Tips & Remodeling

Color Me Green – The Dilemma Of Pressure Treated Wood.

In January, 2004, the type of preservative used in wood products typically stocked in local lumber yards was “voluntarily” changed from CCA (Chromated Copper Arsenate) to ACQ (Alkaline Copper Quat). It’s known as pressure treated wood, and you’ve seen it. It’s the green colored lumber. The preservatives in it help to resist moisture and rot, particularly in exterior applications, like decks, porches, and docks.

The preservative change, from CCA to ACQ, was in response to the presence of arsenic and other components in the CCA, which were thought to be harmful, possibly toxic. The environmentally concerned felt CCA should be eliminated for human health reasons. Who wants poison on their fingers after holding the deck rail and then eating a hot dog at the family picnic? ACQ was thought to be safer, an improvement over CCA.

Over the past couple of years, there has been universal acknowledgement that all fasteners and connectors, like screws, nails, joist hangars, bolts, and post platforms, corrode faster when touching ACQ than when touching CCA treated wood products. I’ve seen it corrode double dipped galvanized steel joist hangars in less than two years. CCA treated lumber never did this so fast, if at all.

If ACQ treated lumber corrodes tough metals, think what it could do to your stomach when the rain washes over it and it percolates into the soil around your vegetable garden…. or into your well?

My first bit of advice is, if you can, delay any project using ACQ treated wood for the next six years. That way, about ten years will have passed from inception of its introduction to this market. By that time, the debate on what to use and how will settle down and converge to points of majority agreement.

If you or your builder just can’t wait to go forward, please follow these precautions:

1. Use stainless steel fasteners and connectors, particularly on projects exposed to the elements. These will cost you more, by a factor of five to ten times the price of alternatives. Most experts agree that they’re the most reliable in a universe where all alternatives, including stainless, are questionable.

2. Use rubber or other synthetic membrane barriers between the wood and connectors like joist hangars and post platforms that resist degradation by ultra violet rays from the sun.

3. Make sure all fasteners are accessible for easy future replacement. Doing this may entail some creative design. While the jury is still out on expected fastener/connector life, assume the worst. Otherwise, complete demolition and reconstruction may be your only option when the deck fasteners inevitably fail.

4. Decks, porches, and stoops that are a story or two in the air will need to be designed and built differently to accommodate safely the corrosion properties inherent in ACQ. For example build a supporting post and beam system beneath the deck. It should be contiguous to the outside wall and rest on a foundation system in the ground.

5. Confine the use of pressure treated wood to the supporting substructure only. Place an alternative finish material, such as more expensive rot resistant woods or synthetic products, in all areas of direct human contact.

As I said, if you can’t wait and must proceed, do so with caution with a good builder who understands the debate and is grappling with it.

Tim Connolly responds to constructive comments
when emailed to comments@connollycontracting.com.
Learn more at www.connollycontracting.com.

Your House Is Rotting Right Under Your Nose.

Let me give you an example of how to find and stop rot.

Recently, a repeat client asked me to repair rotting exterior wood door casing in two locations on a five year old house: on the upper corner surrounding a sliding patio door facing a sunny south; and on the upper corner surrounding an overhead garage door facing a shaded northeast.

So Detective Connolly went on rot patrol.

Here’s what I found: It seems odd but more paint was peeling from the casing at the sunny patio door location than at the shaded garage one. At both locations, the primary moisture source was, not surprisingly, rain.

At the garage, I identified two sources of moisture movement: the flow of liquid water into the trim’s butt joint by gravity and capillary flow, that is the rain got sucked into the surrounding casing and sheathing. At the patio door, it appeared that moisture was moving into the trim in all possible ways: capillarity, air transport, gravity and vapor diffusion. (Learn more about moisture sources and movement principles in “Your House Is Leaking Right This Instant! How To Dry It Out.” )

Rotten Crime Solved.

To avoid future rot, I recommended installation of a casing system that addressed the moisture sources and movement methods identified above.

1. The small spot of rotten plywood sheathing behind the corner of the garage door casing was removed and replaced with new sheathing.

