on the level
Singin’ in the Rain
by Terry Meany
Back in early March, the still kicking, but not so strongly ticking Chronicle reported that San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, a landlord favorite, was proposing a new law that would bar any rent increases greater than a third of a tenant’s income. The laugh-a-minute Daly also proposed that renters could have roommates move in, even if their leases prohibited them. Short of limiting your renter pool to monastic neurosurgeons (average 2007 salary about $530,000 according to the Merrit-Hawkings survey and with 60-80 hour work weeks, they’ll never be home anyway so it’s like renting to ghosts), should either of these proposals actually become both law and examples for equivalent legislation in surrounding areas, where in the world will you, as an owner, ever get the motivation to energetically maintain your buildings in the face of such fiscal hostility?
Well, you square up and face another day with the same resolve that made you into a property owner and landlord in the first place, despite the obstacles and the unexpected chipping away at your rights by voter mandate. To summarize every self-help seminar, book and DVD ever produced—and thereby saving you thousands of dollars and many, many boring hours of forced cheerfulness by very tanned and wealthy presenters—you resolve to do your job the best you can and treat your tenants with civility, hoping you get the same in return. You keep your buildings in good shape because they will outlast you as well as those whose theoretical constructs of who should live where and how they should live are absolutely antithetical to yours and to reality. So grab your work duds or start lining up the painters—it’s spring-cleaning time.
The yin and yang February weather—severe rain coupled with official pronouncements that the state is still in drought mode—benefitted building owners as it identified leaks in roofs, windows and siding. The cardinal rule about rain and snow is you want them to stay outside at all times and never infiltrate the building envelope. Granted, extraordinary weather accompanied by high winds create conditions that are unusual and do not reflect normality, but if they expose a weak spot around a chimney or window flashing, all the better to address it as it might now allow ordinary weather to penetrate. Good communication with your tenants is critical, for you want them to report any water or moisture coming into their units, even if they shrug it off to windy weather. Be proactive and send or drop off regular reminders in the form of incident report cards that they can send back to you or leave with their managers. Check your attic crawl space for evidence of leaks or water stains. If you are not comfortable inspecting your roof and it has not been looked at in over a year, have your roofing contractor do the inspecting.
You can do a precursory inspection from the ground or adjoining buildings using binoculars, but this is not as good as getting up close and personal. Look for damaged and missing shingles, corroded flashing, loose chimney mortar and bricks, loose downspouts and gutter debris. Even if your building is not in an immediate area of trees or vegetation, gutters accumulate loosened granules from asphalt shingles as well as any leaves, bits of twigs or other lightweight debris carried by the wind. Gutters should be checked and cleaned at least once a year so water flow is not obstructed or allowed to accumulate and weigh the gutters down. Properly maintained gutters, even wood gutters, will last for decades.
I advocate giving buildings a bath every year or so, particularly in urban areas with a lot of automobile and industrial exhaust. My preferred method with two-story buildings is to use an automobile/house scrubber, which is a telescoping pole with a scrub brush at one end and a garden hose connection at the other. Some have soap dispensers built in the hose end and normally a shut-off for water is included at this end as well. The poles extend about six feet beyond the length of the fixed end, so you will need a ladder to reach the top of each wall. Because water slowly flows out the brush end, there is almost no potential for moisture damage due to high water pressure. You gently scrub the building down, including the windows, and give a fresh look and longer life to the paint.
As an alternative, use a pressure washer with a fiberglass-telescoping wand (up to 24 feet) and keep both feet planted firmly on the ground. Pressure washers are great tools but be careful. Pressure washers are rated by PSI or pounds per square inch of pressure and GPM or gallons of water per minute. The higher for each, the more powerful the pressure washer and the greater potential to do both a thorough job and plenty of damage. Wear safety goggles and be sure all windows are closed and tenants are forewarned of your work. Use a wide spray nozzle, practice on a concrete sidewalk first, then start about six feet back from the siding and slowly adjust your distance until you are removing dirt and not wood or damaging any stucco or harder materials. Lightly rinse the windows. Your tool rental company can set you up with an appropriate soap and further instructions.
The Bay Area has a moderate climate, so plants and structures don’t undergo the freeze and thaw cycles that occur in such fun places as Fargo, North Dakota, or St. Cloud, Minnesota. Nevertheless, your landscaping needs some attention this
time of year. Clean out any debris from beds, fertilize and inspect trees for damage. If you use a landscaping service, establish and agree to a maintenance plan. While you are at it, reconsider what you want planted in your garden areas, including the lawn—there is a nascent movement to get rid of lawns and replace them with more useful plant life—if any. Contact the California Native Plant Society at www.cnps.org for some ideas.
How’s the paint look? Good, bad or seen better days? If three sides are intact and passable and one side is weathered and showing its age, repaint the one side and wait for the others to catch up. This works better with some color schemes than others; and the decision becomes an aesthetic one versus a pragmatic one. In a time of tight money and an uncertain economy, pragmatic gets my vote. Parking lot striping should also be scheduled at this time.
Do you have a wood fence? In the past, I’ve pushed for regularly recoating wood fences that have been left bare after they were built or only treated with an exterior stain or clear sealer. If wood is not sealed, it deteriorates and needs replacement sooner rather than later. However, the more I have watched these unattended fences—my neighbors’ fences, to be more specific—the more I realize they can hold up for years without a drop of finish being applied.
They won’t win any beauty contests, but if this is not an issue with you and you only want a fence for privacy, I can no longer claim it’s always worth the expense of staining them every few years. You will have to decide if you want to live with your fence looking like an abandoned rural barn and if the cost of replacing it after twenty-some years is less costly than recoating it every three to five years and extending its life. Either way, some boards and nails will come loose and require minor repairs as time goes by. This assumes the fence builder used treated posts that are effective for ground contact. If not, all bets are off as to when they will start breaking.
When the exterior is up to par, then plan your interior work. Your exterior jobs might reveal unseen damage that requires more time and money than you expected. Given that exterior work is weather dependent, it will need to be carried out during the warmer, drier months (fall and winter are, after all, inevitably returning). Once inside, inspect, clean, and repaint common areas as needed, including shampooing all the winter filth from the carpets. I’m a big believer in using up odds and ends of paint by mixing them in five-gallon buckets instead of tossing out. You usually end up with beige, gray or a shade of brown from all the mixing. These paints work very well for laundry rooms and hallways. Given that one of these days someone will propose landlords only use low or zero-VOC paints, you should use them up before you are stuck with disposing of them.
Springtime brings a breath of fresh air as your tenants throw open the windows, but don’t forget your heating and ventilation systems. “It is a good time of year to go through and clean any HVAC units, either the through-wall or centrally located type of forced air heating and cooling units,” comments Daniel Scharrow, vice-president of Vasona Construction. “Cleaning can be as simple as removing a filter and washing it or vacuuming the interior of the unit, removing any built-up dust and debris. After a winter of doors and windows being closed and heaters running nonstop, you might find a fairly large build up.”
The same is true for all dryer ducts. Disconnect each duct or hose from its dryer and blow them out (be sure to check that no one is outside near the vent first). The Makita UB1101 Electric Blower/Vacuum is perfect for this and a lot of other maintenance chores, and it will last forever.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or the SF Apartment Magazine. Terry Meany is a former contractor and landlord. He is now a full-time writer and author of Working Windows: A Guide to the Repair and Restoration of Wood Windows, soon to be in its third edition from Lyons Press. He is cost conscious but not cheap, and he knows deferred maintenance always costs more in the end. He can be contacted at tfmeany@msn.com. Copyright © 2009 by Black Point Press. All rights reserved.