The following are a few quick tips on how to prevent wood rot from occurring on your home:
Ensure Your Wood Siding and Other Substrates Are Sealed
When trying to prevent future wood rot, the single most important thing you can do is to ensure the substrate you’re trying to protect is sealed from the elements. The most common form of sealing wood siding and trim on an elevation of a home is by caulking and painting it. Caulking is used to seal the gaps where wood trim and siding meet, and paint is then applied over it to create a uniform barrier protecting the substrate from the elements. It’s very important to make sure the siding or trim is sealed up, but not sealed too tightly where water can get trapped behind the coating or substrate.
Therefore, it’s crucial to think about how the rainwater would drain off the side of your home. We recommend caulking the tops of trim boards but not the bottoms so that water can escape if it does somehow get behind the trim board. This also allows the home to expand and contract as needed with the atmosphere.
Ensure Your Drainage is Working Properly
Over 50% of the homes we provide exterior painting estimates for have wood rot due to malfunctioning downspouts and guttering. The most common repair we find when it comes to poor drainage is the fascia boards at the gutter corner miter. What commonly happens is the gutter corner, where the gutters are connected to each other, start to fail and leak. The leaking of water over time, directly onto the fascia boards behind them inevitably creates wood rot. Therefore, it’s very important to inspect your home’s gutters and downspouts to make sure they’re working properly as well as any other drainage systems that may be unique to your home.
Don’t Let Objects Touch Your Home
Another common scenario we see that causes the pre-mature rot of your home’s wood siding and trim boards is allowing shrubbery, landscaping or anything else that holds moisture to touch or sit very closely to your home. When these items get wet, unfortunately they hold the moisture there, making your wood more susceptible to wood rot.