2. A peel and stick rubber membrane was installed over all sheathing located beneath new casing. Next, a “crinkle” house wrap product was installed over the rubber membrane to give all moisture an escape route in the event it penetrates through, behind or around the casing and related joints. Most lumberyards don’t stock this. You need a special order to get it.

Crinkle wrap has small channels on both sides that provides a way for moisture to drain down and away by gravity, so long as a water escape space is provided at the bottom of the casing and not caulked shut.

3. All finger jointed pine casing that had rotted was replaced with a polyvinyl chloride trim (PVC), which addresses the issue of moisture being sucked into the trim by capillary action. It’s impervious to water.

4. Where the new PVC trim butts into the finger jointed pine trim that was in good shape and left in place, a new and thick bead of a paintable silicone caulk was applied to the pine, to protect it from moisture moving into the butt joint due to capillarity and gravity.

5. I used twice as many nails to hold the PVC trim in place to resist movement caused by extreme swings in temperature. Generous expansion spaces were provided to accommodate that movement.

Had I, like most of my peers, simply replaced the old rotten trim with identical new without any modifications to the replacement product selection or to the underlying drainage plain, rot would have reappeared in about the same length of time as before. Case closed, house too!

Tim Connolly responds to constructive comments
when emailed to comments@connollycontracting.com.
Learn more at www.connollycontracting.com.

Can You Stop Mold Cold?

Mold is an incredibly powerful destructive force that can destroy your house and sicken its inhabitants. So it needs to be stopped. But as in every other conflict, you need to understand the enemy before you can win the war.

Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of this member of the plant family known as fungi.

Mold contributes to the decay and removal of dead organic matter, like leaves, animals, humans, and garbage. This in turn provides nutrients for the creation and fertilization of new life-mother nature’s benevolent way to make the compost heap work. Imagine what a mess we’d be in if there weren’t a free and readily available way to break down, destroy or recycle the world’s waste. Good for mold!
Sometimes, mold is toxic and creates hazardous conditions, particularly to those with allergies. Another ugly feature: it often accelerates the decaying process of things we don’t want to rot away quite yet, such as house framing and paper vapor retarders on insulation. Bad for your house.

How Mold Is Born And How It Survives.

Mold spores are just about everywhere. Tiny and buoyant, wind and air pressure differentials easily move these microscopic spores all over the world. We’ll never completely get rid of mold because we’ll never completely get rid of the spores and the conditions that make them sprout and survive in your home.

To sprout, mold spores need to inhabit a world with three life-sustaining components:

1. Moisture in some form, like relative humidity above 70%;
2. Temperatures above 40 degrees F. but below 100 degrees;
3. Nutritious food to eat. Generally, good mold foods in your home are things like wood or wood by-products, non-synthetic fabrics, paints, glues, vinyls, and organic dust.

Not only are many of the components used to build your house nutritious for mold, some are virtual mold candy, like delicious processed papers found on sheetrock and fiberglass batt insulation. When denied easily digestible processed delicacies, mold will dejectedly move on and graze on tougher food groups, like house framing lumber and plywood.

Can You Stop Mold Cold?

Take away any of the three life-giving components mold needs and it won’t blossom or survive in your home. But, of course, all three are impossible to eliminate or control completely. Partial temporary removal of mold? Maybe. Permanent complete elimination? Never. Mold remediation salespeople, attorneys or real estate brokers encouraging you to pay to get rid of mold? Hang onto your wallet, keep it closed, and consider this….

You can’t take away mold’s food completely. Most homes are still made mostly from wood and wood by-products, furnished with mold delicacies, like cotton fabrics in couches and curtains and wool piles in carpets, and inhabited by humans, insects and mites that generate tasty organic dust.

Controlling house temperatures is a little easier than controlling nutritious food sources but who wants to live in under 40 degrees F or over 100 degrees F?

That leaves moisture, like relative humidity above 70 percent. The most practical way to avoid and kill household mold is to eliminate or control the moisture it needs to survive. This is an ongoing battle without any end in sight. But it is the most manageable of the alternatives.

We’ll address the moisture management issue more fully in our next article: “Your House Is Leaking Right This Instant! How To Dry It Out.” One thing is clear. If you don’t manage moisture, any payments made to stop mold will be wasted.

