How To Repair Water Damaged Siding

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When siding repairs are deferred as the house at left illustrates, the repair costs increment significantly. The home owner claimed they didn't realize the damage was there until finishing a basement sleeping room for their daughter … and there was a hole the size of a fist, open to the outdoors?

The problem started with leaves piled several feet high on the deck, trapping water against the siding. We didn't cheque the ledger lath attaching the deck to the business firm as the deck needed to come down. The entire side of the house had to be rebuilt from the siding, plywood sheathing, insulation through to new sheet rock and more. We assumed nosotros would also find structural damage inside the walls but again, the homeowner decided to defer the piece of work give the cost of repairs. This is unfortunate equally ultimately this dwelling could be condemned if the exterior walls tin can no longer support the weight of the house and roof.

Reasons Why Siding Gets (Stays) Wet and Rots

From the peak of your abode'southward roof to the lesser of the foundation, you're home is congenital to shed water. Nigh of the fourth dimension information technology works exactly the way information technology is designed an built but sometimes issues occur, frequently when a homeowner adds a deck or sunroom and drainage isn't handled properly.

It rains and that won't modify. Your home should shed the h2o easily, and moving it abroad from your home so that your business firm tin dry afterwards it rains. Exterior paint sheds water until at that place are cracks, peeling paint or gaps between the siding and windows/doors letting rain go behind the surface of the siding. It'due south the water that penetrates that causes problems considering it likely won't go plenty air apportionment to remove the moisture and wood that has more than 20% wet volition rot.

Let'due south await at the examples illustrated in the photos below, all needed some blazon of siding repairs.

1. The sunroom here was built well. The water problem resulted from a valley where the sunroom roof met the existing habitation roof, so h2o poured downward correct where the #1 is shown. This water splashed on the deck and upwards the side of the sunroom, and the wood rot started. We didn't have to replace the windows only the siding and some plywood sheathing underneath had to exist replaced above the deck … and below the deck (#two). The long term solution here was to add together gutters, to grab and directly the heavy h2o volume away from the house, avoiding the deck entirely.
2. Immediately below the deck in #1, the entire wall needed new plywood sheathing, a water bulwark and siding.
3. The woods clapboard siding here was fairly former and wasn't painted often enough, so the added water splashing upward from the deck contributed to the failure of the lowest boards here and elsewhere around the house. The interesting solution here was borrowing siding from the dorsum of the house, to supplant damaged pieces in the front of the house … as we could never match the color of the siding (painted). The customer accepted our recommendation to use Azek along the border of the deck/siding as it won't rot, thus avoiding a repeat of this problem.
4. The water impairment in photos #4 and five was surprising, for this echo customer was quite meticulous in taking care of their home. While we began working through a punchlist with multiple items to prepare the home for sale, we rapidly plant that the random blackness spots on the inside wall of the sunroom barely told the story. The problem was a event of not one, merely several errors in construction afterward the original home was built. Nosotros recommended to our customer that we cut out weep holes in the floor of the deck, to help water drainage.
   • There should be pocket-sized gaps betwixt deck floor boards to allow water to drain and this wasn't true for this deck. This means when the deck was built, the boards were placed together too closely and when they expanded, the gaps were closed leaving sitting water on the deck.
   • Compounding this problem, the deck had a slight slope into the firm where it should have sloped away from the house to help excess water drain off faster. You can tell this by the greater "black stains" closest to the wall of the house.
   • Adding to a poor deck installation, the sunroom roof formed a valley in a higher place #4 so you had significantly more water pouring into this corner that lacked drainage. While gutters may exist controversial, they are nearly a necessity in rainy locations where the roof has one/more valleys.
5. Photo #v shows how the water from the corner of the wall (#4) traveled along the bottom of the wall and in fact, had started traveling up the door jambs as well. We replaced the lower half of the door jambs and all of this could have been avoided if the sunroom was built using pressure treated wood, as it's actually an outdoor structure.
6. The siding on the other side of the sunroom door had quite a few black spots, so we used leftover materials to rebuild the wall although you tin see that the wall studs are in adequately good shape.

Read the rest of our series on water damage and wood rot repairs …

• H2o & Wood Rot Repairs – Roof
  
• H2o & Wood Rot Repairs – Siding … this article
  
• Water & Woods Rot Repairs – Windows
• Water & Woods Rot Repairs – Doors
• Water & Forest Rot Repairs – Decks
• Water & Forest Rot Repairs – Outside Trim

Tina helps women homeowners create homes they love, homes that back up how we live today. Leveraging her experience owning xv houses and running a handyman business organisation, Tina offers a free Savvy Homeowner Written report.

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