Home Maintenance For Dummies, 2nd Edition

by Carey, James

  In some severe cases where the condition has existed for a long period, a deep saw cut may be required at the underside of the support beam in one or more locations to make the timber more yielding and to facilitate movement of the floor up or down. The saw cut should penetrate approximately two-thirds the thickness of the timber. So, if the timber is 6 inches thick (measured vertically), the cut should be about 4 inches deep. For added strength, a splint consisting of short pieces of two-by-six should be glued and nailed with 16-penny nails onto either side of the support beam at the locations where cuts are made.

  Installing a screw jack

  If your home is built on expansive soil and, thus, subject to regular movement, a screw jack is the ticket (see Figure 4-12). Screw jacks, also known as adjustable floor jacks, are used in lieu of solid wood posts between the concrete piers in the crawlspace and the girders (horizontal beams) that support the floor joists.

  A screw jack is a metal support post that can be adjusted to level the floor. It consists of two heavy steel pipes, one inside the other. The inside pipe is threaded and adjusted up and down by turning a large wing nut. The screw jack is attached with nails to the underside of the girder and to the wood block atop a concrete pier.

  Figure 4-12: Using a screw jack to shore up your floor.

  Screw jacks can generally be found at local hardware stores and home centers. Here’s how to install a screw jack:

  1. Use a hydraulic jack and a short post to shore up the floor during this process.

  2. Use a hammer, a nail puller, and a sledgehammer to remove the existing underpinning wood post and nails.

  3. Center the screw jack below the girder and on top of the wood block on the concrete pier.

  4. Adjust the screw jack so that the top and bottom plates are flush to the wood surfaces above and below.

  5. Drive 16-penny nails through the holes in the plates and into the wood framing.

  6. Lower the hydraulic jack to transfer the floor load to the new screw jack.

  7. Adjust the screw jack up or down to achieve a level surface.

  In some cases, when radically adjusting a floor, don’t be surprised if windows crack and doors stick. On the other hand, besides not having to take motion-sickness medicine anymore, don’t be surprised if a few of those once-sticking doors and windows now operate just fine. It’s amazing what a little trek under the house can do!

  Chapter 5

  Roofing and Siding

  In This Chapter

  Stopping leaks before they begin

  Discovering the destructive side of icicles

  Getting into gutters

  Painting for more than appearance

  Caring for siding

  Your entire home and its contents depend on the integrity of your roof and exterior walls in the same way that you depend on protective clothing to keep you dry in foul weather. Getting temporarily stuck in bad weather can make you slightly uncomfortable and maybe even ruin your hairdo, but left unchecked, a roof leak — even a tiny one — can end up costing a fortune in damage to a home’s interior and its precious contents. Damage to flooring, plaster, wallboard, furniture, important papers, and more is no small matter. To avoid problems like these, you need to keep your roof and siding in good condition and repair. This chapter tells you how.

  Your Roof: The Fifth Wall of Your Home

  Most folks are pretty conscientious about maintaining the exterior walls of their homes. On just about any day during good weather, you can drive through a neighborhood and find the sides of at least one home under siege by painters. But rarely do you see anyone on the roof of a home unless the roof is being replaced. For some reason, people just don’t pay as much attention to their roofs, which we think is a mistake.

  The whole idea of maintenance is to ensure longevity, reduce costs, and improve value. We think this concept should apply to the roof in the same way it does to the walls. In fact, we like to think of the roof as the fifth wall of the home — and we think the roof should be maintained with the same regularity as the walls that support it. With proper care and maintenance, a roof can outlast its warranty without leaking a drop or suffering any ugly damage.

  Staying safe on the roof

  A pitched roof is an alien plane. No, not a spaceship from another planet. Rather, it’s an unfamiliar surface to walk upon. And for the novice, an angled surface can be even more dangerous than the dastardly spaceships that tried to destroy the Earth in the movie War of the Worlds. To stay safe, follow this advice:

  If you aren’t agile or athletic, or if you have a fear of heights (or falling), think about hiring someone to maintain your roof. Your best bet would be a roofing contractor. He has the equipment, the know-how, and, best of all, the experience of working up high on an unlevel plane.

  If you do go up there, be sure to wear rubber-soled shoes. They grip better than leather.

  Wear a safety harness. Safety harnesses have fabric straps that wrap around your legs, your waist, and the trunk of your body, and you connect them to a rope that’s securely anchored to a tree trunk — or other fixed and secure object — located on the other side of the roof. These harnesses could prevent broken bones or even save your life. You can find them online, at construction-supply stores or at a sports-supply or camping store that sells products for rock climbing and repelling.