Tim Connolly responds to constructive comments
when emailed to comments@connollycontracting.com.
Learn more at www.connollycontracting.com.

Your House Is Leaking Right This Instant!
How To Dry It Out.

Moisture infiltration is public enemy number one of your house. It’s under constant attack from this most elemental and powerful of nature’s forces.

Water rots exterior trim and siding, creates smelly deteriorating cellars, leaves stains on interior walls and ceilings, and splits and chips paint.

Often invisible and yet every bit as pernicious as liquid water, water vapor migrating into your walls or attic can annihilate insulation, rot framing, and create mold that’s hazardous to your health.

Of course, you can’t stop moisture. But you can manage it to prolong the life of your house and preserve the health of your household. To do so, you need to properly identify the source, how it attacks, and what to do about it.

There are three main sources of moisture that damage your home:

1. From the outside from rain and groundwater.

2. From the inside from human, animal or plant activities such as breathing, taking showers, cooking, watering plants, or maintaining tropical fish. These are more important than you think.

3. From moisture present in building materials at the initial stage of construction or renovation, such as moisture in green lumber, fresh concrete and wet joint compound, tiling thinset and paint.

Many assume that rain and groundwater are the main moisture threats. They’re big but they’re not by any means alone.

Moisture attacks when it is on the move, penetrating your home in four main ways:

(1) From flow of liquid water, usually by gravity. For example, when rainwater drips through a hole in the roof to some point below, gravity is often the culprit. The movement of groundwater below the earth’s surface and into your cellar is often a flow process, though not always by gravity.

(2) From capillarity. That big word simply means the movement of moisture into porous, absorptive materials like cured concrete, gravel, building papers, or wood, or into or between two non-porous surfaces.

(3) From air transport. This is the movement of air containing moisture through a hole or opening due to a pressure difference on either side of the opening.

(4) From vapor diffusion. This is the movement of moisture in the vapor state through a material.

Vapor diffusion wreaks havoc on your house and its effects are usually incorrectly repaired because the moisture source and its movement are usually improperly identified.

Water Management Turned Inside/Out.

Most people think moisture comes into the house from humidity and rain outside of the house. But often, moisture migrates from the inside to the outside by vapor diffusion, that is going through the wall assembly and actually into the backside of window or door casing or through ceiling sheetrock and up into attic insulation. In this case, the usual exterior water management precautions, like house wrap, drainage planes, flashing and caulk, must be augmented with solutions tailored to address moisture transported by vapor diffusion or capillarity and originating from the interior.

How To Deal With The Problem.
As mentioned at the start, properly identify the moisture source and its method of attack. Next, tailor a proper solution. Doing so will avoid shrinking your wallet from numerous unsuccessful repair attempts based on incorrect diagnoses of the problem.
Next week, we’ll go over an example of how, by understanding the principles of this article, it was possible to diagnose correctly and eliminate the source of water stains on a kitchen ceiling and save our client a bundle, in “So You Think Your Roof Is Leaking?”

Tim Connolly responds to constructive comments
when emailed to comments@connollycontracting.com.
Learn more at www.connollycontracting.com.

So You Think Your Roof Is Leaking?

Sometimes the strangest things cause roofs to seem to leak. As I have said before - all is not what it seems.

Three years ago, a repeat client asked me to renovate the kitchen in a second home that was occupied intermittently for short periods of time, usually for family gatherings around the holidays. The home was a remarkable antique, over 225 years old, with original framing timbers providing superb structural support and showing hatchet marks where the magnificent logs from America’s original wilderness had been trimmed into framing timbers during colonial times.

The kitchen renovation was the easy part. But I noticed something not so easy: the existing painted sheetrock kitchen ceiling had ugly water stains on it. The homeowner concluded that the roof above the kitchen was leaking and asked me to give him a price to replace the cedar shingle roof and the sheetrock ceiling.

He was right: the roof was “leaking”. What none of us knew was the moisture source and how it moved. My intervention and related solutions let him keep his existing roof and most of his sheetrock ceiling, thereby saving him over fifteen thousand dollars.

Here’s how. An exterior inspection of the roof revealed that everything was in great shape. No holes. No seepage. Nothing. And the attic space above the kitchen was ventilated well.

