Among all our other fall preparations, one important one to keep in mind is roof and gutter maintenance. Who wants a leaky roof or broken gutter this winter?
Use these tips to help you inspect your roof and gutters:
Check often, check early: It’s best that you inspect your roof regularly for wear and tear. Like most home improvement tasks, spring and fall are the best times.
Safety First: You don’t have to get on a ladder for all inspections–many can be done from the ground with binoculars. In fact, it’s best that you do as much as possible from the ground: it’s safer and will do zero damage to your roof.
Up Close and Personal: If you do need to get up on the roof, be extra careful. Make sure you’re ladder’s secured and stay safe–a fall arrest system is best.
What to Look For and what to do:
Roofs:
- Buckling, curling or blistering asphalt shingles – replace shingles if only a few damaged
- Loose material or wear around chimneys and pipes – replace shingles
- Large amounts of asphalt shingle granules in your gutters (this means that your roof is aging rapidly) – call a pro
- Cracked caulk or rust spots on flashing – replace flashing
- Missing or broken shingles – replace and seal shingles
- Cracked and worn rubber boots around vent pipes – replace boots
- Missing or damaged chimney cap – replace cap
- Large amounts of moss and lichen–a sign of decay (don’t worry about black algae stains unless you’re keeping up appearances) – scrape, clean, inspect, if necessary replace shingles and try our Z-Stop Zinc Strip to stop further growth [product sku=”111732″]
- Bent, damaged or missing flashing – replace flashing
- Pitting, rusting and corrosion, loose or open seams on metal roofs – call a pro
- Broken chipped or missing pieces of slate and clay tile shingles. (Don’t get on the roof if you have these types of shingles; they break easily). – call a pro
- Loose nails – hammer down
Gutters:
Debris (leaves etc.) in gutter – clean out by hand or with DoitBest.com’s gutter cleaning brush- Clogged downspout – unclog by hand and run plumbing snake if necessary
- Standing water in gutter (insufficient slope) – measure from the peak to the downspout both sides, snap chalk line to compare, bend hangers (minimum slope is 1/4″ per 10 feet of run) to fix, rehang if necessary
- Space between gutter and wall or fascia – tighten or replace hangers and nails
- Leaks in seams or cracks – caulk
- Damaged components – replace
What Supplies You’ll Need:
For roofing, we offer the best brands: Interwrap Titanium, IPG NovaSeal for underlayment, Malarkey Roofing, Pabco, IKO, for asphalt and Metal Sales, Fabral and ASC for metal.
For gutters, your local WBC and DoitBest.com offers a wide selection of gutter parts and roof heat tape to prevent ice build up. In fact, we feature several right here:
[product_category category=”heat-tapes” per_page=”3″ columns=”3″ orderby=”date” order=”desc”]
Check out their neat gutter cleaning brush and gutter guards–though keep in mind that gutter guards are limited in our neck of the woods since pine needles go right through.
In the meantime, check out these neat Ideabooks from Houzz on October to-dos: