Your attic’s health is essential. The last thing you want to be doing is shelling out money to people to repair wood sap damages, especially when the damages caused by wood sap can be relatively easy to prevent.
Wood sap (or ambering) in an attic is bad, as it can lead to complications in your house that can be difficult or expensive to repair. In worst case scenarios, you may end up with dust or bug infestations.
In this article, I’ll be discussing how wood sap forms, the adverse effects of wood sap on your attic, and what should be done to combat this issue.
The Adverse Effects of Wood Sap on Attics
There are multiple adverse effects of wood sap formation in your attics, such as staining, the attraction of insects, and the gathering of excessive amounts of dust.
These effects can have an impact on both your attic’s health and your health.
For example, an excessive amount of dust that is collecting on sap could worsen a dust allergy, and a bug infestation could lead to the gathering of wasps, which could put you at risk for painful stings.
Wood Sap Can Cause Staining to Your Attic
When wood sap hardens, also known as crystallisation or ambering, it causes staining on the wood that can be very difficult to get off.
While this staining doesn’t cause any damage to the structural integrity of the attic, a shed or any other construction, it can make your loft look visually unappealing, which is something that house owners usually want to avoid.
The removal of sap ambering depends on whether the sap has hardened or not.
When the sap is soft, you can remove it with oil soap.
When it’s been set, you can chisel away at it with a wood chisel; however, it may be difficult to restore the wood yourself, and you may need to call a professional to do it for you.
Wood Sap Can Attract Insects
Due to the high level of sugar content in sap, it can be expected that a significant buildup of sap can attract insects like fruit flies.
This sap may lead to an infestation that could bring even more unwanted pests like wasps into your home.
Once again, this may not affect the structural integrity of your attic, but you may have to spend a good amount of money on pest control to get rid of insect infestations.
The immediate solution to this problem is prevention.
By putting in place things that’ll prevent sap from leaking, you will, in turn, prevent insect infestations from happening.
If you’re already suffering from an insect infestation due to leaking sap, you may have to put insect traps in your attic or call pest control to solve this issue.
What Causes Wood To Sap?
There are many different reasons why wood sap could form in your attic or shed, but the most common reasons are poor ventilation and overly high temperatures.
Still, it can also be caused by other things such as excessively dry wood.
Thankfully, these issues are easy to solve, and by completing a few steps, you’ll be able to prevent wood sap from forming and becoming an issue for your house health.
Overheating Causes Wood Sap To Leak
When the temperature in your attic is too high, wood will start to “sweat,” and sap will start to leak out.
This sap will eventually crystallise on the surface of the wood, creating a sap coating that can be extremely difficult to get off.
Poor Ventilation Causes Wood Sap To Leak
Poor ventilation also plays a significant factor in this, as not allowing heat to escape will cause your attic to essentially become an oven.
This only results in it continuously overheating, which ultimately adds to the problem of sap leakage.
Tips To Improve Temperature and Ventilation in Your Attic
One way to improve temperature in your attic is to add air conditioning.
Particularly, this ensures the temperature remains steady during the summer months.
You can also use fans and other cooling systems if they don’t dry out the wood too much.
Overly dry wood can also be a cause of concern for preventing sap leakage.
It’s also crucial that your attic has plenty of ventilation, such as windows, so heat can escape and prevent overheating.
Notably, one of the best forms of ventilation for an attic is a setup with lower vents and a ridge vent to increase the airflow.
Conclusion
There are many negative effects that wood sap can have on your attics, such as insect infestations, dust collection, and wood staining.
These effects can have both a long and short term effect on you and your house’s health, and therefore you must take the essential measures to prevent overheating and install ventilation systems.
By doing this, you should keep your house healthy and spare any massive expenses.
Cheers, tools owners!