Category: Roofing & Drainage

I own three rental houses now, and every one of them taught me something the previous one didn’t, but the second purchase is the one that taught me to ask a question most buyers never think to ask: where does the water go once it leaves this property? The inspection report flagged a downpipe discharging straight onto the side boundary, and I nearly waved it off as a minor drainage note. Then the neighbour introduced himself during the pre-settlement walkthrough, unprompted, to explain that he’d already complained to the previous owner twice about water pooling against his fence line, and that he intended to keep complaining to whoever bought the place next.

Continue reading Stormwater Discharge and the Neighbour Problem

Fifteen years hanging plasterboard taught me more about where roofs actually leak than any classroom ever did, because I was the one called back eighteen months later to fix the ceiling stain nobody could explain. It was never the field of the roof. It was always a penetration — a vent pipe, a skylight curb, a chimney chase — where the flashing had been installed as an afterthought instead of as the first thing planned. On one job in particular, a bathroom exhaust vent through a tile roof, the roofer had dressed the tiles neatly around a flashing collar that was never actually sealed to the pipe itself. Looked immaculate from the ground. Leaked for two years before anyone traced the water back to it.

Continue reading Flashing Failures Around Roof Penetrations

The call that taught me to always pull on fascia boards, not just look at them, came from a two-story colonial with gutters that looked fine from the driveway — clean, freshly painted, no visible sag. I climbed the ladder to check the slope with a level, and the fascia board behind the front-left run came away in my hand like wet cardboard. Eight feet of it, soft enough to push a screwdriver through with two fingers, and the buyer had no idea because nobody had ever told her that a gutter can look perfect and still be running water sideways instead of down.

Continue reading Gutter Slope and Fascia Rot: A Slow, Expensive Pair

I spend most of my week assessing storm damage claims, not doing pre-purchase inspections, but the two jobs overlap more than people think. Last wet season I was called to a Gold Coast property where water had tracked under a slab-on-ground extension, and the claim hinged entirely on where the water came from. It came from the driveway — a slab poured with a fall toward the house instead of away from it, something a pre-purchase inspection eighteen months earlier had actually noted and the new owners had filed away as a minor comment rather than a warning.

Continue reading Driveway Drainage Failures: What Turns Up on Gold Coast Inspections