So will pressure washing your asphalt shingles! Round -up will not kill moss...something to do with being the first land plant. A bleach solution will but may ruin your favorite knock-around clothes. If you don't want to use bleach, try this, but read the label carefully about danger to pets and such... Also, bleach and Wet & Forget will also kill lichen and take care of those black streaks, which are blue-green algae. Click on image for link. Or call a professional roof

Like most of you I had damage to my house after the two days of 50 mph gusts. The 5 by 11.5 inch tabs on a couple dozen shingles ripped off and flew everywhere. Called my friend Josh from JGL roofing and he asked me how old my roof is. I said it's probably about 10 years old but looks like new. He said I have Certainteed shingles. "They look new for the whole life of the roof." Wow, and the only tool I have to gauge roof age is the appearance of the shingles and the cond

Perma-boots come in different sizes depending on the size of the vent pipes. These can also easily extend the height of existing pipes if the pipe cover extension connects to some part of the existing pipe (and you glue it on). If the pipes aren't high enough over the roof surface a heavy snowfall may block them and then the toilets won't flush! Click here for one size. Fixed my mother-in-law's leaking vents with these! #roof #drainage

Water is the main enemy of your house. When water gets into a chimney it degrades the masonry all the way down, including the firebox. Covering the opening with a cap and spark arrester protects the roof from sparks and the chimney from water, debris and animals. Click on the image for a link to Woodland Direct who will provide any size you need, plus beautiful ones too. #roof #HVAC

Here is drip edge flashing over the eave. If you have a gutter, the bottom edge would go over the gutter so that water couldn't duck behind the gutter and rot out the eave. I commonly see sheds built with the plywood sheathing exposed (with no flashing) so that the ends simply absorb water and decay the bottom foot or so of the sheathing. These are the rake edges of a roof. Without drip edge flashing here, the shingles will curl easier and water will find its way under the e

Drove by a whole row of houses with copper surrounding their chimneys. Copper is a main ingredient in Wet and Forget. I wonder if the creators saw something like this. #roof

Click on image for link. Click on image for link. #roof #ventilation

Chimneys: lofty, solid...out there in the wind and snow and rain. But like all of us, vulnerable. Brick work isn't designed to act like a roof (like in the sloped parts of chimneys) or dams, when the sides of chimneys meet the roof. Hence the poetically named cricket diverter, which is made of metal or roofing material and sends the water, snow and ice to either side into the gutter. Otherwise, ice can form a dam uphill of the chimney and water pools against flashing which

Roofs are supposed to be on top of everything else. When a roof meets a wall you've got water running down where it was not meant to and then when it gets to the base of the wall it can wrap around and cause trouble. I just inspected a house that needed a whole new joist and its support replaced due to the lack of a few dollars of kick-out flashing. This gutter valley splash guard will help prevent overflow from high pitched roof valleys. Click on image for link. #drainage

This shows how to do the shell and some of the interiors: no plumbing, electrical, HVAC. Even though it covers only some of the scope of a home inspector's work, it helps one appreciate how many parts there are to a house and what goes under the finishes. #misc #roof

Here's a house where the gutters have become planters! Cleaning gutters (and anything else done on ladders) is a major cause of death among men of a certain age. It also results in cut hands and a messy yard below. I have found that Gutter Helmets work best. Designed like an air foil (wing or sail) debris, except for some pine needles, falls over the gutter and water, because of its high cohesion (hydrogen bonds) sticks onto the guard and just wraps around into the gutter:

Ideally there should be continuous soffit vents and a continuous ridge vent in your attic to allow for a passive air flow over the inside of your roof deck which prevents mold from forming in the winter. The old roofs just had a gable vent or two. Some have soffit vents but nothing at the ridge. Any of the the four types below the ridge on the image above would be fine. This static vent below is most common. Each roof is different but ideally these should be placed every

This beautiful room doesn't have a conventional attic space. It may still be vented from the eaves to ridge as required in R806.3 of the International Residential Code but likely it is not. It is then called an un-vented roof assembly covered in R806.4 (click on image for link). Moisture from the home can still migrate through the recessed lights and even through the drywall itself. If it hits a cold roof deck it will grow mold. Therefore the idea is to keep the plywood

New shingles can be installed for about $3.50 per square foot. Add $2.00 per square foot if you need new plywood too. Here's how you figure out how many square feet you have. Click on image for roofing calculator. #roof

The metal flashing wears out after about 70 years on slate roofs. To redo flashing on the valleys they have to be cut back and completely redone. Ridges can be fixed from the surface by this technique. Most of the roofing cement I see on slate roofs is on the ridges. #roof #drainage

Buried downspout extensions are more attractive but are guaranteed to clog at some point and send water directly to your foundation. These WYES at the end of your downspout, connected to the buried pipe, will filter out debris from above and let you easily see overflow when the buried pipe gets clogged by roots or silt. Click on image for link. #drainage #roof

First thought, dry wells aren't good, means we will die of thirst after crossing the desert. Ah, but dry wells can save your foundation, basement and yard. The idea is they fill up during a storm, contain the water and let it seep into the soil slowly. A rain barrel could be considered a dry well. Here is an in-ground one. Search "dry well images" for a great variety of others. This homely model receives drainage pipes from your downspouts or drains to protect your reta

It's amazing how much damage a leaky gutter or a misdriected downspout can do. I've seen gutter overflows neglected for years causing mold in the basement and downspouts dumping half a roof's water onto one corner of the foundation and literally eating it away. As a general rule get that water at least 5 feet away from the foundation or further if needed to slope away from the house! Click on image to link to this versatile model. Look at the trouble they've taken at Linco

A home usually has a long history of good use, happy times and, yes, insults and injuries, before I come to check it over for a potential new master seeking refuge and happiness. Often the simplest things can cause the most dramatic differences to a building's habitability. In the case documented below I arrived just in time for one of the summer's tropical deluges and the "Case of the Flooded Basement" was solved! #misc #drainage #roof