But there were the kitchen ceiling water streaks, stains and drip marks staring back at me in areas where they don’t usually appear when the exterior roof is in good shape.

That left moisture from the interior as the only remaining source for the water stains on the kitchen ceiling. But this seemed counter-intuitive. The house was rarely occupied.

Could water vapor from the interior be moving to the attic through air transport? Holy Smokes! The facts all seemed to point in this direction. Even though the house was unoccupied, moist air from the cellar was being transported through the house and into the kitchen via an open door from the cellar.

The cellar walls were fieldstones and crumbling mortar from before the Revolutionary War…a moisture sieve. The cellar floor was earth- wet earth – which became a giant pond during spring rains. An unobstructed air pathway facilitated air transport of water vapor up the cellar stairs, through an open cellar door, through the main body of the house, and up to the attic space above the kitchen through air leaks in the kitchen ceiling lights. Moisture also migrated through the sheetrock ceiling to the attic by vapor diffusion.

The homeowner would jam the first floor heat on high, mistakenly thinking that this combined with the open door to the cellar would keep the cellar pipes from freezing. Then colder moist air from the cellar whooshed up to the warm first floor where it got heated and, because hot air rises, went right to the attic, condensing into water when it hit the cold attic roof framing. Water dripped off the attic framing onto the backside of the kitchen ceiling eventually staining it.

Here’s the advice I gave to the owner on how to prevent future water stains on the kitchen ceiling.

1. Keep the cellar sump pump plugged in and operating. Liquid water and water vapor are bad for cellars, kitchen ceilings, and attics.

2. Close the interior door to the cellar. This will help to reduce the air transport of water vapor from the cellar to the first floor and attic.

3. Turn the first floor thermostat down to 50 degrees Fahrenheit when not at home. Mother nature provides us with free natural heat below grade. The pipes in the cellar shouldn’t freeze. And really hot first floor heat is unlikely to “sink” into the cellar to heat it.

4. Air seal all areas of the kitchen ceiling. Replace air leaky ceiling down lights with air sealed ones.

5. Install more insulation in the attic space. This will slow house heat loss and thereby reduce the temperature clash in the attic that was leading to condensation and water drips.

The old roof was not replaced and is working just fine. Fifteen thousand dollars was saved by analyzing the problem and providing an unusual solution. Oh, and by the way, the kitchen renovation looks great!

Tim Connolly responds to constructive comments
when emailed to comments@connollycontracting.com.
Learn more at www.connollycontracting.com.

Why Fancy Trim Components Can Turn Out To Be A Rotten Choice.

All is not as it seems.

This is the case with the “fancy” exterior house trim that’s relatively new to our market and has become popular over the past five years or so. It’s made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and other synthetic resins.

You may be familiar with PVC because some of your water pipes, if installed recently, are probably made of it. PVC trim material is typically 50% to100% more expensive than comparable pine or cedar based trim. It looks like wood when painted white and, yes, it won‘t rot - at least not anytime soon. By using it, some manufacturers claim you’ll never have to repair rotten trim again, supported by a lifetime warranty. Tantalizing, but does anyone know of a company that has been around for 70 years and actually honored a lifetime warranty?

As I said, PVC won’t rot anytime soon. But not rotting makes little difference to the wood behind it that may rot and be so well disguised by the PVC trim you’ll never know it. This can lead to huge problems. More about that later.

Lumberyards carry a number of brands, such as Azek, Koma, and Kleer. Knowing which brand is best is challenging. For example, some white PVC trim turns yellow when exposed to the ultra violet rays of the sun. So don’t buy it because the manufacturer claims that it looks great without paint and never needs to be painted. Unless, of course, you like yellow trim.

Some brands dent when handled or moved around on site. Dents and scars have to be repaired using methods typically not used by most painters. For example, most fillers typically used by painters on wood won’t adhere long term or crack when applied to PVC. Power sanding warms up PVC and ultimately softens it making scarring worse. Some brands don’t hold paint well -- it chips off. And there’s more.

Even today, many in the trades don’t know which brand is best. So make sure you discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the different brands with a number of professional vendors and installers.

Once you’ve identified the brand and installer you want, you’ll find installing the product differs from wood trim installation. In my opinion, PVC trim installation and finishing methods are less forgiving than wood. And more labor is required to do everything just right.

