Earlier this week we did a pest inspection on a cute older house, built in the early 1920’s. The family had lived there for a very long time. A couple raised 4 daughters in that house, he passed away when he was in his early 70’s and she passed away when she was in her 90’s. But she lived in the house until she died. Now after she died, the daughters are selling the house. There is clearly some deferred maintenance which was clear in the pest inspection performed by Bugbusters in Santa Rosa.
One huge problem was that water had leaked inside one of the walls, the damage on the inside showed clearly that it came from the roof and had intruded the wall all the way from the second story. Guess what the main cause was??? Yes you guessed right: by not cleaning the gutters for over 10 years, the debris that accumulated in the gutters had caused the rain to to flow over into the wall.
When the inspector mentioned the problem they realized that dad had always cleaned the gutters but after he had died, no one had ever thought about doing this.
So next when my dear hubby says that we have to clean our gutters I will help out with more fervor.