This job started out last August as a two day rot repair job. As we looked we found more and more rot and poor construction so our work escalated. The original cedar lap siding hadn’t been back primed and had been run down to the ground. It was rotten almost everywhere. All the trim was cedar as well and in just as poor shape as the siding.
When we stared removing the siding we found the framing full of dirt, studs and plates gone and termites everywhere. Sheathing is practically non-existent being what used to be Dennyboard, 1/8” pasteboard with a sprayed on layer of foil on the outside. Horrible stuff that hasn’t aged well. Because this is a condominium development most of our work has to be done from the outside since the units are individually owned.
Our plan then became to replace rotten, termite eaten framing, install PVC trim at the lower part of walls to get the siding away from the ground and use HardiPlank siding to replace the cedar.
Early on the Condo Association was in shock because of the damage we were finding so our scope was somewhat constrained. Later, as the depth of what was needed became clearer to them they stepped up and gave us their permission to put it all back right.
At this point I realized that I needed an engineer and a some permits. I kept a couple of guys working while I got plans and permits in place then put on a full crew and went at it hard. Because there are so many things wrong and you can’t fix A until you fix B which can’t be fixed until C is done we’re doing a little of everything. In additional to siding and trim we’re rebuilding all the gates, re-screening and rebuilding screen enclosures, installing new lights, hose bibs, and anything else that comes along.
I’ll get to more specific details in the next post.
Replies
Yeah, run the framing all the way to ground level and you're asking for all sorts of problems, especially in the South.
Once we really got dug in everyone involved realized this was going to be a big, long job. The development is 30 buildings and we’ve been working since last August. We’re about half way through the eighth building now but the scope has escalated to the point that each building takes long than the last.
We started out repairing what was there but now are stripping them to the frame and rebuilding almost like new. Since the Association has to pay for the outside but individual homeowners have to pay for the doors and windows we aren’t replacing them, everything else goes.
Each building has two, two story sides and two, one story sides. We usually start on one of the two story sides by removing the old lap siding as high as we can reach. Because the rot is usually severe on the corners we have to remove the patio fences to get the old corner trim off. Because the screen enclosure sits on the patio fence we have to remove large parts of that as well. We cut the water lines to the hose bids, remove them as well as exterior light fixtures, and surface mounted electric boxes.
Typically we uncover rot in the corners and under the second floor windows as well as some level of current or past termite damage. We cut out old studs and glue new ones onto the drywall with polyurethane foam until we can get inside to screw the drywall down properly. On the corners we replace the old double studs and spacer blocks with new studs so we have more nailing surface for the Hardi and 6” corner trim.
Usually the rim joist has termites so we usually replace the whole thing with new MCA treated SYP nailed with 16 # ring shanks and pulled tight with Headlok screws if needed. We use lots of Headloks and Timberloks. We check the electric wires and plumbing, make repairs if needed, fill in large areas of insulation with fiberglass and foam all the cracks and crevices. We want the wall to be airtight and insulated once it’s closed it. Our theory is that nobody is ever going back into the walls!
Once we’ve got that done we start at the bottom with ZIpWall. To bullet proof the Zipwall we tape the bottom edge with Zip tape so water can never touch it. We have to notch around 2 A/C line sets and 2 A/C disconnect lines on these walls so we prime all the raw cut edges, then Zip tape them later. We work our way up the wall 2 sheets high until we need to set up our pole jacks and scaffolding. At this point everything below 8’ is sealed and tight.
Repairs
I appreciate the detail - outlined and solution. Great reading + photos. Will there be any kind of insect treatment before or after you close up ?
SA
A little off topic but is Florida still considered a good place to retire. The one and only time I was there was about 37 years ago when I helped my inlaws move down there to the Tampa area. It was as cheap for them to have a custom home built then to buy an existing one. We rented a truck and drove them down. I still remember the insects on the front grill about a 1/2 inch thick - the scales in Virgina and that heat in the summer so I've never returned but now I'm starting to hate the winters up here in NY.
