Preservation by Prevention: Care and Maintenance of Your Historic Building
From the Trust for Architectural Easements:
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Preservation by Prevention
Water is the Enemy of Historic Buildings
Welcome to Preservation by Prevention, the newest e-newsletter of the Trust for Architectural Easements. If you would like to send comments or suggestions regarding this issue, future installments, or you would like to unsubscribe from this mailing, please send an email to [email protected].
As Ben Franklin famously stated, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This aphorism applies to the care and upkeep of historic buildings. The most effective way for the owner of a historic building to prevent costly repairs is to properly maintain the building. In this newsletter, we will provide you with valuable tips and information that you can use to care for your historic building and the features that give it character.
Water is the enemy of historic buildings. Or, so I was told in graduate school, and everything I have learned about historic building maintenance since then confirms that to be true. Water rots wooden building materials and causes metal ones to rust. By saturating masonry and subsequently freezing – and expanding – water can cause the masonry to spall or break apart. It is a necessary ingredient for mold growth, which is a health hazard, and further degrades building materials. And, it attracts insects.
If you do nothing else, it is critical to make your building weathertight, keep a sound coat of paint or stain on wooden building materials exposed to weather, and guard against interior leaks. Following these steps will help you avoid the need to make much more expensive repairs in the future.
A simple story from my own experience illustrates the point. The toilet in a friend’s guest bathroom is not often used, and no one noticed that the toilet tank bolts were corroded. Eventually, the motion of the tank broke the bolts. Water from the tank flooded the bathroom, which is on the second floor above the master bedroom. The water leaked through the tile floor and wooden joists to the face of the drywall on the master bedroom ceiling.
The cost of drying out the framing, removing the damaged drywall and replacing it, not to mention repairing the toilet, was in the thousands. If my friend had known that this was a relatively common problem and had checked the bolts regularly, he could have replaced the bolts with new fasteners for less than $10 and saved himself quite a bit of money and aggravation. While a frustration, the damage is now repaired, and the house is as good as new. If my friend owned a historic home, however, the leak might have ruined an original plaster ceiling or wooden floorboards – a much sadder outcome.
In the coming months, we invite you to look for additional issues of Preservation by Prevention on such diverse topics as finding replacement fixtures through reputable salvage dealers, painting, and window repair. We welcome your questions, comments and suggestions. Please submit them by sending an email to [email protected].