Much is said of regular maintenance, but what is the actual cost of neglecting the upkeep of a property?
For example:
Does it cost more to carry out repairs and painting 3-4 times over a period of 25 years, or leave the property to rot for those 25 years and then carry out one big job?
The answer has a lot of “depends upons” like severity of winters and quality of the last paint job, but leaving those aside we can have a stab at a simple answer.
If left, the wooden windows will rot to some degree, and if they needed actual replacing after 25 years, the cost of the neglect option would be much, much more.
And if only half the windows needed replacing, it would still be much more.
And if only half needed not actual replacing, it but major repairs, it could still be more.
But another and likely scenario of neglect is that although the visible rot would be handled, much of the incipient rot would not be spotted at the time of the tardy maintenance and therefore you would have drastically reduced the duration of your windows.
By the way, this hard to spot rot can obviously be present during any paint job.
So how do you spot rot that might not be visible?
One method is to use a tool called a High Speed Profi.
This is a 27,000 rpm machine that will remove not only the decayed wood but also the soft wood that is about to decay.
Some decorators like to use a wood hardener on the soft wood to enable the filler to stick. This is all part of the non-permanent repair methods that do not keep weather and wet at bay until the next paint job.
In conclusion:
It is regular maintenance that wins out financially.
And:
The effects of nature can remain hidden until it is too late.
Perhaps Francis Bacon, the 16th Century philosopher, had something else in mind when he wrote:
“Let not a man trust his victory over nature too far; for nature will lay buried a great time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation.”
Some might say I’ve stretched Bacon’s point applying it to my blog.
But I’m happy with it.