Siding Woes

House Repair Talk

Help Support House Repair Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

tk3000

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 27, 2010
Messages
369
Reaction score
39
Hello Folks,

In the past I post about a for season room addition to an otherwise externally concrete walls + stucco. The four season room was in a state of disrepair to say the least (specially the roof). Now I am tackling the siding of the same season room.

The sidings is in bad shape, and there is a spot wherein the wood/fiberboard sheathing is rotten. The wood sheathing seems to be fiberboard, and the siding seems to be sometime type of high density cardboard material. So, I was wondering if it would be ok to cut out the bad part of the fiberboard exterior wall sheathing and replace/patch it with 1/2 plywood?

Some pics depicting the situation:

15493382222_a9339fa287.jpg


(aforementioned spot with rotten fiberboard sheathing)


15493382162_2b5b1b8f4a.jpg
 
Last edited:
Sounds like a good plan to me. Get everything that’s wet and rotted out of there. I assume the bad roof is now fixed and that was where the water came from.
 
Sounds like a good plan to me. Get everything that’s wet and rotted out of there. I assume the bad roof is now fixed and that was where the water came from.

Thanks. Yeah, I will remove all the rotten and bad wood and fiberboard stuff, and install things anew. I heard that this type of siding is problematic and outdated, so I was wondering if it would be ok to replace the bad siding parts with fiber cement siding.

As far as the above roof goes. I did all the heavy lift (replacing wood sheathing, rafter tails, etc), and installed new EPDM membrane on top of the bad one, as shown below:

15229416428_06a921d015.jpg

(used hclips to join wood panels in spots whereon the rafters did not coincide with the joint spot, also braced from below with 2x8 to reinforce)

Then, with the membrane overcasting the roof:
15229416508_af0d46a479.jpg


As of now the membrane has been glued, all seams done, and edges caulked. I only need to install soffits, and then install the gutters. The bad roofing and absence of gutters is largely responsible for the damage to the siding of this season room.
 
Can we assume the framing is in good shape, with no rot or mold?

There has been water going through parts of the wall in one occasion or another, but then almost all house have had a leaking at one point of another.

Overwall it seems that the wall and studs right behind this badly damaged exterior wall+sidings seen from inside looks to be in decent shape at first:

15419930717_12894f1ab7.jpg


This happen to be the wall where the circuit breaker box resides.
 
Framing looks good. I would say you can put any kind of siding back up that you like the look of.

Nice job on the roof also.
 
Do you gutter first before you do you soffit. The roof liner, which is thye 2x4 across the ends of the rafters is seldom really straight and makes the gutter do some funny things and sometimes dosen't sit tight. So if you do that first you can snug the "J" trim for the soffet up to the gutter nice and snug.

Hardey siding is a great choice and if you have the siding off you want to do a proper flashing over the door and windows.
 
Do you gutter first before you do you soffit. The roof liner, which is thye 2x4 across the ends of the rafters is seldom really straight and makes the gutter do some funny things and sometimes dosen't sit tight. So if you do that first you can snug the "J" trim for the soffet up to the gutter nice and snug.

Hardey siding is a great choice and if you have the siding off you want to do a proper flashing over the door and windows.

The misalignment is very true in this case. The fascia board is attached to a 2x4 which then is attached to the rafter end rails; the 2x4s are a little bit out of alignment (one proturding more than the other by a few milimeters); so I am cutting some shims to try to compensate.

Back to the ext wall sheathing, sinding and frame member that I am working on now; some studs and door jamp are partialy rotten at the very bottom. Also the 2x4 bottom plate was partially rotten which I then replaced. It is all shown below:

15637155232_a5cc973c3e.jpg

(inside view, with bottom plate piece partially replaced)

15637155312_078eb4e0cc.jpg

(outside view of stud and door jamps partially rotten at the bottom)

On a side note, this fiberboard sheathing is a pain to remove; the thing simply crumbles in pieces.
 
So this porch was just built on a slab that is three or four inches thick and does not allow you to have the the landscapiing 8 inches below the siding.
The fix for that is to remove the concrete sqaures and dig a trench around the slab and install drain pipe that will drain into the perimeter drain or away from the house and back fill that with drain rock and replace the squares with a little distance to the wall to allow thew water to drain away.
I see what looks like caulking along the base plate, never seen that before but you should have sill gasket between the plate and the concrete.
 
So this porch was just built on a slab that is three or four inches thick and does not allow you to have the the landscapiing 8 inches below the siding.
The fix for that is to remove the concrete sqaures and dig a trench around the slab and install drain pipe that will drain into the perimeter drain or away from the house and back fill that with drain rock and replace the squares with a little distance to the wall to allow thew water to drain away.
I see what looks like caulking along the base plate, never seen that before but you should have sill gasket between the plate and the concrete.

It is missing the gutters now, I would imagine that the gutters would divert the water away from the perimeter near the allseason room/deck. The concrete slap protrude to the outside of the season room for almost a feet, and it sustaind lots of erosion caused by the water over the years, so I will have to redo it as well. Should I also dig for a drain pipe around the perimeter of the allseason room?

Yep, I used caulk to obtain an airtight seal and thus avoid air drafts and insects. I also used sealer (not realy caulk) where surfaces make contact. I will look into the sill gasket thing, but what would be the issue with flexible caulking; I was also considering using flexible caulkingon the gaps between the plywood sheathing and then put house wrap and insulation in the sheathing facing the interior.
 
Sill gasket, tar paper or polly between wood and concrete to keep moisture from wicking up from the concrete and there are things in concrete that is not good for wood so even in dry areas we never let wood touch concrete with out something between them.
As your slab did not have poly under it the water has a better chance of wicking up and that is another reason to get rid of surface water as best you can.

No matter how sealed up and tight you build your walls water or moisture will always get in so we give it a way to get out. Sheeting on the exterior is nailed up with a 1/2 gap between sheet and closed cavities like under windows we drill a 1 1/2" hole in each cavity.

House wrap the white stuff keeps water out but will allow vapour out. To keep bugs out you can tape the joints in house wrap and seal the bottom to the concrete with acustic seal. It's black messy stuff that never drys out.

Most sidings don't do a perfect job of keep water out so the application of house wrap window and door flashing and window installation are more important than how the siding looks when done.
If you are really lucky with good windows they will have an "R" value of 5 so you do get condensation both inside the house and between the vinyl and the framing so the new deal now is to collect that water and give it a waterproof path to the outside below the window.
 
Back
Top