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Our climate can play havoc with your roof. Here’s what happens:
When the lumber was ordered for your house, it was what we call “green lumber,” having a typical moisture content of 20% or higher. The natural drying process as the house was being built typically causes the moisture content to fall to between 7% and 10%. Now that construction is finished, the house suffers through periods of sunshine and rain. During the hot, dry months, the moisture content can fall to between 1% and 3%, causing shrinkage gaps between the various wood components. At the same time, the flashing sealant on the roof is drying out, becoming brittle, and cracking. Now the rains come. Leaks everywhere! The roof and flashing on your house can fail at any time. Here’s how to protect your investment without spending a lot of money and without waiting until thousands of dollars worth of damage occur to the interior because of a roof leak. Put in your annual home maintenance budget a couple of hundred dollars or so for a roofing contractor. |
Every October when you set your clocks back (or any other easily remembered day in the Fall, but definitely before the winter), pay a qualified roofing contractor to come out and examine your roof and give it the A-OK (some roofing contractors may also provide warranties against leaks for a year or two).
Now you should make it through the winter with no problems. And come on, a couple of hundred dollars or so in preventive maintenance for the roof is much, much better than waiting until it leaks and going through the anguish of major damage to the interior and to your furniture, books, pictures, photographs, and other priceless mementoes of you and your family (like your wedding album and your children’s baby pictures). Your roof covering will last a long time in our climate if you’ll do three things: make sure your attic (1) has adequate ventilation (e.g., any combination of gable, soffit, static, turbine, and ridge vents; and attic fans), (2) has adequate insulation, and (3) then give a roofing contractor a couple of hundred bucks or so each year, or toward the end of whatever warranty period the roofing contractor provides you, to inspect your roof and flashing. |
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