Article: Future-Proof Building
Keeping Your Home Upright & Weather Tight?
How To Identify Potential Leaks When Buying
If there’s any phrase bound to make a prospective homeowner shudder in fear these days, it’s “leaky home”.
For those with leaky homes, it is a personal tragedy of seemingly boundless consequences.
Although the bulk of affected buildings are located in Auckland, more and more examples are being exposed every day.
Plan For The Unexpected When Building:
For those just getting started on building or renovating, you are in luck: the best time to deal with weather tightness issues is in the design phase. Attention at this stage and avoidance of known issues will minimize the risk of future failure.
The Bad News:
Not everyone wants to or is financially capable of building a new house. So if you are buying an existing house, how do you avoid purchasing a leaky building?
Technically, the answer is: you can’t. All buildings leak, but older styles of construction allowed for this. They were built to allow for a manageable amount of water incursion and designed to allow it to dry out before moisture became a problem.
In the early 2000s, following the relaxation of the requirement to treat timber framing with fungicides to prevent rot as well as other contributing factors in the 1990s, Leaky Building Syndrome began to be recognised as a nationwide problem.
What To Look For:
So if you are looking at buying a home built after 1990, what should you pay attention to when inspecting your prospective purchase? According to waterproofing specialists and remedial builders Pilcher & Edwards, signs that leaks may already have occurred within the home include:
• Water dripping inside after rain
• Staining of plasterboard linings
• Softness or swelling in floors
• Sagging or depressions in ceiling linings
• Popping or loosening of wall fixings
• Musty smells
• Mould and mildew
• Ants exiting wall spaces
• Bubbles under paintwork
• Deterioration of paint
• Corrosion of fixings
• Lifting of floor surfaces
• Staining of carpet or damage to carpet “smooth edge” (tacks)
• Swelling/staining to skirting boards, scotia or architraves
Ask The Hard Questions:
A number of these indicators might simply point to poor ventilation and not to leaks. So what do you do if you still want to proceed with the purchase?
“Always ask the current owner of the house if they know of any leaks or weather-tightness issues the building has had in the past,” says David Edwards of Pilcher & Edwards. “If they or their agent know of any existing issues, they are legally obliged to tell you about them and disclose any reports or documentation pertaining to the leaks and any subsequent repair work.”
Looking For (Potential) Trouble:
There are a number of companies offering pre-purchase inspections equipped with experience in recent building techniques and specialise in leak detection.
Expert Advice:
During the inspection, close attention to the colour and detailing of the cladding and that the ground clearance is sufficient to avoid moisture wicking up from the earth into the walls. Balconies, internal gutters and parapets are all scrutinised as points where failures have been known to occur in the past. The home’s site, exposure to sun, flooding and existing vegetation are all taken into account as well.
High-Tech Tools:
Aside from the visual inspection, common tools of the trade for building inspectors are moisture meters and thermal imaging cameras. Both Armitage and Edwards agree that these have their limitations. It is worth knowing that this kind of inspection can be a lot more expensive than a standard pre-purchase inspection. They could well be worth it, but a lot depends on the skill and interpretive ability of the person wielding the tool.
Tried And True:
There are only two other methods of testing a building to see if leaks have already occurred. The first of these is having core samples taken. The second is to observe the building in a downpour.
Pilcher & Edwards use this approach in their remedial work. “We are in the business of repairing buildings which are known to be leaking. For us, simulations (with hoses) are most effective in determining where the leak is occurring and how the water is getting in,” says John Pilcher.
Even for specialist inspectors, however, it is hard to get a definitive answer on a house’s weather tightness, especially when the weather is dry.
Know Your Stuff:
This illustration from the BRANZ publication “Maintaining Your Home” shows some of the most common places where leaks can occur.
Generally speaking, the more complex the design of your home and the more unsuited to New Zealand’s often wet weather conditions the design is, the greater the risk that your home will develop leaks in the future.
Not every at risk building will end up leaking, as long as attention is paid to these areas of risk and the house is maintained properly and promptly.
David Edwards says new purchasers must educate themselves in the type of building they have purchased and be aware of what must be done, when, in order to keep their home in good condition.
“We believe you can maintain (these houses) with localised work which you can plan on an annualised basis.”
