Siding touching sidewalk

[anonymouscow]

Hello, I own a small commercial building, built in 1910. It has vinyl siding over wood siding, the vinyl siding is directly over the wood siding, no housewrap or anything. On one length of the building, maybe 50 feet long, there is a sidewalk and there is no space between the bottom of the siding and the sidewalk.

I looked under the vinyl siding where I could, and it looks like the wood siding is also touching the sidewalk, so it's not just a matter of taking off the vinyl siding and putting new siding on a little higher. This is causing moisture issues when it rains.

I'm not sure how to go about keeping the moisture out.

My only ideas are to use concrete crack filler to try and fill the crack between the foundation and the sidewalk and seal the bottom of the siding to the sidewalk.

Or to take the bottom row of siding off, put some asphalt down to try and slant the water away, get some sort of waterproof backing and raise the siding up.

I have no idea if either of those ideas would work, but I'm not sure what I can do without tearing out the sidewalk.

Thanks for any ideas!

[Jon Bon]

Put a level on that side walk........

I agree that having the siding touching the ground is bad, and your idea of cutting back a little of the wood siding is probably a good one.

However I doubt the main issue is water wicking up the wood siding and causing moisture problems. My guess is that sidewalk has flat or negative grade. So when it rains a bunch of water is channeled against the house.

If you have negative grade crack filler is not really gonna help that much.

So go get that level and report back to us!

[lthenderson]

Agree with Jon Bon's advise. Crack filler at best is a bandaid that you are going to have to apply over and over. Water is always better dealt with by getting it away from a house rather than trying to waterproof a house sitting in a puddle of water.

[rab-bit]

Put a level on that side walk........

I agree that having the siding touching the ground is bad, and your idea of cutting back a little of the wood siding is probably a good one.

However I doubt the main issue is water wicking up the wood siding and causing moisture problems. My guess is that sidewalk has flat or negative grade. So when it rains a bunch of water is channeled against the house.

If you have negative grade crack filler is not really gonna help that much.

So go get that level and report back to us!

+1 to this. We just backed out of a deal for a duplex that had a very similar issue.

[BudgetSlasher]

My only ideas are to use concrete crack filler to try and fill the crack between the foundation and the sidewalk and seal the bottom of the siding to the sidewalk.

Moisture can and does get behind vinyl siding, be it condensation, driving rain, a stray sprinkler, and so on. I would think that the last you want to do is seal the bottom shut so that any water that runs down the back side of the vinyl or the underlying wood is sealed sitting against the wood siding and framing causing rot or other moisture issues.

[Fishindude]

This is pretty common "crummy construction".   Sidewalk was probably added later without giving much thought to this problem.

The bottom of any siding (and the floor of the building) should be minimum several inches above the surrounding outside surfaces at grade; lawn, driveway, sidewalk, planters or whatever.   Permanent solutions are to remove and replace the sidewalk at a lower grade level if possible, or remove the bottom of the wall material and replace it with a concrete "curb" that can handle constant contact with ground, moisture, etc.

Leaving it as is, will result in leaks, deterioration of the bottom of walls, and possible insect trouble.

[anonymouscow]

My only ideas are to use concrete crack filler to try and fill the crack between the foundation and the sidewalk and seal the bottom of the siding to the sidewalk.

Moisture can and does get behind vinyl siding, be it condensation, driving rain, a stray sprinkler, and so on. I would think that the last you want to do is seal the bottom shut so that any water that runs down the back side of the vinyl or the underlying wood is sealed sitting against the wood siding and framing causing rot or other moisture issues.

Yeah, on second thought that would be a bad idea.

[anonymouscow]

This is pretty common "crummy construction".   Sidewalk was probably added later without giving much thought to this problem.

The bottom of any siding (and the floor of the building) should be minimum several inches above the surrounding outside surfaces at grade; lawn, driveway, sidewalk, planters or whatever.   Permanent solutions are to remove and replace the sidewalk at a lower grade level if possible, or remove the bottom of the wall material and replace it with a concrete "curb" that can handle constant contact with ground, moisture, etc.

Leaving it as is, will result in leaks, deterioration of the bottom of walls, and possible insect trouble.

There is probably already water damage. I'm thinking replacing the wall material is going to be more practical. The sidewalk is on city property,  if I lowered the grade I'm not sure how well it would tie back in with the sidewalk on both ends. It looks like maybe 6 inches of the sidewalk is on my property, I don't know if I could cut the sidewalk lengthwise and install some sort of drainage system, it would probably have to be designed so people walking along the sidewalk wouldn't step into a crack in between the building and the sidewalk though.

Maybe I will just take the vinyl siding off the entire building and I will have a better idea what I'm dealing with afterwards... I'm trying to return the building to as original condition as I practically can as it is.

Adding concrete material sounds like it would be more of a project than I could do on my own... I'm trying to do an Internet search and not seeing the exact use case I am looking for. Maybe it would be the same process of pouring a concrete footing over top of an existing concrete footing?

Thank's for the help.