CONSUMER Doing Your Homework

one of your most expensive investments – your home – can continue to cost you on repairs. But if you have a keen eye for problems before they occur, you could save money, time, and the frustration of having to deal with repairmen. Three of the costliest problem areas (and the most damning when it comes to reselling your home) are the foundation, the roof, and the air conditioning system. If major damage hits one of these, you may have to kiss some big bucks good-bye.

Proper foundation care for a Dallas house is essential because the soil here is like a dry sponge: Give it a little drink and it swells; dry it out and it shrinks. The soil can expand up to 15 times and the force of this expansion can easily lift a house. Therefore, the main objective is to keep the soil surrounding your home at a constant moisture level. Excessive moisture can be just as damaging as excessive dryness.

To determine if there is too much moisture, walk around your house during a heavy rainstorm and look for standing puddles of water. Any low level areas should be filled with dirt (not sand) so that the water will drain evenly over the yard. Be careful not to fill dirt higher than the top of the foundation for this could cause termite problems or wood rot. At the same time, check your gutters to be sure the downspouts extend far enough from the roof so the water doesn’t fall near the house and wash dirt away from the foundation.

Parched and cracking earth can also lead to foundation shifting. To determine if your soil is too dry and consequently if you need to “water your foundation,” see if the soil is shrinking and pulling away from the house. Don’t hose water into the crack by the foundation or it will wash soil out from under the foundation and make the problem worse. The best way to keep the foundation moist is to use a soaker hose (a flat hose riddled with tiny holes). Lay it approximately two feet from the house, with the holes facing down, and turn on the water just slightly, letting it dribble into the ground. When you plant a tree, place it far enough from your house so the roots won’t grow under the foundation because roots can drink enormous amounts of moisture and cause the pressure that makes the foundation shift or crack.

Roofs of all types can be damaged by trees, lack of protection around flashings, too much or too little of the sun’s heat, and hail. Keep an eye out for tree branches and trim them before they scrape away shingles. Check that the gutters are clear; if leaves or other matter block the drainage, water can overflow onto the eaves and down the walls to gather under the foundation.

Your furnace and water heater chimneys should have protective rain hats (which cover the pipe opening) and be free of any holes. If small holes develop, patch them with aluminum tape. But if the hat needs replacing, measure the diameter of the pipe and buy a replacement at any major hardware store.

Wood shingle roofs need a few hours of sunlight daily to retard fungus growth. This fungus may appear as a charcoal-gray stain or green moss, and it can rot wood shingles within a few years. (A healthy wood shingle roof should last 20 years.) A very good chemical for killing this fungus, Penta Chlorophenol, is available at most hardware centers and lumber yards. When applying Penta, be careful not to drip it onto any plants or grass – it will kill them.

While you’re on the roof, you’ll probably see a few warped shingles, called curls. These are caused by an irregular grain in the wood. Minor curls usually won’t do any damage, so don’t nail them down. You’ll probably break the shingle, or at the very least, the nail will soon work its way out and leave a hole in the roof.

Composition (asphalt) roofs require little, if any, maintenance. The lighter-weight shingles will normally last 15 years while the heavier-weights should last 20 to 25 years. If the edges of composition shingles are curling down, causing them to pucker, the roof probably needs to be replaced.

If there are black spots the size of pencil erasers or larger, the roof has probably been hit by hail. These spots will eventually burn through when the sun heats the shingle. To prevent this, you can cover the shingles with exterior latex house paint or exterior caulking.

Tar and gravel roofs are layers of felt paper covered with tar. The gravel is used as a heat reflector to prevent the sun from baking the tar. Be sure the gravel covers the tar completely; if you need more gravel, many lumber yards stock it in smaller bags for this purpose.

Leaks will occur in the tar around the roof flashings (fireplaces, water heater flues, furnace flues, and sewer vents), and if you spy any cracks, you can repair the crack with silicone caulking, which is available in caulking gun tubes. (Read the directions before you begin.)



If the air conditioning unit is main-tained properly, your utility bills should stay within reason and repair bills should be kept at a minimum. If you have a gas furnace, shut off the pilot once you’re sure you won’t need to heat the house until fall. Do this by turning the knob in front of the furnace burners (the knob should read “On-off-pilot”; you may have to remove the front cover of the furnace to find it). Even the small amount of gas consumed by the pilot costs money, and shutting it off will help keep the house cooler.

The condenser unit of the a/c system (outside the house) contains the compressor, a fan, and a condenser coil (similar to the car radiator). The compressor (merely a piston pump) compresses Freon and circulates it through the condenser coil; the freon is then cooled by the fan, which condenses it into a liquid. This liquid leaves the unit through a small copper tube and flows to the evaporator coil near your furnace, where it is evaporated and changed into a cold gas which cools the evaporator coil. The gas then returns to the compressor for another cycle.

The condenser must be kept clean to prevent overheating. If the small copper line is hot to the touch, the condenser coil is overheating and should be cleaned by spraying high pressure water through the coil. (Turn off the power to the unit before doing this.)

If you’re not sure that the unit contains enough Freon, feel the suction line (a return line about the size of a hot link and usually insulated with rubber). This pipe should be cold and wet: Experts say the suction line should sweat back to the compressor. If the pipe isn’t cold and wet, the unit is probably low on Freon or the com-presser may have problems. On the other hand, if the suction line is frozen, the air flow over the evaporator coil may be inadequate. Shut off the unit before the compressor is ruined and call an expert. The evaporator coil is a large box next to the furnace with a coil inside (also similar to the radiator on a car). As the high-pressure liquid Freon enters this coil, it sprays through a small nozzle, evaporates, and cools the coil. At the same time, the air from the blower passes through this area and it is cooled. This coil is constantly condensing moisture which ultimately drips into a pan and runs down a pipe to a drain. If the drain becomes clogged, the water in the pan may overflow into the furnace or onto the floor (if your unit is an upright system) or into a secondary drain which is connected to a hose or pipe directed to the outside of the house (if you have a horizontal or attic unit). In either type of unit, if the drain is overflowing, it may be clogged and needs cleaning: Call an expert.

To tell if the unit is cooling as it should, check the temperature drop by placing one accurate thermometer in a return-air grill (these are usually near the floor of your house) as near the furnace as possible. Place the other in a vent where the cool air blows out (choose one also near the furnace). If the air entering the system is 14-18° higher than the air leaving the vent, the cooling is adequate. To be sure you have a good air flow from the vents, hold a length of yarn in front of a vent. If it visibly flutters, you have adequate air flow.

The blower section of the a/c unit is simple: It consists of the blower, the motor, and the filter. The blower moves air through the ducts during both the heating and air conditioning cycles, the motor turns the blower, and the filter cleans the air that passes through the system. On some units the blower and motor should be oiled each year, and others have sealed bearings and need no service. Remove the blower cover to determine this. (Cut off the power to the unit.) If the electric motor is not immediately visible, it is positioned inside the blower housing and is sealed. If the motor is in the front with a fanbelt drive to the blower, you will probably need to oil it. Look on the motor for oiling directions.

The filter should be in this area. (Sometimes the filter is behind a large air return vent in your house or behind a small one-inch-wide door in the ductwork near the blower). Change the filters once a month, and you’ll save lots of hours of dusting furniture and a few dollars in utility bills. The filter size will be printed on the edge of the filter. After you’re finished with the a/c servicing, reconnect the power to the unit.