This is an interesting phenomenon one of my clients had occur to his house about two months after the home inspection. The home was a newer cape built in 1991. The inspection was done at the end of Sept. 2005.
The client noticed his siding was melting in Dec. on the left side of his house. He called me to asked have you ever seen this before? I told him no and would look into it. He emailed me a bunch of photos he took because quite frankly I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
All the pics. the client took, these are not my photos.
This is looking up the siding. Anyone getting sea sick?
Right pic is the air temp. and the left is the siding temp. Notice the bright spot in the left photo. That is a refection from the neighbors window.
Reflections on the clients house and the neighbors windows.
I asked around about this and no inspectors I talked with had heard of this happening. I did find someone with the same experience on the ASHI discussion boards. That inspector had seen this happen on a condo.
My client contacted the old owner and as expected he was a little evasive. He did remark "it happened again". So this was not the first time this occurred and it seemed they had replaced the siding before selling.
The melting only happened in the cold months. This would seem to be because the trees were bare and the angle of the sun was right at this time.
I have never heard back as to what the client did to rectify the problem. He did say he was going to talk to the neighbor, but said he could not expect the guy to cover his windows. Melting siding, yes it can happen.
James Quarello
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