Can you recommend areas for retirement with no bugs of course ! I also hate property taxes and need resturants close by with early bird specials.
SA
Have you considered Reno?
Florida is still the retirement mecca for most people. They estimate that 5 million retirees just from the northest will be retiring to Florida in the next 10 years! Prices are starting to move up again but there are still deals to be had if your taste are modest. Seems that lots of people sell their homes in Ohio, NJ or where ever then use the cash to pay for their retirement home here. The main thing seems to be that it's warn here. I have know quite a few northerners who moved down, stayed for 5 or 6 years then split the difference by moving to western NC or Tennesse where it's a lot cooler.
Thge bugs you encountered were 'Love bugs" which don't bite or bother people at all and only last a month or less. Their role in life seems to end on your car. Mosquitos aren't bad at all, I'll bet they're worse where you are. We have the most aggressive mosquito control in the world here and I can honestly say I never even think about them. "Noseeums" are bad at dusk near salt water but otherwise won't bother you.
It is terrbile hot during summer but the humidity is the worse thing about summer. A trip to the mailbox will leave you perspiring but that's why you have a pool! I'd suggest renting a year or two until you figure out where oyu want to be and if leaving friends and family is worth it.
Now we’re ready to start pulling the high siding, window trim and the Denny Board. Once we have all that off we have a better idea what we’re going to have to replace. Around the windows is always bad. The windows never fit the old opening, they rarely have more than 2 nails holding them in place and they weren’t caulked or flashed. The quarter radius window on top is actually just a piece of extrusion with the glass caulked in with silicone caulk. There is no flange and they set the windows on top of the unpainted cedar trim!
We pull the windows and then remove all the rotted, termite eaten framing. The building we’re working on now is the first to have headers over the windows! We install new studs as needed and resize the rough opening so the windows fit. The quarter barrel windows are always a struggle since they really don’t fit and have no nailing flange anyway. We run our ZipWall up and over the windows then try to make precision cuts for the windows. There is a lot of cutting and fitting at this point.
The picture of the window shows the huge gap between the window and the old rough. We have to make it work on the outside and at some point will have to get inside to make a new radius there with drywall. We lay down a heavy bead of Tremco Dymonic caulk then bed the windows in good. After we screw the flange down tight we flash with 6” Vycor tape. Since we’re using Zipwall we don’t have anything to flash to on the head so we want to make sure of our Vycor and caulk. We use a large J roller to go over the Vycor and Zip tape and we’ll go back and do it again later if it doesn’t look tight enough.
Once the windows are back in we all breathe a little easier! We can move on to the top of the wall fitting the ZipWall to the pitch and taping everything in sight. The walls end at the patios are 2” EIFS so we wrap the entire corner with 12” Vycor flashing tape then cover the edge of that with Zip tape. Later we’ll come back and trim the corner with 5/4” X 6” TrexTrim. But, at this point we have the whole wall weather tight. All the insulation is repaired, cracks sealed, everything caulked, joints taped and come what may there will be no water or air intrusion.
These walls leaked air and water so badly that I fully expect the owners to have substantial energy savings and for the second floor to cool much better than before. We already know from the other buildings that the units are much quieter and have no air movement around the windows.
The last thing we do is install 36” hurricane straps across the rim joist to tie the two floors together. Once that’s done I’m confident that these buildings will be magnitudes more resistant to hurricane force winds and rain.
Wow! And I thought I had bad a termite infestation problem in my house. Pish... it was nothing compared to what you are dealing with.
Thanks for sharing this work with us. Very interesting. Its a wonder that the buildings are still standing considering all the structural damage. Or is it actually less structurally significant than the photos seem to indicate?
Are your termites the wet wood type or the dry wood? Here in the PNW we have wet wood termites so if the house is repaired and dried out, the bugs die off or go away. I know in So. California they have the dry wood type so houses are tented and fumigated. What happens in Florida?
