Maintenance Matters: Pay Attention Now or Pay the Price Later

By Tim Feran, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Jul. 27–Nah, that little drip under the sink is nothing to worry about. I’ll put it off until I get around to it.

Beware those words. They could cost you in the long run.

Doing household maintenance may be a drag that is easily put off, but home renovators say people should stay after simple things such as keeping the gutters clear of leaves and the caulking in the bathroom fresh.

If you don’t pay a little today, you’d better be prepared to pay a lot tomorrow.

“People ignore things they know are wrong because they can’t see them,”said Bob Fry of Fry Contracting Co. “Because they didn’t actually see the water in the drywall or they disregarded the smell or don’t see the water droplets, because they ignored things on purpose, it just costs thousands and thousands of dollars.” Many of the problems occur when Mother Nature decides to make unannounced and unwelcome visits indoors — incursions that could have easily been blocked through cleaning, clearing, painting and patching.

Other problems result from a lack of maintenance in man-made products. But either way, the price of a little upkeep is always far less — sometimes tens of thousands of dollars less– than the price of a major project to repair the damage.

Home-renovation experts offered these home-maintenance tips — ideal for keeping the big bills at bay.

1. Check the caulking outside: windows and doors.

“We had a client in a fairly new home in New Albany,” said Monica Miller of J.S. Brown & Co. “Of course, New Albany has pretty strict standards on what products can be used.

“This house used wood windows and wood trim. When our clients bought the house, it was less than 10 years old, but the previous owners hadn’t kept up with maintenance and caulking.”

Without caulking, water was able to get past the seal around many windows, damaging drywall. And when the renovators took down the drywall that had been damaged, they found more damage — mildew and rot on framing and studs.

The repairs cost thousands of dollars. The cost of a tube of silicone caulk? Less than $2.

2. Eyeball the roof.

“It’s easily done,” said Marc Gliatas of Gliatas Construction in Columbus. “If you don’t want to go up on a ladder, get a set of binoculars and look. Then, if you see any problems with loose shingles or flashing, call in a professional.

“It’s basic home maintenance,” said Adam Thompson of Thompson Building Associates in Columbus. “We had a client, a former football player from OSU who keeps a house up here in Dublin, but he hadn’t spent much time in Columbus, and the house had been neglected for three, four, five years.

“There was all kinds of water damage that came in through the roof. Even though the house was fairly new, there was no caretaker for the house. Nobody was there taking a look around, and we wound up doing $60,000 worth of repairs.”

The cost of a roof inspection? Just your time.

3. Check the caulking inside: kitchen, bath counters.

“People don’t pay a lot of attention to faucets leaking or the drain lines under sinks,” Gliatas said. “They slide a trash can underneath and go on their way.”

But a lot of times that drip loosens the fittings, and before you know it, you have water damage, either in the level below or, you’ll open up the cabinet and see a puddle in the front of the cabinet.

“We see a lot of water damage around showers when the door is not caulked properly,” he said, “or if the curtain is allowed to sit on the floor. People don’t notice the damage until water comes down into the ceiling of the kitchen — that’s when we get the call.”

Letting that leak go on and on can be costly: If it damages the floor, subfloor, ceiling and drywall, the repair bill can amount to thousands.

4. Beware of critters.

Look for suspicious signs of incursions by insects and other wildlife, and call a licensed exterminator or wildlife excluder if you have any doubts.

“We were doing a small bump-out for a guy in Upper Arlington,” Fry said, “and during the remodeling, as we were tying into the existing foundation, the guy said, ‘Hey,can I ask you a question? I’ve been noticing sawdust in the corner of the basement, and I don’t know how it’s getting there.’

“Well, we looked up and saw termite tubes all over the wood. He didn’t understand that termites had been eating away his floor, and every week he would sweep up sawdust in the basement. He didn’t realize the entire corner of his home had been eaten away. So we had to replace the joists and rework his hardwood floors.”

The repair wasn’t difficult –”but was expensive,” Fry said. “About $3,800.”

