National Maintenance Week 2006
Kevin McCloud, presenter of TV’s popular Grand Designs has launched Britain’s National Maintenance Week 2006 17th to the 24th of November from the roof of historic Bristol Cathedral.
Organised each November by SPAB (The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings), National Maintenance Week is an annual awareness campaign designed to give anyone who cares for a property - regardless of its age, style or purpose - practical advice on the best ways to batten down the hatches before winter bites.
Long-term SPAB member and supporter Kevin McCloud is readily associated with cutting edge property design, but he is also a passionate advocate of the importance of good maintenance for buildings of all types.
He says: "Maintenance is the Cinderella of the property world. Together with good design, it is the most important factor affecting the quality of where we live, work and play. Without it our cities would descend to chaos and our buildings would become unusable. Sadly, many people put maintenance of their homes way down the list, preferring to spend money on the more glamorous stuff we like to fill our homes with instead.
"But lack of maintenance destroys the integrity of our built world so that in the end, decay overtakes history. The great irony is that most maintenance itself comes too late - it takes the form of repair and restoration - when so much can be done to prevent the ravages of time and the elements in the first place. Preventive care is the best form of maintenance, the least intrusive and the least expensive."
Maintaining roofs and chimneys is one of the best ways to protect a property, as these are often the place where damaging rainwater finds a way in, potentially causing a great deal of damage.
Kevin McCloud explains: "Rebuilding a wall fractured by frost - where water from a roof or gutter has penetrated the masonry, frozen, expanded and then split the wall - is difficult and costly; by contrast, getting up there and repairing that roof or that leaking old gutter is relatively straightforward; but the easiest thing of all is to replace the odd rooftile and clear the leaves out of the gutter in the first place."
Now an established event in the calendar SPAB’s National Maintenance Week provides homeowners throughout the UK with practical tips and advice on maintaining their properties in preparation for winter. National Gutters Day (Friday 24 November 2006) is a timely reminder to homeowners that just a few minutes spent clearing weeds and debris, or just a few pounds spent to mend a leaky gutter can save many hundreds, and possibly thousands of pounds!
To find out more visit http://www.maintainyourbuilding.org.uk/
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