Just as a curiosity question: Approximately how much money are we talking about per condo unit? Whatever it is, it's probably a fraction of what it would have cost to have built properly in the first place. Are some of the owners having you do window upgrades as an additional? Seems like it would behoove them to change out a few windows now for little more than the cost of materials.
What you're seeing is 25 years of neglect. No termite treatment to speak of for nearly 20. All things considered it's not that bad. We've had 2 units where we had to remove both top plates, the rim joist, 4, yes 4, bottom plates for the 2nd floor and about half the studs. Just to make it fun it had to be done from the outside without destroying the drywall. Not that we don't make some holes from time to time but we fix them pretty fast and move on.
These are wet wood termites. To treat them they inject the soil all the way around the building.
The cost is a moving target. As I said before each building gets more than the last so the cost have risen each time. Also there are the old 2 story, old one story, one 8-plex and 8 new, 2 story buildings. The 2 story buildings have the most damage which comes from the upstairs windows leaking and attracting termites. Also, if you can believe this, some of the two story buildings have small garden sheds as part of the pations where the unpainted cedar trim was nailed to the framing then stucco was applied around it. We've had to gut the sheds, cut back the stucco, splice in lath and patch the stucco. That in turn has meant tearing down the patio walls and rebuilding them. I don't have a total so far but would guess the whole project may be 2 million before we're done.
So what you're basically doing is replacing the entire framing of the buildings, while they are occupied.
(Why did building codes not prevent this debacle?)
No, not the entire frame by far. The damage is localized and the single story walls have all been in relatively good shape. As to why and how this ever got past the BD is another story. The work done on these buildings is criminal, no other word for it. Apparently no one cared, no one supervised and the BD had its eyes shut. As I mentioned earlier the most nails we've found in any window is 4, and 2 of those were misses. One window was held in place with one 16# framing nail bent over.
Since sapwood asked about the damage I’ll show you one of the bad units. I n this case the rot and termite damage started on the end wall and extended in both directions, toward the center and worse, around the corner on a stuccoed wall. Since we were dealing with a rim joist on the gable wall we were obviously dealing with joists on the adjacent wall.
The first joist was about half gone above a sliding glass door. The top plates of the first floor wall and bottom plates of the second floor wall were gone. We had to remove a large section of stucco and lath, drywall and the glass door. The door had 4 screws in the side jambs, none into the concrete floor and hadn’t been caulked anywhere. It took 6 guys almost a week to get it apart and all back together again including stucco and drywall and that was just the side wall. We were lucky that this building had lath and plaster rather than EIFS.
On the gable wall termites had hit in 4 spots on the rim joist and plates so all the plates and the rim joist had to be replaced. Floor joists were hanging in the air unsupported by much of anything except the one next to it. Of course the corner framing was rotten and termite eaten so that took us another 2 days to get back together before we could start the ZipWall. Once we got above the rim joist we could start dealing with the rotten and termite eaten framing around the windows. All together I think we were about 3 weeks on the gable end and stucco wall. You can see in the last photo that the termites have eaten the paper off the back of the drywall but also gone through the drywall and eaten the paper on the face and left only paint flapping in the breeze!
I hope I never have to do it, but how does one remove studs, from the outside, while leaving the dryall intact? Do you split the stud with a chisel...? Or, maybe, cuz they are so termite eaten they just crumble?
Looking at the photos it would appear that this project must be one that is depressing to go to everyday. Like the guys on the crew must be saying.... Can't we go build something NEW today?
How are the condo owners holding up? The project must be a real shock both emotionally and economically to have to absorb. I imagine some bring you cookies and others just grumble.
Usually the studs are in bad shape so we try to roll them from side to side to get the nails to pull out. As you can imagine we tear the nails through the drywall most of the time. We glue the new studs in with poly foam and hopefully the tenants will let us in to screw the drywall down.
