Love your Home
What do we mean when we say "Love Your Home"
To Love your home means to not hurt it. Don't do things to your home that will harm it. I see mistakes all the time that are mostly done because of ignorance. We just don't know. One of my favorite sayings is " You don't know what you don't know until you know it." One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is putting dirt up against your home. They build flower beds and bring in dirt to make it pretty. They add dirt and raise the elevation outside there home to try and stop water from coming into their home or stop it from going under their home and they create more problems because what they needed to do was remove dirt. This was a problem on my home and one of the reasons I'm addressing it in depth here but the main reason is I see the problem all the time especially in homes as old as mine. My home is over 100 years old now. For a home to make it 100 years is an achievement. Another area where I see big problems are additions. People don't think about ventilation if it has a crawl space and ventilation in the attic and I see mold and rot all the time, and it's not always because of additions, sometimes people think they are improving their home by air sealing and insulating but they do it in the wrong place and create unsafe homes and they not only hurt their families because of unsafe conditions because of mold and rot they hurt the home itself. I've seen people put insulated panels inside their home on the ceiling for looks and insulation and it causes mold. I've seen microwaves and other appliances installed and huge holes created in whats called your building envelope that creates drafts and people think its their air conditioner that's not working but over the years they've had bad installers and contractors do work on their home. Those are the kinds of problems I find and fix. Problems most people don't see and to be honest most people don't care whats behind their walls until they are uncomfortable because the AC is not keeping up any more or their mother or child is in the hospital because of the mold that was growing in the attic and no one knows why they are sick but could it be because the bathroom exhaust fans were not vented correctly and the attic is full of mold? The important thing to remember here is how important it is to have someone educated Building Science doing any work on your home.