For example, carpenters must provide a hefty expansion space to accommodate future movement when the material is exposed to temperature extremes common in our locale. More fasteners are required to resist that movement. Painters must use unique fillers and a limited universe of paints. Many carpenters and painters take short cuts. They often fall back on old installation and finishing stand-bys that are quick, economical, and work well on wood, not on PVC.

Okay, here goes…the most insidious and potentially costly of the fancy trim pitfalls is the one no one ever mentions or discusses: it conceals the tell tale signs of rot to a home’s framing. If wood trim is rotten and needs replacement, it’s easy to spot. Responsible carpenters will investigate behind it for evidence that rot has spread to the underlying framing. Any such clues from PVC trim are unlikely.

With PVC trim, moisture will have no choice but to migrate to, through, and around it to other parts of the house, in particular to the structure behind the trim, possibly rotting it undetected for a number of years. By the time damage clues are detected, probably when moisture stains appear on sheetrock, more significant framing repairs will be needed.

To address the challenges of fancy trim, we’ll examine some characteristics of proper flashing and drainage around it in “Your House Is Rotting Right Under Your Nose.”

Tim Connolly responds to constructive comments
when emailed to comments@connollycontracting.com.
Learn more at www.connollycontracting.com.

Surprise!
There Are No Licensed Home Improvement Contractors In CT.

Am I kidding? We’ve all seen their ads. They say “licensed and insured”. Well, guess what? There just ain’t such a thing as “Licensed” contractors. There are only “Registered” contractors.

Why would they misrepresent themselves? Simple, it sounds better… all part of their pitch. Is this illegal? Beats me. But wait, there’s more. Now that you know “Licensed” means nothing, neither does “Registered”, really. Catch this: A “Registered” contractor does not need to complete educational or apprenticeship training to acquire technical proficiency, establish or prove competency.
            
All a contractor needs to do is satisfactorily fill out certain very general information like name/address, driver’s license number, partners’ names, if they perform Radon mitigation, any court judgments, any other trade licenses, etc. on a State Department of Consumer Protection (DCP) application form. It’s easy to fill out, provided he hasn’t been sued or been convicted of a felony. Bad guys have to disclose what they did. Following disclosure, they might or might not be awarded registration, at the discretion of DCP. On acceptance of the application by DCP and the cashing of the $160 check, a contractor is registered. Big deal!
           
The sad facts are a registered contractor does not have to know how to do your job or have any experience in doing a similar job at any time in the past to get “registered” status. It is left entirely up to you to back-check contractor skills and experience. We will cover how to do this in subsequent columns entitled “10 Steps To Choosing The Right Home Improvement Contractor”.
           
What’s good about all this? Registered means that if you contract with a registered home improvement contractor and he defaults on your written contract, you are entitled to certain cost recoveries up to a total of $15,000 per residential contract from the DCP Home Improvement Guaranty Fund. But as you might expect… complying with the DCP collection guidelines is time consuming, relatively difficult and expensive.
           
Contractor swindles come in two varieties: disputable and indisputable. Typical indisputable swindles include stealing an upfront deposit without doing any work, disappearing midway through a job usually after a payment has been made and pending work is not done, or not completing a job at all. To avoid getting swindled, try not to let your money get too far ahead of the work! Conversely, try not to let the work get too far ahead of the money or you may experience a lengthy interruption.
           
Shoddy workmanship and subcontractor bills not paid by negligent general contractors are disputable swindles. These are costly to prove since disputable issues provide time consuming and therefore lucrative opportunities for attorneys to debate the merits in and out of court at high hourly rates at your expense.
           
I’m not an attorney but I can give you this advice: when choosing a contractor learn how from a good source, then go carefully.
           
There are ten steps to follow when choosing the right contractor. You can read them next week and for three more weeks right here in this column. The trick is to save money, time, and get wonderful work from your contractor. People who follow the ten steps usually get what they want. See you next week!

Tim Connolly responds to constructive comments
when emailed to comments@connollycontracting.com.
Learn more at www.connollycontracting.com.

10 Steps To Choosing The Right Home Improvement Contractor:
Parts One through Four