Believe it not it's an exciting job that demands a lot of creative thinking from my guys. They love it because it's not boring. They inovate every day as we figure out better, more ecnomical ways to get the job done. Every building we do is better than the last even though we've done a great job on all of them. Also, since the buildings were built in phases they aren't all the same. Each group brings new challenges.
The owners have been through the wringer as you can imagine. No one was expecting this so everyone has been blindsided. There were, and I guesss till are, people who thought it was all unecessary and who put up a lot of resistance. I truely feel for all of them although I'm sure that when it's all done their units will have appreciated more than the costs. I know for sure their units will be more energy efficient, quieter and much more hurricane resistant. As we've worked through the buildings and they've seen the carnage the resistance has almost died. I think at this point the major question is "when is my building going to get done?"
"when is my building going to get done?"
Flo,
on a much smaller scale.
From the whole house reno to the very detailed and invasive kitchen, I've heard that a few times. Seems the excitement of beginning starts to recede in the face of inconvenience.
I'm sure you're being there regularly all day, sealing it up to the weather and keeping an orderly job does much to temper any grumbling.
Two thoughts come to mind reading your thread.
We've both been uncovering a lot of things, most just minor. But every so often one comes along that defines (insert word choice).
Showing up is half the game. Nothing a customer hates more than a pile of shit with nobody moving it. A job site with no one working is a short fuse.
Thanks.
We're lucky in a way. Snowbird season is over and about half the tenants have left until next fall so the gripe level is down. I just got a call this moring from a tenant unhappy over us cutting down a small tree in front of her unit. It was in the way so we couldn't work so it had to go. I explained it to her and she seemed mollified at least.
Everybody gets a letter from me the week before we start telling them what's going to happen. I tell them we're going to trample their flowers, take their parking spaces, leave material all over and create a lot of dust and noise. Bui I also tell them that we understand and will do whatever we can to make it easier. I really haven't had many complaints from the ones whose house we're working on. They all seem very happy at the improvement when we're done.
Flo
I know I sleep well at night knowing I've done my best to ease the pain of a major remodel. Can't understand how anyone can, that don't give a shit.
Word of mouth can go both ways.
You're right, doing a good job makes me sleep well. I'm doing this job for less than I normally would partially because I feel so bad for the people but also because it creates steady work for my guys. The whole job will probably take at least 3 years and that's worth a discount! This is also not the kind of job that most contractors could do at all. The repairs require a lot of original thinking and keeping the drainage plane going downhill is tough.
iI sure hope you're getting regular periodic payments on this.
Oh yes, I sure don't have the money to fund this!
Yeah, you know that as soon as you let the payments lag behind someone living in the development is going to file a lawsuit, claiming workmanship problems or maybe just in a snit with the committee, and force all payments to stop.
A few words of contracting advice:
Future work is pie-in-the-sky... and cutting your prices because you feel sorry for the customer is a sure way to be unneccesarily undercompensated. It a job and you're (apparently) running a business. Save the "labor of love" thoughts for your own house.
The day these customers come by your house to help you mow your lawn and help you remodel your bathroom(s), is the day you can justify offering them a discount.
You should go back and read my original post. This started as a 2 day job so every moment of it is that non-existant future work you speak of and I've got 5 more permits in my briefcase. I'm a pragmatist. I'd rather have 30,000 hours of work at $60.00 an hour than 2,000 at $100.00 an hour. I give all my longtime customers a discount off my regular rates which is part of the reason I have many customers who have been with me for so long.
reality check
If you don't regularly bill it, then it's not your regular rate. By your same logic, you'd probably book 60,000 hrs. of work at $30/hr. and still feel pragmatic.
Point is: you don't stay in business looking to stay busy, you stay in business to make a projected profit. One can stay busy working for someone else.
I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have guys like you telling me how to run my business. I've been in business for over 40 years and I'm doing just fine. How about you?
Flo
I'm thinking there's a happy medium between dead's get it now and your way. At least that's what kept me above the poverty line and busy during the deep downturn in our region's economy.
