When a contractor is an expert with the dry heat of Phoenix, how does that make a difference for your damage restoration service, roof repairs, or remodeling project?

Whether people are interested in an emergency repair service or are researching a remodeling project, we want them to know a few things about what makes our contractors the best choice for you. The basic idea of your "home team" is that the individuals that work together on that team are not just highly skilled professionals, but are led by veterans with many years of experience with the specific features of our climate here in Arizona.

Before we detail the specifics of how the dry heat is important to the fields of roofing, restoration, and remodeling, let's review some examples that might be more familiar to you. First, we'll consider the effects of dry heat on the visiting team of a college sporting event (like for the first game of the football season when it is still scorching hot at Sun Devil Stadium). Then, we'll consider what happens when someone from out of the area brings their car to Phoenix in the summer... and their car does not have any extra tinting in the windows.

The home team in this part of Arizona is used to the dry heat of Phoenix

Think about the case of a college football game that is played outdoors where there can be exposure to extremes of heat and cold, plus wind and thunderstorms. What advantage does the home team have here in Arizona when they host a visiting team that is not used to the dry heat? What disadvantages do opponents have if they are not adjusting their behaviors for the climate here?

What difference does the dry heat of Phoenix make?

In the context of athletics, extreme dehydration can lead to something called sunstroke, which refers to a severe neurological crisis due to overheating and electrical failure. It is like having a car battery when all the water has evaporated from the battery. The battery stops working. The battery case itself is useless without water in the storage cells of that battery.

So, special precautions will be used by people who are adjusted to the arid climate of the Arizona deserts. Visiting athletes who do not take the relevant precautions can be prone to exhaustion and muscular cramping as well as being vulnerable to certain kinds of injuries.

What does it boil down to ultimately? The heat results in a physical response of sweating to cool the overheating body. But if the body cannot sweat fast enough to balance out the dry heat, then athletes will perform much worse than usual. If they exert themselves too much, they can even pass out or vomit. Those extremes are not common in pro athletics in which all the athletes tend to be in very good condition, but some visiting high school athletes (and even some college athletes) can be extremely challenged by the intense climate in Phoenix.

The lasting intense heat of Phoenix summer causes construction materials to expand.

Heat expands: snowbirds who leave the Phoenix area every summer may not know what it is like to have an overnight low temperature above 100 degrees, but professionals in the construction industry are very familiar with some of the issues that correspond to the long months of dry heat. What happens physically to materials in intense heat?

What happens to the dashboard of your car in Phoenix if you do not tint your windows?

What happens to the interior of your car if it is in the direct sunlight day after day during the summer in Phoenix? Window tinting will help to reduce the effect of the heat in damaging the dashboard, but some materials will require frequent maintenance (such as lubricating them regularly) or else they can dry out and crack very quickly here.

You can also see that the exterior of old cars will deteriorate and fade in certain spots or the paint will simply crack. You can see the same kinds of decay on the dashboard or even the seats of the car, right?

The heat actually expands the physical material. Since some of the material will expand more then the rest, that creates pressure which will create small cracks within a few summers. Once there is a small crack in the material, then what happens the next time that heat expands that cracked material? That first crack will be followed by other cracks, but the first crack will probably always remain the largest.

All of the materials in any building or home in Arizona will also expand in the heat. However, some materials will expand more than others.

How does the intense heat of Phoenix summer affect roofing materials?

In Phoenix, a roofing nail that is not properly submerged can slowly lift itself out of the wood. What is really happening there is that the nail is metal and is expanding in heat, but the wood does not expand as much as the metal of the nail. So, each summer day, the nail gets just a little bit bigger (fatter and longer), but when the nail cools off, it does not return to its original position.

That movement is extremely small on any individual summer day. However, after years of that same process of heat expansion every day, a nail can eventually be quite far out of position.

Next, there will be a sudden wave of humidity, still during the period of summer heat. That produces a slightly different interaction between the wood and the metal nail.

While that issue is not exclusive to asphalt shingle roofs (or roofs in general), a protruding nail can be especially problematic with shingle roofs. All it takes is a rather slight elevation of the nailhead and then the entire shingle will be lifted up enough that it allows for air to get under it during a gust of wind.

Once a roof shingle curls or lifts, what happens if a wind storm hits?

Once the wind can get under the shingle, then dust can get blown under the shingle. Eventually, each small issue leads to another small issue and soon the shingle is allowing moisture under it instead of diverging moisture to flow down like water off of the back of a duck.

Once the moisture is getting trapped under the shadow of the single, then that can lead to mold or a weakening of the wood due to rot. If the edge of the shingle is raised up far enough, then a gust of wind with the right amount of strength and not the right angle will not just lift up the shingle, but tear it off.

If a single storm tears off a lot of shingles and also dumps a lot of rain or even hail into the exposed decking under where the shingles used to be, then a lot of moisture can quickly get into the wood and felt or even into the attic and the ceilings and the walls.

"We were selling a home in Phoenix, but then the home inspection found old water damage!"

So, moisture gets under the roof because of shingles that are not properly secure. That moisture can go undetected for a long time and lead to water damage, toxic mold, and structural weakness that may not immediately fail (collapse), but cannot simply be repaired. The damage will be too extensive to repair it.

In order to be restored to the condition that would pass the inspection of the home inspector ( in the event of an attempt to sell the house), significant sections might need to be entirely replaced rather than merely repaired. that can be expensive. A famous pro basketball player (that recently left the Phoenix Suns for the Cleveland Cavaliers) lost a $3.5 million sale because a home inspection found extensive water damage and mold damage, so the buyer was not willing to wait a long time for the replacement of drywall across thousands of square feet of interior space.

Roof leaks are actually not the most common source of water damage in Phoenix

As for plumbing or even doors and windows, think once again of the surface of the interior of a car. What happens to that material in the dry heat of the Phoenix Summer?

The same thing happens to the seals and caulk in your plumbing and windows and doors. When the seals dry out due to heat, they crack and no longer create a watertight seal. In other words, they are vulnerable to leaking.

In the damage restoration industry, it is widely recognized that many of the most costly instances of water damage are not from roof leaks or even burst pipes or flooding toilets, but from one or more small leaks that can go for months or even years prior to the detection of the water damage and mold contamination. Not only will extensive amounts of the physical structure need to be replaced, but the mold remediation service will require a great deal of precaution in order to avoid a spreading of the mold spores through the air during the removal of the contaminated materials like drywall, ceilings, and kitchen cabinets. Again, like in the case mentioned above, that can lead to failing a home inspection prior to a sale and the loss of the buyer (if the buyer moves on to a property that will pass inspection immediately and be available without delays and uncertainties).

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