Do you have a maintenance-free car?
When Uljas Kiesinen buys a car, he inspects it carefully because he does not want a car whose body panels are dirty, rusty, scratched or matte. He knows that keeping a matte-finished car clean is nearly impossible. Uljas also will not accept a car whose roof is covered in moss. Used-car dealers know to spruce up and polish used cars as shiny and scratch-free as possible so that they can withstand even the closer inspection carried out by Uljas.
Real estate agents, on the other hand, do not pay much attention to or spruce up the condition of a house roof. Nor, of course, do buyers. Uljas will easily buy a house costing ten times as much as a car without examining its roof. He may even be pleased that the new house has a matte-finished metal roof; at least the sun’s rays will not reflect from the roof into his eyes. However, Uljas may not realise that a matte-finished roof makes his life more difficult and shortens the lifespan of the roof and possibly also the house. Uljas Kiesinen’s own life may also be shortened by annoyance, extra work or falling from the roof.
A matte-finished metal roof, you see, requires more maintenance than a shiny one, and still does not last as long. In winter, thick, heavy snowdrifts and ice dams easily form on a matte-finished metal roof, which Uljas then tries to remove using rough methods. Debris adheres more easily to matte-finished metal, and organic debris retains moisture, lengthening the time the roofing remains wet. In a fairly short time, lichen and moss growth appears on the roof in addition to dirt. All these shorten the roof’s lifespan, increase the risk of leaks and cause Uljas worry and maintenance work.
Uljas maintains his car and its beautiful metal surface in many different ways. He washes and cares for it, waxes and polishes it. He touch-up paints or has scratches, dents and stone chips repaired. He has not kept count for years of the money spent on cleaning products, waxes and other supplies, nor of the time spent sprucing up the car.
Uljas Kiesinen, on the other hand, can remember the number of times he has visited the house roof without counting. The last time he climbed onto the roof was once about 10 years ago, when the children were small and a badminton shuttlecock that had flown onto the roof did not even come down with the rain. He cleaned the gutters from the ground five years ago, when they were so full of muck that the gutter overflowed and the overflowing water ruined his wife’s perennial bed in front of the living room window. At the same time, the windows had to be washed because the water overflowing from the eaves splashed soil from the flower bed onto them.
Uljas uses his car for an average of 10.9 years, a couple of hours a day. Mr Kiesinen carries out numerous voluntary and mandatory maintenance procedures on the car, costing thousands of euros, so that the car would retain at least some resale value.
Despite the fact that the house is in use nearly all the time, Uljas maintains it only when forced to: either when something breaks or when his wife forces him to do redecorating, such as changing the wallpaper. When selling the house, he believes he will get more money than he paid for it himself. And he does sell it at a good price if the house is in a place where other people also want to live. And once again, nobody looks at the roof.
Uljas Kiesinen takes his car for the legally required inspection once a year, when the inspector tells him if there is some fault in the car’s body that needs repairing. The authorities do not prescribe anything about caring for a detached house and its roof, so only the smartest people maintain their roofs. On the other hand, the authorities do instruct and prescribe all kinds of (humbug) moisture measurements and energy calculations, which are most often of no benefit to anyone other than those carrying them out and lawyers. Roof maintenance is left to the discretion of each detached-house owner.
It is difficult to understand this kind of undervaluing of the roof. How did we get here? And yet that famous old folk, who have lived in houses longer than they have driven cars, say: “If the roof holds, the house holds.”
Would now be the time to climb up and inspect whether your roof needs maintenance?