You might have heard of sandblasting. But chances are you don’t know as much as you think you do about it unless you work with it on a regular basis.

Building exteriors are meant to keep water out. But brick, stone, mortar, stucco or EIFS can’t always do the job themselves. That’s where coatings come in.

Whether it’s indicative of an underlying structural fault or not, rust can cause unsightly orange stains on the outside of the building. It can leave streaks across your concrete, and if you’re not careful, it actually could indicate a deeper issue.

Are you using a pressure washer for all your exterior cleaning needs? Plenty of people do—and plenty of people are harming their building.

It’s easy to let things slide. Sure, that coating on the floor of the parking garage needs to be replaced, but it doesn’t really need to be right now. It’ll be OK. You can just get the stains out if you need to. And that crumbling bit of mortar will probably last another couple of years.

The building you’re probably sitting in is moving right under your feet. You might not notice it, but it’s true. Every building is subject to the forces around it, which is why you see issues like foundation cracks in some older homes—the ground moved the home and the slab cracked under the strain.

Winter is hard on everyone, but it’s particularly hard on buildings. Cold weather can cause issues that get overlooked in the summer months to come to the fore, and if left untreated some of these issues can cause tremendous maintenance headaches.

Hail is one of the greatest dangers to any structure in the Great Plains. The hailstorms that can crop up during the winter can damage any exterior surface, but stucco and EIFS are in particular danger.

Winter weather in the Great Plains is hard to predict. As anyone who’s lived in the region for long knows, you can leave the house in the morning in a T-shirt and have to thaw the car out to get home. Freezing precipitation and wild temperature swings make winter a dicey prospect.