Winter-Proofing a Traditional Property: The Maintenance Checks That Prevent Costly Repairs

The Building Doctor | Ian McKee FRICS FCABE, Head of Strategic Advisory and Technical Due Diligence at GLM

Traditional buildings in Scotland are robust. Many have stood for two or three centuries. Their weakness is water: where it gets in, and whether it can get back out.

Most of the expensive defects I investigate, including dry rot, decayed joist ends, failed ceilings and frost-damaged stone, start as a small, cheap problem that went unnoticed through one or two winters. A few hours of planned inspection in October or November is the best value maintenance spend an owner can make.

1. Rainwater goods: the single most important check

Gutters, hoppers, downpipes and gullies should be cleared after the leaves have fallen, not before. A blocked cast-iron hopper or a cracked downpipe at the back of a building can saturate a wall for months, and that is the classic route to dry rot in the timbers behind. Check for:

• Blockages, vegetation and silt in gutters, valley and parapet gutters, and outlets
• Cracks and splits in cast-iron downpipes. These often face the wall, so look for staining or green algae streaks instead
• Joints that have opened or brackets that have failed
• Gullies at ground level that can take the volume of water discharged into them

Concealed parapet and valley gutters deserve particular attention. When they overflow, the water goes straight into the building.

2. Roofs, chimneys and flashings

You don’t need to go up a ladder. A pair of binoculars from the ground, or a drone survey for larger houses and estates, will show most problems:

• Slipped, cracked or missing slates, and failed nails (often called “nail sickness“)
• Lead flashings and soakers lifting, splitting or missing their wedges
• Ridge and hip tiles with loose or missing mortar
• Chimney stacks that lean, have open joints, or have loose cans or flaunching
• Vegetation growing from stacks, skews and wallheads

Look in the roof void as well, on a wet day if you can. Damp patches, daylight showing through, or staining on sarking boards tell you more than the outside does.

3. Walls, pointing and harling

Masonry needs to stay breathable. Look for open joints, eroded pointing, cracked or hollow harling, and saturated areas around downpipes and wallheads. Water that gets into open joints freezes, expands and breaks up stone faces.

One point I would stress more than any other: repairs should use lime, not cement. Cement pointing and renders trap moisture inside soft sandstone and drive decay into the stone itself. Many of the most expensive masonry repairs I specify come from well-intentioned cement repairs made decades earlier.

4. Windows and doors

Timber sash and case windows are very repairable, but they fail from the bottom up. Check sills, the bottom rails of sashes and the putty for cracks, flaking paint, soft timber and gaps where water can sit. Some localised paint and putty work in autumn can save a full sash replacement. Check external doors and thresholds for the same problems.

5. Ground levels and drainage

External ground or paving that has built up against the walls over the years, particularly above the internal floor level, is a common cause of rising and penetrating damp. Keep air vents to sub-floor voids clear. Blocked vents under suspended timber floors are a recognised cause of rot. Check that surface water drains away from the building, and that field drains and soakaways around larger properties are running.

6. Services and frost protection

• Lag water pipes and tanks in roof spaces, cellars and unheated outbuildings
• Get boilers and heating serviced before the cold sets in
• Know where the stopcock is and make sure it works
• Where a property, or part of one, sits empty over winter, keep a low level of background heat and arrange regular inspections. A burst pipe in an unoccupied wing can go undetected for weeks, and insurers will usually expect evidence of reasonable precautions

7. Inside the building

Check for new damp staining, condensation, mould or musty smells, especially in cellars, behind furniture against external walls, and in rooms that are rarely used. Traditional buildings need ventilation. Sealing up chimneys, blocking vents or applying impermeable modern paints and plasters inside often moves the problem somewhere else.

8. Trees, outbuildings and estate structures

On estates and rural properties, extend the checks to trees near buildings (look for overhanging or dead limbs and root encroachment), boundary walls, lodges, steadings and any listed structures. Owners often find these are the assets with the weakest maintenance records.

Making it a habit

The owners who spend least on major repairs over time are the ones who:

• Inspect every autumn, and again after storms
• Keep a simple maintenance log with dated photographs
• Fix small things straight away – remember, a stitch in time saves nine!
• Commission a professional condition survey or quinquennial inspection every five years, giving them a costed, prioritised plan instead of reacting to crises

For listed buildings, take advice before carrying out work beyond like-for-like maintenance, because consent may be needed. Make sure anyone working at height is suitably qualified and insured.

The bottom line

A £200 gutter clearance this autumn can prevent a £50,000 dry rot eradication in three years’ time. Winter doesn’t create defects in traditional buildings. It finds the ones that are already there.

If your autumn checks turn up something you’re unsure about, or you’d like a professional condition survey, contact our private client team.