  Be sure to adjust the slack in your safety line as you work your way up the roof. The less slack, the less sudden the stop!

  If you’re cleaning your roof, applying a preservative, or doing some other similar task, never stand downhill of your work. You can very easily slip on the wet surface. Always stand uphill of your work (see Figure 5-1).

  Use binoculars to inspect your roof. If you want to take a close look at your roof but don’t want to climb up there to do it, get a good pair of binoculars. Then you can stand on the ground and see what there is to see! Split wood shingles, shingles with holes, cupped and curling asphalt shingles, stains, mold, mildew, and other damage and wear will be as easy to spot as if you were standing right next to them.

  Cleanliness is next to godliness

  Streaking or discoloration can cause a perfectly good roof to look old, tired, and tattered. So, for appearance’s sake, keep your roof clean. You can use our Universal Roof-Cleaning Formula (see Chapter 20), which not only cleans off dirt but also gets rid of mildew, moss, and algae, all of which can cause extensive damage if left unattended.

  Figure 5-1: When cleaning or applying a preservative, always stand uphill of your work.

  If you prefer not to make your own, you also can use one of dozens of commercial roof cleaning solutions available. Although many of them simply contain detergent and bleach like our recipe, others contain peroxide, fungicides, mildewcides, disinfectants, and other fancy fluids. Some are better at killing mold and mildew. Some are better at removing stains. Some are easier on your landscaping. In the end, though, they all work pretty much the same. To find out more about the options, visit your favorite home center or hardware store.

  To clean your roof, you need these supplies:

  Cleaning solution

  Safety glasses or goggles

  Pump garden sprayer

  Stiff-bristle broom

  Tall ladder (how tall depends on the height of your roof)

  Garden hose

  Safety harness

  Choose a cool, humid, overcast day to make sure that the cleaner doesn’t dry too fast on the roof and then follow these steps:

  1. Pour your cleaning solution into the garden sprayer.

  2. While standing on the roof, spray the cleaner on a strip about 3 feet high and 10 feet wide and let it sit for about 15 minutes.

  Begin cleaning the lower portion of the roof, moving up as you clean each lower section. That way, you always stand on dry ground and reduce the chance of slipping (refer to Figure 5-1).

  3. If the cleaner begins to dry out, spray on a bit more.

  A few uplifting words about ladders
<
br />   There are as many different ladders as there are tasks that require one. They range from the small two- and three-rung step-stool type to the common 6- and 8-foot folding models to the big daddy of them all, the extension ladder. If your home-maintenance budget can afford only one ladder, get a 6-foot stepladder. It gives you the length you need when tackling most home-maintenance and repair projects. You can change light bulbs at ceiling-mounted fixtures and paint ceilings and walls. However, if your ceilings are 10 feet or greater, you need an 8-foot ladder instead. If your project involves a multistory roof, you need an extension ladder. (Whichever type of ladder you choose, be sure to check its posted weight capacity. The ladder must be able to carry your own weight plus your payload.)

  Don’t try to save money by purchasing a cheap ladder. Cheap ladders fall apart in no time — usually with someone on them. When buying a ladder, look for secure connections, metal-supported steps, and superior hinges. As the ladder gets older, keep an eye out for loose connections, splits, cracks, and missing rivets.

  Follow these tips to help you avoid any unplanned downward trips off your ladder:

  When working on dirt or turf, stabilize the ladder by placing the feet on boards or on a sheet of plywood to prevent them from sinking into the earth. For added stability, place the bottom of the ladder away from the wall one-quarter of the ladder’s length; if you have an 8-foot ladder, place the bottom of the ladder 2 feet away from the wall.

  When working on the roof, make sure that the ladder extends a minimum of 2 feet above the edge of the roof.

  Never climb onto a roof from the gable end where the roof crosses the ladder rungs at an angle. Instead, mount the roof from a horizontal side. The plane of the roof should be parallel to the ladder rungs at the point where you leave the ladder to mount the roof.

  To maintain proper balance, keep your hips between the side rails when climbing the ladder or when reaching out. Keep one hand on the ladder and the other free for work.

  4. Use the broom to gently scrub the area as needed to get it clean.

  You don’t want to scrub off the granules from your asphalt shingles, or scrub your wood shingles loose.

  5. Rinse the cleaned area with fresh water.

  Repeat the process until the roof is clean.

  A wood-shake or shingle roof covered with pine needles, leaves, moss, and other debris may retain water, causing the shingles to rot prematurely. An annual sweeping with a stiff-bristle broom cuts down on fungus damage by enhancing proper watershed. Cleaning to promote proper watershed is important with other types of roofs as well. Built-up debris can create a dam, which can cause a leak.

