>> good afternoon and welcome to the department of building inspection's brown bag lunch. we depo this every third thursday here at the department of building inspection. we have an interesting topic today about preventative home maintenance. and we'll talk about what that means a little bit. i have two great guests, extremely knowledgeable folks, anthony wong who is a contractor here in the city, thanks for joining us, anthony. and dan, also a contractor and both of these gentlemen do a lot of small, medium and some,

i guess you do some large size jobs as well. but also have maintenance and home prevention, damage prevention and maintenance issues built into the work they do. in fact, i know dan brought along a list of maintenance check lists that they actually use in their business to help people. so what do you use that mapet nance check list for? -- maintenance check list for? >> for every project we finish, we sign a service agreement or offer a service maintenance agreement and then when we go back to the house a year later we go through this check list and we go through the whole thing to make sure everything's being maintained, that, well, it's a very detailed check list. but every house in san francisco needs to be maintained and you can see through lawrence's slides what happens if you don't maintain them. >> in my experience, often

people do wonderful design work and excellent construction but stop at that point when the construction is finished and think they're done. but that's not the case. you have to maintain it. you have to have a program first to evaluate it. is this what we wanted? pick up the stuff that's not quite right, you thought it was ok but not. so we have to do post construction evaluation and then we have to have a maintenance program. you've got to maintain them. these houses do not maintain themselves. and much of the work that we see coming in for small permit work in the department of building inspection are things that are related to maintenance. people want to rebuild a deck or they need to fix the bathroom and put new materials and tile and so on and a lot of that work is work that could be -- extend the life of what you have if it had been properly maintained. not to say we don't like you to do bork in your homes, we -- to do work in your homes, but

maintenance will help home repair. i have some slides here. let's take a quick peak here -- peek here. we'll look at the outside buildings first and inside buildings next. outside buildings are typical maintenance issues. a whole plethora of maintenance issues. the siding, the windows, the doors, the stairs, the sidewalk, the landscape. so let's just look at a couple different kinds of buildings and the typical problems they might have. so, for example, here's a building with final siding. what kind of maintenance do we need with the vinyl siding? we have to wash the thing, that's for darn sure. what do you think? >> it's got to be washed, caulked, checked to make sure water is not getting behind the siding. >> caulking is not a replacement for good flashing. caulk something sort of a -- an interim waterproofing material that has to be maintained. if somebody says, we have a leak, let's caulk it, what that means is we've got a temporary solution that's going to leak some more unless you maintain that caulking constantly. the way that leaks are prevented and by the way leaks and water intrusion are pretty

much the number one problem in buildings. that's my experience. is that what you see as well? the way to really prevent that is through proper flashing, typically metal, and then counterflashing over the top. complex flashing solutions. we're talking about washing buildings by the way and every year or two it is really a good idea for to you put a ladder up on your long weekend and get a bucket of soapy water and a big long handled mop or brush and get up there and scrub it and hose it off. you don't need a pressure blaster, you don't need to do anything more than just wash it off and hose it down. that's my speernls. what do you think? -- experience. what do you think? >> it's really important. also, when do you the water testing you have to make sure you test around the windows and then go back inside to see if there's any dampness around the sheet rock, to see if there are areas you need to do additional flashing or caulking which again is a temporary measure.

but that's a good time to check to make sure that your windows are waterproof. >> so don't be overly aggressive about water testing, though. if you take a hose ass and squirt it at something, water will -- hose and squirt it at something, water will go in. when you wash it off and hose it down gently and carefully, it gives you a chance to look for problems as well. >> yeah. the main thing is wash around all the windows. the water will go inside your house,ed siding. >> so don't be overly aggressive with your hose. if you go to a window an start squirting it, it'll get wet. let's look at another style of house. here's wood siding with stucco in this pattern of masonry and then a solid wood garage door. how do we maintain wood siding? >> wood siding needs to be painted, it needs to be maintained. if it's a clear finish and you -- there's some shingles and siding that you can let go gray

in that instance you're really depending on all the flashing to do your water proofs. >> by the way, stucco, people say, oh, i got stucco like this blue area of the house. stucco is taking care of the waterproofing. stucco is not a waterproof material. stucco always cracks. stucco combracks and in fact -- cracks and in fact unless you put a waterproofing membrane on top of it which is paint or something, when it gets wet, water's going to pass right through the stucco and what happens when it passes through or gets behind your wood siding? what happens then? a few things happen. first you get wood rot from the sheathing underneath. but secondly something really important in our earthquake-prone areas is that you can rust the fasteners, the nails, the nails that are holding the sheathing and other types of metal as if ners which are always underneath -- fasteners which are always underneath the siding, you lose the sheer connections between the sheathing and the framing

of the building. and we saw that in earthquakes. especially in that lower few feet close to the sidewalk where you have a lot of water splash. we see rusting of connecters, a serious problem and a reason for to you make sure you're keeping that stucco painted and coated. do we have to seal the grout and the masonry around brick? >> if you don't, if you don't seal the brick, then water penetrates through and you have the same problem as you have with stucco. most of the dry rock that we come across is either in stucco or brick because the water gets in and gets trapped and can't get back out. where the wood breathes better. so, wood gets -- water gets behind stucco. the worst dry rot is always behind a brick or a stucco facade. >> brick has a special problem and a special reason for you to make sure that it is waterproof and that's because it has metal fasteners that keep the brick attached to the building.