The benefits of a long term customer relationship and "their" marketing of my talents are measurable in my future income. Constant velocity seems better than the flash in the pan.
not many businesses can say they have worked for 3 generations........it used to be quite common, now not so much. The downside is when you start to attend the wakes of your clientele .
This place was built by guys wth his 'get it now" attitude which is why the place is so horribly built. Everybody from the developer to the carpenter were getting theirs while they could, to he11 with tomorrow. What they did is or should be criminal. Contractors often get blamed for things out of our control but in this case they should be blamed. In their hast to "get it now" they regulary left out roof rafters, didn't install headers, didn't caulk doors or windows much less flash them, ran the cedar siding into the ground and primed nothing. If it was too big that just filled it with caulk, if it was too small they used a bigger hammer. Apparently nails were really expensive in the 80s because they sure didn't use any more of them than the hurricane straps they were supposed ot install.
I would call the whole ugly mess a criminal enterprise since everyone was apparenty in on it. My customers have complete trust in me and my crew. No one supervises or even checks our work. I decide what needs to be repaired and replaced and how we'll do it. I decide what materials we'll use and where. But, they don't have to worry because every job I do I do exactly like it was my own house. I constantly look for lower prices on materials and pass the savings on to them because the more I save them on materials the more they have to pay me for labor. I have great relationships with all my customers and have walked away from more than one signed and sealed job because I realized the customer and I weren't on the same page.
"Get it now" is a horrible philosphy for a contractor and one I'm glad I never got caught up in.
Actually, I follow Michael Stone's advice in his book "Markup & Profit": A Contractor's Guide. I suggest (like thousands of others) you follow it too. It's been a best seller for decades. It is also based on this simple, overiding mathmatical business fact:
Total Collar Voume Built diviided by job costs= Markup.
If you're cutting your regular rate, then your cutting your markup. In turn, this cuts your projected profit. It has nothing to do with "flash in the pan" or "get it now" operating philosophy. Those unsound business strategies aren't mentioned in my rsponse nor Mr. Stone's book--anywhere.
To quote Mr. Stone:
"Let me ask you one more question. If someone hires you to do a job for them, don't you do the best job you can for them? Don't you research and complete the work the work to the best of your ability? Well, that's how I approach things, too. And that's how I came up with these numbers.
The bottom line is this: if you don't know how to arrive at a markup figure, or choose to ignore the knowledge you do have, you're well on your way to going broke. Knowing this, if you don't make an immediate adjustment to the way you're doing business, your business will soon be history. I'd like to be the first to wish you well in your next endeavor." --M..Stone
Actually, I don't follow anyones advice but my own anymore. After 40 successful years as a contractor I'm the guy that writes the books for guys like you. For the record I was reading Stones stuff 20 years ago.
I hear what you're saying, even if the others don't. A significant cost of doing business for someone in your line of work is FINDING the business. In many lines of contracting "the cost of sales" (advertising, sales work, negotiating contracts, etc) is around 50% of total costs. In general the longer a project lasts the lower these costs are as a fraction of the total cost. And repeat sales are generally cheaper to arrange than new sales. (And we haven't even begun to discuss the cost of down-time because you simply don't have a "next project" yet.)
In addition, there are significant efficiencies in having a long job vs a short one -- not having to move equipement to the site and back, being able to plan the work to "dovetail" more efficiently, etc.
That's one way to look at it.
The other way is: you've just locked yourself into cutting your rate for two years on one job wheras you could've met your profit projections on other "regular rate" jobs you've missed out on selling & producing for those two years.
Of course if you don't know your numbers, then your just swimming in la la land anyhow and it doesn't matter. That's called getting up each day with the philosophy of "get 'er done".
The character Boxer, in George Orwell's precient (copyright 1946) book titled Animal Farm, had this attitude. Where did Boxer end up? That's right; sold off to the glue factory in his old age.
Actually, Orwell's book wasn't "precient" at all. It was an allegory about the Russian Revolution that had occurred 30 years earlier.
