Weekly Maintenance for your Home

September – Week 35

Just like preventative maintenance on your car, if you take care of a few small items around the house every week, you can avoid many emergency breakdowns and expensive repairs.

Siding

The primary function of house siding is to protect the important parts of your walls from the sun and baseballs. Even though we insist on caulking joints between the siding and anything that penetrates the wall, like windows, doors and wires, the siding's primary function is not keeping water out of the wall. Sure it sheds most of the water, but bricks have drain holes on the bottom, aluminium and vinyl have breathing holes in every second row and wooden shingles and planks are all loosely overlapped. The real wind and water barrier is the house wrap or building paper that is under the siding. But if we didn't protect it from both mechanical abuse and the UV rays of the sun, it wouldn't last long. Siding is really the protective armour of the walls, not the water proof or wind proof barrier.

Joints that go right through the wall need caulking but joints that are properly flashed are usually left open to help the wall dry out when it needs to. If you are confused, check out the keyword "Siding" in the SEARCH tab above.

What is important is that if the siding begins to get loose so that the wind could catch it and pull it off, that needs to be fixed immediately. If the siding comes off, the rest of the wall can't stand up to the elements.