Preventative Maintenance: Exterior/Grounds
When I am performing preventative maintenance on my building exterior and my grounds, I follow a few guidelines. I inspect my roof and my gutters, especially after major storms, especially in spring when the pollen starts to fall in the fall when leaves start falling off of your huge a hundred year old oak trees onto your building roofs.
Clogging your gutters, do those inspections. If you don't like getting on the roof or if it's against your company policy, then have someone else come out and do it. But you have to inspect your roof and your gutters at least once a year. Quarterly would be ideal if you can do it yourself, but if you're paying someone to come out and do it at least once a year.
To come out and give you a very detailed inspection with reports on your roof and your gutters. Any pressure washing that you wanna get done, say you've got a building that likes to, the way that it was built, it sits in the shade a lot, and so maybe you get some. You get some growth on the exterior of the building and you need to get that pressure washed off.
Keep your sidewalks nice and neat and clean. Maintain that curb appeal because that curb appeal is what residents, potential residents, owners, investors, anybody sees as they pull into your property, their first glimpse of your community. Is it clean? Does it look nice? You can control a lot of that with a pressure was.
Trim trees and vegetation away from buildings to prevent pest entry and damage. Get the tree limbs off of your roofs. That's how squirrels are getting into your crawl spaces, your attics. That's how raccoons are getting in there. That's how bugs are getting from trees into apartment buildings, and they're just walking down the branch, right onto your roof.
Get that stuff out of there, clean it off. Seal cracks and pavement and walkways to avoid trip hazards. Water is a very powerful thing and the Grand Canyon at one point in time was not so grand, but over the bajillions of years it has turned into quite the site, but you don't want that happening on your property.
So seal those cracks in your pavement, in your walkways to avoid. To avoid movement. 'cause you want, you don't want people tripping and falling on your property, so do yourself a favor. Get ahead of that now while you can.