Indeed it is prescient
Actually Orwells fable is contiunally prescient in terms of illustrating the cycle of revolution which seems to be universal. While it can be applied to the Bolshevik revolution in Czarist Russia as it was intended, it was not unique to that society and time period. It occurs even today. You only have to look at the current situation in the Ukraine to prove it.
There would be very little point of a satirest like Orwell to write such a fable based on past events if he did not intend for it to have an effect on future events (namely Stalin's role in developing post WWII Soviet Russia). To record current news or history are the jobs of journalists and historical biographers , neither of which Orwell is known for. Lastly, the fact that in 1949 he wrote his most famous satirical novel, 1984, firmly places him in the camp of someone with prescient writing tendencies in terms of giving his readership fair warning.
You're doing great. With no real knowledge of how florida conducts his business you are driving his pictorial thread into the ground. Your behavior is one of the reasons people are discouraged to share what and how they do their work. It is one of the reasons Breaktime has collapsed and is one of the reasons it struggles to survive.
If you want to discuss business practices, I'd suggest you start your own topic.
Thanks for making a good point! He does raise some valid points about pricing that might be of interest to someone else contemplating a large job like this. Anyway, I'm getting to the actual Hardi install next, just wanted a couple of pictures I hadn't taken. I'll get it up in the next day or so.
But Dan is exactly right and you're exactly wrong. Apparently your understanding of costs is a little thin . What I'm doing is like a medium size kitchen remodel every week or a large kitchen every two weeks. But I have no sales time or costs, I have no down time, I have no staging time and no moving time. I don't have to pay my guys driving time or OT and I have an on-site shipping container we lock our tools in every night which means we're at work as soon as we get there. I'm able to store huge amounts of material right where we're working. When we move buildings my lumber company sends over one of their lifts and moves it all to the new building for me, free, so we don't mess with material.
My savings from all those factors far exceed any rate reductions I'm giving so that I'm actually making more than I would were I having to replace my gross with smaller jobs.
Just to sweeten the pot this place, like all condos, has a property management company that handles their business. Because of our craftsmanship and prices I've picked up other condo developements from this same property management company where we're doing all their construction too. Discounts have equaled money in th ebank!
T&M or lump sum?
@florida,
Is your contract for the scope of work you're showing lump sum or cost plus?
Twice on my trips south, once in Tennessee and once in Mississippi (must be something about states with multiple repeated characters) I encountered similar damage but on a much smaller scale.
The Tennessee home just had rot in the front wall -- had to replace most of the rim in sections along with about half the studs (but thankfully the inside wall was open so we didn't have to do such a surgical job). The job was actually kind of fun because it was a challenge to figure it out.
The Mississippi home was a disaster. A small 2-bedroom unit on a slab. I'm thinking we were asked to look into leakage in one corner of the house, and when we pulled down that wall it rained cockroaches -- not just a few dozen but thousands. Pulled down the ceiling and even more. And somehow the ceiling rafters had started rotting and the ceiling above the hall and bathroom was compromised (don't recall the details there). Investigation revealed that an old doorway had been in that corner of the house and had been filled in. The rest of the house at least had a 1-high concrete brick rim, but apparently plain old 2x4s had been stuck in the threshold area where the door had been, AND THEN DIRT PILED UP SEVERAL INCHES ON THE OUTSIDE.
We left town the next day, kinda happy to leave that mess to the next crew.
Aside from treating the soil and applying the PVC trim, have you devised any other ways to keep bugs and soil moisture out of the structure? (This is speaking from the POV of a northerner who would never dream of buying or building a ("permanent") structure where the framing was only inches from soil level.)
Yes, but not enough to defeat Florida termites I'm afraid. We've taken it upon ourselves to cut back overgrown trees and palnts that are too close to the foundation. We've raked most of the mulch out of the beds completely and moved the A/C condensate lines out 4' or 5' from the building. We've also encouraged people to install gutters and we extend the downspouts out to the sidewalks to keep water away from the foundations. Long term nothing will work except poisoning the soil.
