By Mark Philben -- Globe Correspondent

Q. We suspect that moisture collected on the windows in the dining room and office years ago when I put plastic over them to keep out the cold. I did this for a couple of years. The rooms are on the north side of the house and don’t get much sun. There is, and never has been, a water leak. For the past few years, particularly in summer, there has been a strong musty smell, which seems to be coming from the windows. There is no visible mold. We’ve used Concrobium in a fogger for both rooms, which suppressed things quite well. That was two years ago. The smell is coming back with a vengeance this year. I’ve sprayed the same product on the windows and window trim, and it helped for a bit. We believe the mold is probably inside the window frames and may have even migrated to within the walls. It’s certainly not bats or mice or bees, as some have speculated.

What are your thoughts on this? My fear is that we’ll have to gut these rooms down to the studs. Can a remediator get rid of the mold and also rebuild, or do we need a home building/remodeling company?

A. I am going to guess that you are correct and have a mold problem inside the walls. Just because you don’t see a leak does not mean you don’t have one. It can be around the windows or within a flashing detail above them. Over the years we have found many leaks that go undetected for years until we open things up for a remodel. I would call in a mold remediation company, which should be able to seal off the space, open up the walls, and make a recommendation to replace or treat the wood. You would be surprised at how resilient wood can be; often it doesn’t have to be replaced — just dried out and treated. The treatment is key to ensuring the smells are eliminated before closing up the walls. Some mitigation companies can also do basic repairs to wood framing; however, you should have a qualified builder look over anything structural or complicated.

Q. We have a Cape that is more than 30 feet high in the back. The snow builds up on the roof in the winter. When it starts to melt, huge sections of snow come off the roof. We had to replace our air-conditioning because it was damaged by falling snow. How do we fix this? Is there something we can put on the roof to break up the snow over time so it doesn’t come crashing down at the same time? We don’t want to put anything with heaters up there due to the risk of fire.

A. There are several products on the market that have been used for a very long time to address this issue, typically for slate roofs where snow tends to slide off when heated up by the sun. The product I would recommend is a snow rail. These are typically three horizontal steel rods with a brass bracket that attaches to the roof. These bars are designed to hold the snow back and allow it to melt in small amounts as the weather warms, and they require no electricity. You should have a roofing company install them.

Mark Philben is the project development manager at Charlie Allen Renovations in Cambridge. Send your questions to [email protected] . Questions are subject to editing. Subscribe to our free real estate newsletter at pages.email.bostonglobe.com/AddressSignUp. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter @globehomes.

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