Stop, Look, A Lesson - Part 3

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What we don’t know…

In Delaware, homeowners are given a one year guarantee by the builder on their brand new home. I have never been at the center of a lawsuit over a warranty but my understanding is that it becomes more difficult for homeowners to claim after this point. In Mrs. H’s case she was also the second owner of the home. The women who had owned it before had commissioned the house and in one section she had installed a stationary pool for her husband who needed it for health reasons. When Mrs. H bought the house, she wanted to have the pool removed so she struck a deal with the original builder JW. He could have the pool if he removed it. I was not privy to any of these negotiations but when Mrs. H spoke about them, it was in a manner which implied that the relationship she had with JW was a good one. We advised Mrs. H to call him and bring him into the conversation. She did so and explained what had transpired to the best of her ability and then set up a meeting with him which she asked Keith and I to be present at as well. Before that meeting with the builder we consulted a local home inspector. We knew we were dealing with a situation of our word against the builders and since we had done the paint job our word was slightly compromised. The inspector came to the house and gave this assessment in his report:

“I have found that the top corners of the “J” channel on all windows were not properly finished so water can enter sides, which runs down behind the vinyl siding. There is also a similar problem w/the doors, especially the rear one. The 2 corner posts are open at top so water enters, which over time can (or already has) create damage at bottom framing/sheathing areas.”

How Low Can You Go?

On the day of the meeting with the builder Mrs. H, Keith and I were waiting inside. JW and another man arrived but spent a good deal of time circling the house before coming to the door. The meeting was uncomfortable to say the least. We would show him where the paint was peeling because of water and where the water had entered but he refused to accept total responsibility. He kept saying that some of the paint failure MAY have come from water getting behind the siding but that some part of it was our fault as painters. I try to be a diplomatic person so I offered that it is indeed hard to know without removing all of the siding. This is something that Keith and I had mentioned to Mrs. H before which had really shocked her because after all the house was only seven years old. The mention of removing the siding had the same effect on JW and his companion.

For years I had been telling people (and myself) that my biggest problem with vinyl siding is that there is no good way to know what is going on behind it. J channel seems to me to be just as good at trapping water as it is at channeling it away depending upon how it is installed. I had read some horror stories about folks whose sheathing was being decimated by water behind the siding and because of the nature of vinyl the house had showed no symptoms on the outside. There was no way I could be sure this was happening here on Mrs. H’s house but the more JW pointed the finger back at us the more I became convinced this had not been our fault. The meeting ended without a resolution, JW told Mrs H he would call her.
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