Dear Ken: I bought a house with a deck that was neglected for a long time. It has developed cracks everywhere. Should I fill them with wood putty or some other material? – Kelsey

Answer: If the cracks are relatively small, then it’s better to treat them than to fill them. A good linseed oil-based deck stain liberally applied will seep into the fissures and season the wood against further deterioration. Do it now and once again next spring, then every two years or so after that.

For larger cracks and knot holes, try some Bondo wood filler (yes, the same company that makes the patching material for car body repairs). My listeners swear by this stuff; they say it’s much more stable than regular plastic wood or paste filler. Once it cures, you can apply that same stain.

Sometimes you can turn the worst deck boards over to hide surface problems. Look underneath to decide whether the nonweathered surface is in good enough condition to warrant this approach. If you decide to flip some boards over, power wash or strip sand the entire surface, then use a pigmented deck stain to blend them all together.

Dear Ken: We have a two-story home with central air. Which way should the ceiling fans should blow? Also, we have a total of eight skylights. How can we treat them to keep the house cooler? – Peggy

Answer: In the summer, it assists the air conditioning system when you blow warmer ceiling air back down toward floor level so it can go back through the furnace to be cooled again (usually a counterclockwise blade rotation as viewed from below). In the winter, we want to wash that same warmer air down and over the cold outside walls, so the fan should then blow upward.

For homeowners without central air – and especially in houses with high ceilings – it’s best to leave that high, warm “cap” of air alone. Disturbing it with a ceiling fan will only mix it up with the naturally cooler, floor-level air, so the whole room becomes unnecessarily warmer than it needs to be.

Skylights can add an additional load to the air conditioning system. The best treatment is to apply some low-e film to their inside glass surfaces. Or you could install some custom-made mini-blinds or shades at the ceiling line of the skylight opening.

Dear Ken: I own a house which is becoming too small for us. Can I dig out my crawl space to add some more living space? – Stan

Answer: Theoretically, it’s possible. But there are bigtime structural implications to this project. The local building department will want you to get an engineer involved to assess the effect your digging will have on the existing foundation. At a minimum, you’ll have extensive costs in constructing a retaining wall around the hole you dig in order to hold the dirt in place under the house. In addition, there is a requirement that all habitable rooms have light and ventilation and two ways out. So that means you’ll probably be asked to install an “egress” window plus a set of stairs to the new space.

Of course, the big question is: where do you put the excess dirt? You can pile a certain amount of it around the edges, but most of your diggings will have to be dragged outside and disposed of. Plus, there is no mechanical answer here. You can’t get any sort of machine inside the hole, so it’s all backbreaking manual labor (good luck trying to find helpers, no matter how beguiling your pleas).

If I’m sounding discouraging, there’s a reason. The cost in dollars per square foot for your proposal is seldom worth it. In addition, you may find that your house has been catapulted to the top of the price pyramid for your neighborhood, and so you may never be able to recover the expense of your “big dig”. Check this out with a real estate agent, and I’ll bet they – like me – would encourage you to buy a different, larger property.

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Ken Moon is a home inspector in the Pikes Peak region. His radio show airs at 9 a.m. Saturday on KRDO, AM 1240 and FM 105.5. Contact him at aroundthehouse.com.