the top of your priority list. However, until there’s water flowing through the ceiling, many people see roofs as a decorative detail on the house.
If you have loose, warped, cracked or missing shingles, it’s time to repair, or replace, the roof. There are products available today that will last much longer than the discount 15-year shingles everyone seems to love. (They shouldn’t exist!) Consider fibreglass shingles or a metal roof, and add your roof to your list of assets!
An important part of your roof is the soffit area (the flat vented area outside the walls and under the roof). Your soffits keep animals out of your attic and also provide ventilation into the attic to keep the roof cool in the summer and remove unwanted moisture from the attic. If your soffits are blocked, you’re asking for mould to grow in the attic, and a shorter lifespan of your shingles. Looking at the soffits from the attic, you should see light — make sure they’re not blocked with insulation.
The exterior siding is the next line of defence from the weather. Siding is designed to shed water off the building envelope and allow for airflow and drainage behind it. It has to be continuous, or water will find its way into your walls, causing all kinds of havoc. An important part of the siding is the flashing above windows and doors to direct water around those openings and to the ground, and the sills below them.
Sills should be a solid continuous piece of stone or metal flashing. Small brick or multiple pieces of stone will eventually fail — water will find its way into the joints between them and destroy the mortar during the freeze/thaw cycle every year. Installed properly, most exterior siding systems should last a lifetime.
Underneath everything, is your foundation — but don’t put it at the bottom of the list. The exposed part of your foundation should at the very least be parged to protect it, while the buried part should be properly waterproofed to keep water out. If your foundation is leaking, there is only one way to fix it properly, and that’s to dig and waterproof it properly from the outside.
Weeping tile must extend around the outside of your home to collect and remove water from the area and keep it where it belongs. There are products available to “waterproof” foundation walls from the inside, but they don’t remove the water that’s already inside the block or foundation wall. If you have water leaking into the basement through the foundation walls, it’s time to dig. Period.
Water in the basement, especially if the walls are finished, will guarantee walls full of mould. Take care of your foundation, and it will hold you up forever. Part of caring for your foundation, is making sure you have a good eavestrough and downspout system installed to direct water away from the foundation wall, and that you have proper grading away from the house to take care of runoff from the outside walls.
The roof, siding and foundation are all integrated systems that depend on each other to protect us from the environment and provide shelter for us. If these three systems are in good shape, your investment is protected, and you can start to build real value inside the walls by making your home more safe, efficient, and pleasing to the eye. We’ll talk about that next time.
I sleep well at night knowing my roof, siding and foundation are all in good shape … now I have time to hit the car wash!
Bryan Baeumler is the host of Disaster DIY (weekends at 1 p.m.) and House of Bryan on HGTV. His column appears every two week in New in Homes & Condos. You can contact him via his website www.baeumler.ca or follow him on Facebook or on Twitter @Bryan_Baeumler.
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