Whether you’re a homeowner, seller, buyer or looking to let or rent property, you will find my personal experience with my property very handy - particularly my roof in this case.
After a costly ordeal that literally took the roof off from over my head, I now take caring for my roof seriously.
I’ve decided to share the costly lessons I’ve learnt so that you don’t make the same mistakes I did!
I'm going to share my tips on repairs and preventative maintenance when it comes to roofs, followed by a little tale of how it all went wrong for me at home.
General care for your property roof
Roof gutters
It’s a good idea to regularly spray out any leaves, twigs or other debris that lodged in your gutters. Besides it affecting the water flow around your property, it ensures that there isn’t a backflow into your roof and into your ceiling. Water has a sneaky way of getting into any place and can be very destructive.Overgrown and over-shadowing trees
As much as we all love trees and hate to cut them down, a little trim and prune is always good practice.Firstly, you wouldn’t want an overgrown tree to fall on your roof (like one did on my roof). Secondly, having trees and leaves hovering over your property roof could invite other guests. I had instances where it gave perfect access for snakes to get onto my roof and into my ceiling, especially during winter when that area becomes one of the warmer places on our property.
Roof Equipment
Be very careful when getting up onto the roof to install stuff like a satellite dish or aerials, apart from the risk of falling and hurting yourself, walking on the roof often tends to cause cracks or breakages. The safest way is to walk along the wooden beams, these are stronger areas and you can be more certain of not falling through and into your lounge. Usually installers are more learned in this field.Algae or Moss
Excessive moisture always impairs the durability of your property roof. If water settles, the roof becomes damp and eventually softer, weaker and more susceptible to breakage and leaks. Please don’t attempt to climb up onto it yourself, one thing I should have done with my roof was to call in an expert.Ceiling or Attic
It’s good practice to regularly check out your ceiling or attic. My property, more especially my roof and ceiling housed some very furry guests during the last winter period. It warms up to very comfy temperatures during the day. In addition, if there are a any leaks or cracks, moss, dampness or deterioration - it’s best to detect it at that stage, before it filtrates to your ceiling and then cause damage.Roofing specialist
After my traumatic ordeal as you will read below, I now have my roof experts on speed dial! Whether buying property or even renting for that matter - calling them could save you thousands of rands, migraines and a husband who say: ‘’I told you so’’. It’s a sad occurrence that some nasty property sellers may cover up any problems when selling a property. Voetstoets they say!My funny little story
Our gardener, Solomon, who has been with us for over 12 years was tasked with trimming a few trees in the yard to lighten his load of picking the leaves up every day.
I’m sure at some stage we all have experienced not knowing when to stop, this was my day. Once he was done with trimming the trees, my urge to get things done kicked-in… There was this one tree that bugged me, apart from it being overgrown and untidy, the roots were cracking up my new courtyard paving and leaving this huge sink hole in my property. My husband was never ever going to get around to cutting this tree – he had been meditating on my suggestion for a year!
To ‘cut’ a long story short
Anyway, with Solomon now ready with his axe and me in my PJs spear-heading this operation, we, the A-Team were determined to get this tree to the ground.
The last place I wanted it was on my roof! I hate Murphy ’s Law I tell you! There it went plummeting not just on but nicely embedding itself in my roof…
Getting professionals for the job cannot be emphasized more!
But I blame my husband too… I mean how would I know this?
Valuable lessons
· Apparently you don’t axe it at the side you don’t want it to fall
· Using a long rope from different angles help to control the tree as it comes loose.
· As much as we hate it, at times it’s worth waiting for your husband to be around to get things done
You should see the look on my husband’s face when he got home from work!