Do anteaters eat termites? If they do, maybe a herd of them would help. Of course, there are probably negatives to that option.
Hanging the Hardi
Now we’re finally ready to install some Hardi.
We've done the hard work now, the wall is structurally sound, tight and weather proof. Like any good job preparation is 90% of the job and nothing could be more true on a siding job.
We start at the bottom with a 1” X 8” piece of TrexTrim that we install as a water table to get the Hardi away from splash water. The TrexTrim is pretty bullet proof, comes in 18’ pieces and is easy to install. On top of the Trex we install an aluminum Z flashing. Since we’re going over Zipwall we can’t tuck the top leg under anything so we run a 6” strip of Vycor over the top leg and roll it down well. On the outside corners we install 5/4” X 6” TrexTrim over our previously installed 12” Vycor and nail it down tight with 2 ¼” ring shank siding nails. If we were working at the beach we’d be using nothing but stainless nails. The reason we use the siding nails is that they hold well and improve our efficiency. We could use shorter nails for the Hardi but that would mean different nails in different guns. With only one nail size there is no confusion or wasted time looking for the right gun.
One of helpers has cut a stack of starter strips with the electric shears so they go on first. Even though we’re going over ½’ Zipwall we still like to land our joints on a stud so we measure over and cut our Hardi on the end that will butt into the corner, no cut pieces in the middle unless there is no way around it. Our manual shear is on the ground near our working pile of Hardi which has been drug off the pallet. We don’t pick Hardi up until we install it. The cut man makes the cut then sprays the cut end with primer while one of the other guys lays a short bead of Tremco Dymonic sealant against the corner board. We set the Hardi on the Z flashing then use 5 way tools to gap it up so it’s not touching the flashing. That prevents corrosion and gives any water that might get behind the Hardi an easy way out. I also remind the painters not to caulk that gap!
Now we’re ready for our first whole piece which we usually have to notch for A/C lines. We notch from the bottom, save the cut offs and fill in as much as we can on the bottom of the notch. We use a 6” X 8” flap of house wrap under all the joints to shed any water that might get in. We cut a piece to the other corner, install it the same way and we’re over the hump. Nothing but straight runs now so we can make good time. We try to lap at least 3 studs, more if possible, and we do the laps at random. One helper stocking, cutting and 2 guys installing seems to work smoothly. The other guys are up on the pump jacks installing window trim around the upstairs windows. We have 2 quarter arch windows on each wall which requires gluing Trex together to get the arch. We have a plywood template so it’s not terrible but I’m still exploring bending the Trex.
The guys on the ground can efficiently run the Hardi up about 7’ at which point we lower the pump jacks, load up some Hardi and move the shear up to the material on the work bench. Now we have 3 guys on the scaffold and a helper on the ground handing up nails, caulk, more Hardi, etc. We use a 12’ step ladder to get on and off the scaffold and don’t bring it back down until the wall is done. As soon as we get to the rake cuts we put two guys at each end and they work toward the window in the middle. With 4 guys the gable end work goes quickly but before we’re done we caulk the window trim to the Hardi with more Dymonic. If you are depending on any caulk to keep water out of your house you’re in trouble but that’s not what we’re doing. Our caulk has two purposes, the first is stop most of the water from getting to the Zipwall and the second is to stop the painters from slopping on their $.99 a tube crap.
When we’re done the wall looks fantastic and will perform as well as anything you could install. Every step of the way we have taken care of the details so I’m sure it will keep out 99% of the water and the Zipwall will take care of the rest.
TrexTrim fascia and Hardi soffit next time
In my first post to this thread I could place the photos in the postwhere I wanted them. In the follow-ups I don't seem to have that option. Am I doing somethng wrong or missing something?
Click the "Image" square to
Click the "Image" square to the far right of the "toolbar" at the top of the comment edit box.
double post