When I was first starting out as a contractor, a homeowner asked me to look at the kitchen floor of the "completely renovated" house he'd just purchased. The floor seemed spongy, he said. It was obvious to me when I inspected it that the previous owner had done only a cosmetic job so he could "flip" the house for a quick buck. It turned out that before doing so, he had also covered the wood siding of the addition where the kitchen was with aluminum siding.
When I peeled back the aluminum -- which looked great, by the way -- I found the wood siding along the ground, the floor joists and the rim joists of the kitchen floor were all rotted. About half of the joist ends were rotted to a point where they did not even sit on the foundation wall any longer. I had to cut away and replace the bottom three feet of outside wall and install a new rim joist, floor joists and subfloor before I could fix the kitchen floor. That was very expensive.
Starting in the late sixties, homeowners were sold the idea that slapping aluminum siding over wood siding was a good, cheap facelift. Sure it was, but at the cost of hiding signs of serious problems.
Before you buy an older home with aluminum or vinyl siding covering the original wood, take a close look at it and answer these questions:
Is there a drip cap over every opening? The cap is a specially fashioned piece installed at the top of all the doors and windows to keep water from migrating back to the house along the underside.
How well is the siding cut around the caps? It should fit neatly, with no visible gaps. But if you can see the original siding underneath, then you shouldn't need me to tell you it's a bad job. Water is getting through there for sure.
Lots of caulking, or sloppy caulking, tells me that maybe there's been a repair done or an attempt to patch a leak. Normally, in a good siding installation, there should be no caulking needed. If you see caulk, it could be a sign that there was a leak, and water has been trapped behind the siding, which will lead to trouble.
Is the new siding mounted directly on the old siding? There should be an air gap, which lets the wood underneath breathe. Without it, there is an excellent chance water is being trapped somewhere behind the new siding and the original wood siding is rotting. But you won't know it till it's too late because the aluminum or vinyl is covering it.
Everything good so far? Great, but high skill doesn't necessarily equal high ethics. Very good installers can still be very bad contractors. It's so easy for them to shrug and say, "I'm being paid to cover it, not fix it." They don't want to tell the homeowners to fix the problem, so they hide it. Maybe they don't know enough, maybe they don't care enough or maybe they don't want to lose the job since the homeowner is paying for new siding, not advice. And if the repair they're recommending is going to be expensive, you know what happens . . . especially if it's a flip.
Does the siding appear true? If it's buckling anywhere, it means one of two things. It could be the siding is hung incorrectly and the nails are too tight; siding is designed to hang from the nails -- not too loose and not too tight. Or it could mean the original wood siding underneath is breaking away from the frame of the house, which is very bad because, unlike aluminum or vinyl, wood siding is structural as well as cosmetic.
Does the horizontal siding line up parallel with the tops of the windows and doors? If not, it could mean the house is settling or rotting, and the siding was purposely installed to hide the fact. You could have serious structural or foundation problems.
How close to the ground is the siding? Aluminum or vinyl siding can be close to the ground without suffering damage, but the building code states that wood siding has to at least eight inches above grade. This is to keep it dry and prevent rot, and also to protect against termites. If the aluminum is covering wood close to the ground, you will almost certainly have a rot problem hiding under the aluminum.
There is also a very good chance of mould being under that siding cover-up -- and that's a problem you don't want to have.
Retrofit aluminum or vinyl siding is just like lipstick and mascara -- and it's often put on over something ugly to make it pretty. But what's really ugly is what might be going on underneath.
Don't get me wrong -- aluminum and vinyl siding are great products for your home. But, like anything else in my business, it has to be installed correctly and not used as a cover-up.
The bottom line is, when you're buying an older home that has siding on the exterior, the real concern should be what's underneath it.
Mike Holmes is the host of Holmes on Homes on HGTV. E-mail Mike at mikeholmes@holmeson-
homes.com or go to http://www.holmesonhomes.com