For most people throughout the UK, your home is your most important asset. As a result, protecting your home from damage is something everyone can recognise as an important thing. Barring faulty installations and fire, one of the most likely causes of damage to a home is bad weather, or weathering and erosion. When left unattended, a home left without weather protection can undergo a tremendous amount of damage over time, some of which can be difficult to detect. For example, water damage from rain can cause an unprotected wall to split and break apart during colder seasons as the water freezes and places the concrete under stress. Thankfully there are a number of tried and tested methods and products that can help to ameliorate these issues and concerns.
The first and most important thing to do is to regularly survey your roof. When something goes wrong with a roof, not only will it allow damage to occur, but the roof will likely enter a downward spiral that will see an ever greater amount of exposure to weather and damage over time. To avoid this, you can do a simple eyeball check of your roof by either looking at it from below with a clear vantage point, or using a ladder to check it out more closely. If this is something you’re unable to do, doing something like a roof survey is a very normal service that many roofing companies provide, and using them is even advisable periodically anyway, as they will be able to uncover any areas of concern more effectively than you are likely able to with just a sight inspection.
Similarly to roofs, checking your wall standards is another thing that you should grow accustomed to doing with your home, as, like with roofs, any issues that are left untreated are likely to only get worse over time, potentially leading to disastrous consequences. What typically happens with walls is that, either with splash back from rain hitting the ground or animals potentially trying to burrow through them, the walls suffer from some damage that allows water to find a space within the wall construction. Once this has occurred, water will be able to freeze during colder periods of the year, leading to an expansion, and placing the wall under increased stress. In the worst case scenario, this can lead to walls cracking and damaging the stability of your home.
To deal with these concerns, there are number of things that you can do to help to protect your externals from weathering. The most important is to make sure that there are external wall coatings in place on your walls, which are functionally the same as paint, but are far superior in terms of both effectiveness and the lifetime durability. External wall coatings can help to protect your home for at least ten years from a single application, and is one of the first things that you should do. You can also install fascia on the roof of your building, so that any water run-off from your roof is projected outside of a splash radius, and erosion is therefore kept to a minimum. Installing cladding is another potential option for the walling, as this ensures that any damage is kept to an easily replaceable component of your home, rather than something essential for the stability of it such as walls.