  Replacing an asphalt shingle

  Asphalt and fiberglass shingles, sometimes called composition shingles, are by far the most popular roofing material. Made of asphalt (tar), reinforced with fiberglass or other organic materials, and covered with mineral granules, they’re good looking, long lasting, and need very little maintenance. Composition shingles are more flexible and, therefore, somewhat more forgiving than wood shingles (see the next section).

  Because composition shingles become more flexible when warm, replacing a shingle is best saved for a sunny day.

  Here’s all you have to do to replace a composition shingle (see Figure 5-2):

  1. Fold back the shingle(s) that are above the one you want to remove.

  2. Use a flat pry bar to remove the nails that hold the damaged shingle in place.

  3. Slip a new shingle in position to replace the one that was removed.

  4. Nail the new shingle in place using a flat pry bar as a hammer extension.

  Using a flat pry bar as a hammer extension, you can drive the nail in from beneath an overlapping shingle. First, press the nail into the shingle by hand; then position the bottom of the flat pry bar so that the straight end rests atop the nail head; then strike the flat pry bar with a hammer. The offset below drives the nail home.

  Figure 5-2: Replacing a composition shingle.

  Preserving a wood-shake or shingle roof

  If your wood roof-covering members are machine-sawn on both sides, they’re known as just plain shingles. If they’re hand-split (having a rough, ribbed surface), they’re known as shaked shingles or shakes.

  Regardless, no matter how clean you keep your wood roof, it usually starts looking a little worn out after only a few years. Good Old Mr. Sun causes the majority of the damage, drying out shingles, causing them to split, and literally burning holes into them. These shingles can lose virtually all their moisture (water and natural resins) in as few as five years, which can result in cupping, curling, splitting, and an almost certain early demise. However, with proper care and maintenance, you could double or even triple the life of a wood-shake or shingle roof.

  Most preservative applications last three to five years depending upon the climate. Keeping the roof clean and debris-free helps extend the lasting quality of the preservative and, therefore, the life of the roof.

  For more information on wood-roof maintenance, contact the Cedar Guild (phone: 503-897-2541; Web: www.cedar-guild.com/contact) and order its terrific “Double the Life of Your Roof Manual.”

  Super-cleaning to open the pores

  Preserving your roof begins with an even more thorough cleaning than the general roof-cleaning technique that we describe in the “Cleanliness is next to godliness” section, earlier in this chapter. It completely exposes all the pores of the wood so that the preservative you apply later can penetrate deeply and completely into every pore. This super-cleaning also cuts through grime and makes your wood-shake or shingle roof look almost as good as new.

  Step 1: Pressure-washing

  The first step in super-cleaning your roof is to pressure-wash it. We recommend a pressure washer, a small device that converts water supplied from a garden hose to a high-pressure mix of air and water that comes through the hose with enough force to cut through soft wood. Talk about eliminating elbow grease! When using the pressure washer, hold the spray tip approximately 8 to 12 inches from the roof’s surface while working backward from the lowest part of the roof up to the highest part.

  Step 2: Getting rid of mold

  When mold is present, follow the pressure-washing with an application of mold-killing bleach (1 quart bleach to 1 gallon hot water) to eliminate remaining spores that may reside deep within the pores of the wood. Place the mixture in a garden sprayer and thoroughly wet the entire roof. Keep it wet for at least 15 minutes and then rinse with fresh water.

  Replacing damaged wood shingles

  After super-cleaning the wood roof, let it dry and then follow these steps to replace any damaged shingles (see Figure 5-3):

  1. Using a hacksaw, cut the nails anchoring a damaged shingle and carefully slip it out.

  Attempting to pry nails loose or pull a shingle out may damage surrounding shingles and make it more difficult to install the new one.

  2. Using the shingle you just removed as a pattern, custom-cut a replacement shingle.

  3. Slip the new shingle up and under the building paper until the butt end (the fat end) is within 1 inch of the ends of the shingles on either side of the new one.

  4. Toenail (nail at an angle) two barbed roofing nails as high up as possible without damaging the butt end of the overlapping shingle.

  5. Finish the repair by driving the shingle until it aligns with the surrounding shingles.

  Place a wood block against the butt end of the new shingle and strike the block firmly with a hammer. This process conceals the new nails, providing a more watertight installation.

  Figure 5-3: Replacing a wood shingle.

  What about other types of roofs?

  A number of alternative roofing materials simulate traditional roof coverings. Synthetic and fiber-cement slate look like the real thing but are considerably cheaper and lighter — an important consideration in retrofitting. Metal, polymer, fiber-cement, and even rubber shakes offer a top fire rating and are an alternative for homes in are
as where wood roofing is banned.