One thing you will love about The Woodlands area is the lush growth 365 days per year. Most years, we get plenty of rain and even in a drought, green foliage is a constant in our landscape. In The Woodlands, great care has been taken to preserve as much of the natural green space as can be managed. The area is known world-wide by their success in maintaining wide open spaces of natural forestation within a carefully master-planned community.
However, water can be the enemy in The Woodlands area. This photo depicts wh
at the entrance to a home can look like after a heavy rain. As you can see, the first few feet of the brick appears to be rather saturated with water. Over time, this can lead to ugly mold formation.
Maintaining a home in The Woodlands will often require an occaisional power wash to remove any mildew or mold caused by moisture. The heavy tree canopy can keep evaporation low and drying out the brick can take some time. I will not begin to claim my expertise on property conditions such as mold. They are outside my expertise. However, I have not seen a great deal of concern from inspectors about this kind of moisture alone. It may be primarily a cosmetic issue.
The first question asked by new people to the area is "Why don't people have more gutters here?" The photo to the left gives you a visual answer to that question. With all the natural trees preserved normal gutters very rapidly fill with pine needles, leaves, etc. Pine trees have been known to sprout and grow right out of the top of gutters in homes in this area. As you can see, the moisture is held within the composting pine needles causing green mold to build up next to the chimney.
The photo above (with water on the brick) may have been caused by an overflowing gutter as well. When gutters are not regularly maintained, they can be a source of additional maintenance and expense. It is quite possible that when this gutter is removed, the homeowner will find rotted wood behind the metal. A simple gutter cleaning can then turn into a much more expensive maintenance project.
For the most part, builders only install guttering in areas above doorways. We can have some tropical storms that drop inches of water per hour. In those cases, gutters do very little to keep you dry anyway. So, the best solution is to protect your doorways with good quality guttering and clean them out atleast a few times per year.
Enjoy the rich blessing of living in what I believe is a wonderful urban tropical paradise. God gave us a generous dose of natural beauty with natural plants that others pay lots of money and lots of effort to keep alive in their landscape. Buyers and current homeowners in The Woodlands should respond to the natural beauty with a little loving care of your gutter system and an occaisional power wash to keep the beauty of your home.
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