Vinyl sided chimney on side of house - rotting OSB

SDC

I too have seen and know so called contractors who cannot fix the problem as well. All I am saying is, if you are having someone come out to look, I would think THAT person would be better informed on how to handle the issue that people on-line.
How can you trust people here??
I have seen (not this thread BTW) lots of people in this chatroom give awful advise, as I'm sure many of you have too.
If the contractor he calls cannot fix it...he should be calling someone else...

Here is a nice example of a home that had a flashing detail leak....but the vinyl siding held up perfectly...

jmiller

Were gutters the missing flashing detail?

Michael Thomas

Looks to me like missing gutters plus missing kick out flashings:



This detail is for a kick out at a wall, but the use at a chimney is the similar, see here for more information:

”Roof” leaks caused by missing kick out flashings at chimneys can cause "wall" leaks below- Paragon Home Inspections and Thermal Imaging Chicago

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jmiller

It's good that you point them out to your customers. A lot of inspectors miss it.

In SDC's pics it looks like the water ran all the way down the outside of the siding until it hit the j channel at the bottom, which was probably pitched towards the rotted wall on both sides.

SDC

Correct, you hit it right on the head... water was running down the chase siding, going into the "J" channel at the bottom of the chimney chase. It was then running right towards the house. This house was built in 1997, not that old, with proper flashing and details like above, this would not have happened.

Michael Thomas

Private message sent.

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Slyfox

I have seen many in this forum and others giving really pi** poor advise.
That shouldn't stop us from giving our opinions tho, with everything said here on this subject the OP will know what questions to ask when he meets the roofer who shows up and be able to better decide if that roofer really knows what he is talking about.

BTW, The pics show poor flashing "maybe the roofers, maybe the siders" the gutters or lack there of don't cause leaks like that.

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SDC

Siders all the way...

It all starts at the bottom of the chase......I agree gutters don't cause leaks at all. Faulty installs, clogs, etc. can cause leaks, not products.

SDC

BTW
I have not seen the OP back here, I hope all of this will help...

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Michael Thomas

IMO, that's a "combination of ingredients problem" - the siding install guaranteed that water would enter the exterior wall wall at the bottom of the chase even absent the roof runoff above, and the lack of gutters and the missing kick out flashing guaranteed a high concentration of water from roof runoff was present to worsen the problem.

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Michael Thomas

To go back a step, SDC's example is a good illustration of why I'm skeptical that when a chimney penetrates a rake, the chimney's flashings should direct water over the rake rather than back toward the roof side of the chimney.

We know that real-world, even at new construction, wall cladding details will usually be imperfect if not blatantly incorrect, and that as a result at least some water will be entering behind the water resistant barriers and flashings details.

And we know that at older buildings, there will often have been a series of modifications (siding and window installs, additions, wall penetrations for dryer and bath exhaust fans and the like, etc.) which compromise the original wall water-control provisions, often in ways we can't visually assess without removing portions of the cladding and/or trim.

We also know that the investigation and and correction of many of these defects will usually be outside of the scope of the work being performed during a re-roof or even the installation of a roof at new construction. For example, in SDC's examples few roofers are going to be pulling off siding to investigate its installation, except perhaps for a small area at the roof, chimney junction itself - even if they are aware of the potential problems, or even strongly suspect they are present, convincing homeowners to pay for the investigation and repair of such problems will be somewhere between difficult and impossible).

So the the questions confronting someone installing a roof (if they even bother to ask it) is not "Is water getting into the walls?", it's "How much water is getting in, and how fast is it deteriorating the materials it reaches?".

And real-world, given the quality of the actual work by others we see every day, the answer usually is "If it's not too much water, and it's not creating too much damage" (i.e. there is only minor deterioration, and it's going to take decades to cause problems), then "given the nature of the beast, that's about the best we can expect, but let's at least try not to make it any worse...".

And from that perspective, why would a roofer want to direct substantial quantities of water down a wall of unknown but likely imperfect water-resistance, when there is the alternative of sending it down the roof to be eventually conducted away from the rest of the structure by an appropriate roof drainage system?

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jmiller

There are hundreds of places that would leak like that if they were exposed the amount of water directed down that wall. Gutter guys would have probably sealed gutter to vinyl and gone a long way towards preventing this.

Tom Struble

good call Mr.Miller,vinyl siding can handle a surprising amount of water intrusion,but even it has its limits

if that was wood or fiber cement,i'd imagine the damage would be much worse if installed with the same level of expertise

side wall water protection should not depend on one system for ''waterproofing'',but should be attacked with a multi layered approach

kwikfishron

I disagree, I don’t think I’ve ever had a customer that didn’t want the root cause of the problem detected and resolved. What’s the point of a new roof or siding if it’s still going to leak. Although not always the case, more times than not it is a simple flashing or wb detail that is the problem and correcting it is usually a small additional charge compared the cost of the job.

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MJW

Or we could just keep our mouths shut and let people get what they pay for. That would be better for all of us, right?