Early intervention and good maintenance will prevent having bigger problems to tackle in the future.

Cleaning your gutters and giving the house a wash will give you the chance to see if there are any minor repairs that need to be sorted.

As we move out of winter into warmer spring weather your cladding will be expanding due to heat expansion.

This expansion can cause the older sheet jointing products to split. No home is immune from this. In fact even weatherboard and brick cladding expand and crack eventually.

Take a close look around your home for:

• cracks in the cladding
• degraded silicon joints in your joinery junctions
• old or damaged painted surfaces that no longer repel water

Even minor issues could let the wet spring rain in through you plaster surface and behind the wall structure.

Early intervention prevents the damage taking hold and becoming vastly more expensive to repair.

While we are all happy to be through winter and enjoying spring’s new growth in the garden and flowers appearing its often the case that small cracks in your plaster cladding will also be appearing.

To help you out here’s a simple checklist so you can give your home what it needs

• Is the paint coating in good condition? Any fading cracking or bubbling?
• Is the sealant around the joinery in good condition? Bug eaten, ridged, cracking or peeling away?
• Is there any damage or cracks to plaster cladding?
• Are the gutters clear and in good condition?
• Are the glazing rubbers in good condition? Receding or cracked?
• Is the roof in good general condition from what you can see? Rust, popped fixings, lead flashings cracked?
• Is the roofing membrane visually ok?
• Is the sealant and control joints in good condition?
• Are there any visible signs of moisture showing on the internal timber window jams?
• Are there any cracked roof tiles or crumbled mortar?
• Are there any damages or rot to the weatherboards?
• Is the balcony/Internal deck membranes visually ok?
• Is the balustrade and parapet capping in place and visually functioning?
• Are the rain head outlets in good condition and free of debris?
• Are the overflow outlets clear and in good condition?
• Are the diverter flashings present and adequately functional?
• Is the ground drainage visually functioning?

And once you’ve checked this out does anything require urgent attention?

Right now it seems like next winter is a long way off but even the spring rain can create problems.

Early prevention is the best investment you can make in your home.

But don’t worry if you don’t know what you are looking for in your spring “home check-up”. You are not alone!

In a recent multi choice question done at the national home show, 72% of home owners couldn’t tell us what the facia is on their home!

But that’s okay !! … that’s what SoundHomes is here for.

Whether you need some advice or there are repairs needed We are the specialists you need.

One of our Exterior home performance specialists can come out and look over your home for you, just go to our website soundhomesnz.co.nz and fill out the enquiry request and we will be in touch within an couple of hours to help you out.