Yes, Your Siding Does Look Rotten, But It May Not Be As Bad As You Think!
After a few decades of seasonal rain, sun, frost; you may have some damage to your siding. When you property was first built the new materials were installed and probably painted or stained to protect it from the weather. Keeping the water, sunlight, and freezing weather off of the wood product will add to the life of the siding.
However, over time moisture will start to get into places were the caulking has separated or the paint has started to fail. This is something that just happens. If you regularly maintain your property, this will re-correct the areas that would be harmed by the intrusion of water and extreme weather conditions. If you do not maintain your property, moisture will begin to soften and rot the wood siding. It will start to look rotten!
This may not be as bad as you would expect at first, these areas can be fixed and made weather tight again. Leaving it untreated could mean some more trouble in the future. We see this issue on the large apartment communities all the time. The reason is that no one is really paying attention to the siding until it is an water damage issue. The problem has become obvious at this point. Large areas of dry rot, moisture intrusion to the interior walls, or maybe some wet carpets.
The natural tendency for most people is to do a quick, and inefficient, repair rather than correcting the problem. This is cheaper and allows management and owners to feel better about the situation, I guess. A better solution may be to budget for regular repairs annually, and avoid having to spend a boatload of money once the problem has escalated to a very large project.
We are coming up on the budget season for most apartment communities, perhaps you also have a budget for rental homes too. Think about adding some money for the maintenance of the building. A few pieces of siding every year can be a lot easier to swallow than tens of thousands in one lump sum.
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