Weekly Maintenance for your Home

April – Week 13

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.

Indoor Frost Damage

As winter draws to a close, it is time to look at what freezing temperatures may have done to your walls indoors. Any frost shifting on the outside will usually show up on the inside with cracked plaster, or delaminated drywall tape. This will be most noticeable around weak spots in the walls, the corners of windows and doors. It can also show up at joints between walls.

Take a close look outdoors in the area of the plaster or drywall problems. Look for landscaping problems that bring surface water near the house. At this time of year if you have a bit of a thaw, or some rain over the frozen ground, you will see these areas as water puddles. Later in the spring they will disappear because they will soak into the ground. Right now, the frozen ground will force them to stay on the surface, allowing you to define more of your spring landscaping tasks. Keep this water away from these areas in the fall and the soil will not be saturated before the first winter frost, and you will reduce the cracking of the plaster in the house.

Check the Search tab above for more details on "Frost Heaving".