Forms done (?)

Ronnie was back Tuesday with one assistant working on the slab forms and a kid (on virtual daycare).  I was very glad to hear them starting around 9:30am.  They left around 1pm.  Forms look basically in order now, mostly secured to ground and leveled, mostly doubled 2x6's now (rather than just one 2x6 suspended in midair, as it had been for the past 2 weeks).

Sometime around 10am I continued checking out different brands of fiber cement panels online, as I had been doing Monday night.  (I noticed on Monday when I said "Hardipanel" Ronnie said "cement board" so I was wondering if he was considering some other brand, so I thought I'd check them all out.)

Then I noticed that despite some differences in warranty, they all specify one thing.  Cement siding panels are required by all manufacturers to be 6 inches minimum above grade (earth level).  That got me to wondering if Ronnie had thought of that.  So I went out to talk to him around 10:30.

Ronnie said that it was fine, the siding would just overlap the concrete by a tiny bit, and the concrete was at minimum grade in front at 6 inches (as held by the 2x6 boards).  But then I said that if the siding overlapped the concrete, it would not be exactly 6 inches but a little less, like 5 1/2.  Ronnie said not to worry because the siding panels had a lifetime warranty.

I then related to him my experience with siding warranty on the back of my house.  The siding company sent out inspector who determined that the siding was less than 6 inches from the ground, so the warranty was void, the panels had been installed incorrectly.  So we needed to meet that minimum requirement, or there wouldn't be any warranty.

Ronnie did not look pleased.  He asked me if I wanted to finish the project soon.  I told him I was sorry for asking him to make so many changes (it was exactly 2 weeks ago I informed him of the easement violation, and that he finally agreed to move the forms back to avoid encroachment, and that seemed to derail the project for almost 2 weeks, mostly because he only showed up twice during that time).

Ronnie then suggested that he could nail an additional small board to the top of the existing forms.  I asked if that wouldn't make the sides of the concrete rather lumpy.  He said they would smooth it down afterwards.  I agreed to that, and left.

But then I started to worry about this extra board Ronnie had proposed, that sounded rather too improvised, and I wondered if it could be catastrophic.  The extra board might come loose, I worried, and then spill concrete all over.  And I didn't really like the idea of an extra bump in the concrete, that might mean the panels wouldn't hug the concrete very tightly.

But I figured I'd better not bother Ronnie any more about this, he was angry enough already.  Even just to tell him not to bother with the extra board, now that we had agreed to it.  Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut.  I wondered similarly about bringing up the easement problem two weeks ago.  Maybe it would have been easier just to pay the $720 for two variances.  Or just not tell anyone, and then maybe nobody would ever notice.

There is only a problem with the 6 inch clearance at the front end of the pool house, the grade goes downard from there.  Thus most of the siding will easily exceed the 6 inch requirement anyway.  Only in front is there a slight problem, and about half of the front is going to be french doors rather than siding, and the doors are going to be above a ramp rather than bare earth.

I think this 6 inch requirement is more of a "gotcha" that siding companies use to avoid paying claims, more than a real limitation with fiber cement.  What is the difference between 5 and 6 inches above grade anyway, seems about the same to me.  They only require 1 inch above concrete walkways.  And as far as gotchas go, I'm sure the siding company can find some other gotcha anyway.  By legend, siding manufacturers almost never pay replacement claims.  The cheap pressed board siding on the back of my house is still holding together after 27 years in spite of often (during wet weather) being less than 6 inches from ground, and never having been repainted.

But I had actually suggested on Monday that Ronnie get 8x2 boards to allow more clearance.  And, it occurred to me later that 6x2 boards aren't really 6 inches high either, more like 5 1/2 inches.  The building industry sure is full of ways to cut corners.

I was thinking, though, that when I drive through more expensive neighborhoods you can see the siding (often brick) starts well above the ground, sometimes even more than 12 inches.  It's only in cheap neighborhoods like mine where the siding is often quite close to the ground, often violating siding warranty requirements.  So some builders do things above and beyond, and others fall a little short.

About 3pm when I was driving through Candlewood, a slightly higher priced neighborhood than mine, I  noticed that all of the houses seemed to have their siding, brick or not, easily more than 6 inches from the ground.