5. Check the appliances, part 1: refrigerator.

“People never keep up with this, and I’m guilty of it, too,” Miller said. “But it’s important to keep the compressors clean. If you make a compressor work too hard, you shorten the life of one of the most expensive appliances in the kitchen.

“You want to make sure it’s clean and clear. Unfortunately, with a lot of models that means hauling it out . But it’s well worth the effort for the efficiency you get in return.”

The savings add up to more than just the price of a new refrigerator, of course: Think of all the food that will go bad if the unit breaks down while you’re on vacation.

Before cleaning, check the manual instructions for the location of the coils.

If the coils are on the rear, unplug the refrigerator and move it away from the wall, being careful not to tip it over. Vacuum or brush the coils.

If the coils are at floor level, snap off or screw off the grill from the bottom of the refrigerator and vacuum the coils, using the hose attachment to reach narrow spots.

6. Keep the lawn mower clean.

It sounds crazy, but Thompson tells a tale of seemingly minor neglect that caused a major house fire.

“This guy was mowing his yard for a long while, and he didn’t clean out the grass clippings from the mower deck. Well, the clippings decomposed, and when they decomposed, they got hot and started to burn.

“The fire on the tractor caused the tractor to explode, and that caused the house fire.”

7. Check the appliances, part 2: sump pump.

“It’s really important to periodically test the sump,” said Todd Schmidt of Renovations Unlimited in Grove City. “The last time you want to find out it’s not working is when there’s a really heavy rain. If you have a finished basement, we recommend a battery backup.”

The latter point is important because the most likely time homeowners lose electric power is also the most likely time they will need that power to run the sump pump: during a big storm.

“We recommend that sump pumps have a battery backup in places where power goes out frequently,” Miller said. “Our plumber told us he replaced something like a dozen sumps in the days after those storms recently. People didn’t know that their sumps weren’t working.”

“More and more of insurance is written so that if the sump doesn’t have a battery backup, then the policy doesn’t cover water damage,” Thompson said.

The easiest way to test the pump is by pouring water in the sump pit or lifting the float — it looks like a black ball — to start the motor. The pump should start when water is about a foot below the basement floor, and whatever water is in the sump pit should be clear.

8. Know the location of the main waterline shutoff.

And if you plan to be away from home for an extended period, make sure the person you have checking in on the house knows where the water shutoff is, too.

Simply knowing this small point and making sure that the shutoff valve is operable can be crucial in avoiding thousands of dollars worth of damage.

“If you lose power,” Thompson said, “if the water pipes aren’t insulated, those lines will tend to freeze.

“We did a job in Muirfield for a family that spent the winter in Florida. When there was an ice storm and they lost power, they knew nothing about it, and the pipes froze. After the power came back on, the frozen pipes burst, and water had been dripping from the second floor all the way down for six or seven days.”

9. Check the appliances, part 3: washing machine hoses.

“We recommend you replace those black water hoses every five years, or an even better idea is replacing them with braided stainless-steel supply hose,” Schmidt said.

The black water hoses are often cheap and cheaply made, Schmidt said, so they will break after a few years of use, and the water that spurts out can cause loads of damage.

“That black supply hose that hooks from the wall to the washer, people don’t turn those off, and there’s constant water pressure,” Schmidt said.

“So if no one is home and it springs a leak — well, it’s a $10 rubber hose, and it becomes a $20,000 leak.”

10. Clear the gutters and downspouts.

“That’s the No. 1 thing, keeping the gutters clean,” Schmidt said.

“And it’s actually a three-part job: the gutters, the downspouts and the drain tiles. If any one of them isn’t working, you’re going to have a problem.”

If the gutters and downspouts don’t properly drain water away from the house,

“The water puddles and sinks in,” Gliatas said. “In the winter, the freezing and thawing from that water can actually create cracks in the basement walls, and then more moisture comes in, and then you have a real disaster.”

tferan@dispatch.com

—–

To see more of The Columbus Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.columbusdispatch.com.

Copyright (c) 2008, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.