In Reno, Sparks and the rest of the Truckee Meadows, give the outside of the house one check per season: the windows in fall, starting with the weep path, before the first freeze; the doors and their hardware as winter sets in; one walk round the siding in spring; and the west and south glass in summer. Each check is timed to what the weather is about to do, or has just done, to your walls, windows and doors. The sun hammers the south and west walls in July, freeze-thaw works the siding roughly from October to May, and the doors are the first thing to complain when the temperature drops, so a check timed to each season does more than one big annual push.
Done on schedule, those four checks catch the small thing while it is still small. Skipped, they let the small thing wait until the season turns it into a repair. Here is the year at a glance, and each season has its own full guide in this series.
| Season | What to check | Why it matters here |
|---|---|---|
| Fall | Windows, starting with the weep path | Clear the drainage, then renew any failed sealant at the sides and head, before the first freeze |
| Winter | Doors and their hardware | They complain first when the temperature drops |
| Spring | Siding, one walk round the house | See what the freeze-thaw months opened up at joints and cut ends, and whether the base course still clears the ground |
| Summer | The sun-facing glass and its heat load | Manage the July heat on west and south walls |
Two dates anchor the calendar. NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 U.S. Climate Normals, published by its National Centers for Environmental Information, put the median first fall freeze (a daily low of 32 degrees Fahrenheit or colder) at the Reno Tahoe International Airport station on October 23 and the median last spring freeze on April 20.
Fall: clear the window weep path before the first freeze
A window frame is built to drain water, not to seal it out, and a blocked weep leaves whatever gets past the sash (the frame that holds the glass) sitting in the sill chamber (the hollow channel along the bottom of the frame) instead of draining back outside. In Reno, the first fall job, done before the first freeze and ahead of anything that adds debris, is clearing the weep path: the drainage slots along the bottom of the frame’s outside face. Then come the tracks, the weatherstrip, the balances (the springs that hold a sash open on a window that slides up and down), the exterior sealant and, last, the sash. The full routine, in the order that matters, is in the six steps of a fall window service.
Winter: door hardware, rollers and sweeps
Doors are the one part of your home’s exterior envelope (the walls, roof, windows and doors that keep the weather out) with moving parts carrying load every day, which is why the cold finds them first: a patio panel drags, the handle on a multipoint lock (one handle that locks the door at several points at once) goes stiff, a draught finds the sweep along the bottom of the door. The fix starts with finding where the door is actually touching, and while adjustment still has room it ends in an adjustment or a part rather than a new door. Each fix, and the point where adjustment runs out, is in door hardware before winter.
Spring: the annual siding walk
One walk round the house with a bucket, a soft brush and an awl (a pointed hand probe for finding material that has gone soft) shows you what the freeze-thaw months left at the sealant joints, the butt seams where boards meet end to end and the cut ends, and whether the base course along the bottom of the wall still has its clearance to the ground. The wash method changes with what is on the wall, and it matters more than how often you do it. Both are in the annual siding walk.
Summer: heat gain through west and south glass
West and south glass carries the cooling load, and late afternoon sun on a west wall arrives too low for any sensible overhang to shade it. Managing it is an orientation question before it is a product question, and shading outside the glass does far more than a blind inside it. The solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC, the label number for how much of the sun’s heat a window lets through) to aim for on each wall and the summer walk-round are in cutting summer heat gain through west and south windows.
Why each check is timed to its season
Each check on this calendar is there to find a fault while it is still maintenance, before the next season turns it into a repair. A weep slot is tested with a cup of water and cleared with a nylon brush and low-pressure air, never wire. A blocked weep is a drainage path that cannot drain, and a wall that cannot drain rots quietly for years. That is not a small job, and neither is rot that has gone past the paint and into the timber of a wood sill: that ends a service visit and starts a replacement price.
And when a check turns up more than maintenance (a soft spot that takes an awl point without effort, moisture between the panes, a door that cannot be squared because the opening itself has moved), the question is no longer upkeep. It is repair or replacement, and the field test we run before quoting a repair or a replacement is worth reading before you keep brushing at it.