We have an issue with rotting wall shingles, which I'm unsure how to deal with. Here are the details:

Our house has a brick patio that butts up directly against the back of our house with wood shingle siding. The point where the brick patio meets the siding was filled in by stuffing foam backer rods down into the gap and then filling it over with some sort of sealant. Over time this sealant has given way and the shingles have started to rot out along the bottom edge that is up against the patio. I've attached some pictures to the bottom of this post to show what's going on.

My basic question is this: can I just replace the rotted out singles, fill in the "gap" with new foam/sealant and call it good? Or is there a bigger issue here in that the shingles shouldn't run down all the way to the patio like this? Given the amount of rot occurring around the patio, it seems if I simply replace and reseal, I'll end up in the same position some years down the road. If a quick fix isn't a good long-term solution, what is the "proper" way to handle a case like this? Thanks in advance for the advice and let me know if you need any more details.

 

As a side-note, the patio's pitch does not slope down towards the house, though it is probably flatter than I prefer. So when it rains, while water doesn't necessarily pool up against the house, given the slight irregularities in height of the brick, it does drain fairly slowly and collect in pools on the patio itself.

 

Wood siding should be kept 6" above grade. id recommend cutting that first row completely off and replace it with a pvc 1x6 and z-flashing.

 

I agree! even if you do all the painting right and stay on top of the maintenance - those bottom shingles are still going to get wet and eventually rot.

 

Thanks for the feedback, guys. PVC board sounds like a promising option, though the height of that bottom row of shingles varies depending on where around the patio you are. Most shingles have an 8"-10" height to the next row up; other parts around the patio are around 6". And of course the shingles are staggered and alternate in height by an inch or so as you go across the row.

It appears 10" PVC boards are available, so I could altogether replace the bottom row of shingles, even for the "tall" areas. I'm just trying to decide how strange it would look to have such a tall board across parts of the patio. Maybe it wouldn't look odd at all. Or perhaps keeping the PVC board limited to 6" and making a "short" row of siding above it would be doable? I'll have to think on this a bit, but am open to suggestions.

Regardless, it sounds like something needs to be done, other than just replacing shingles and resealing, so this doesn't happen again down the road!

 

Yes... getting a 10" board and ripping the bottom edge to match the various levels of grade would be perfect.

 

IMO the difference in materials won't be that noticeable after it's painted ...... and it will look like a border anyway less maintenance in the future too

 

Is this house on a slab?
I'd bet when you remove those shakes your going to find some mold and rot at the bottom plates, sheathing and wet insulation.
Someone really messed up by building that patio that high.
The siding and the doors threshold should have been at least 6" above the patio.

 

The house has a stone foundation with a basement, built in the early/mid 40's. I'm sure there will be all sorts of fun stuff to deal with behind those shingles .

Yeah, this house has been added on to and changed quite a bit over the years. I'm certain this brick patio is not original to the house. And I'm sure when it was first built there was 6" of clearance around the original patio or whatever was there before. They apparently just decided to built on top of the old structure instead of digging down/replacing/etc.

We just moved in a little over a year ago, so I'm slowly finding all the oddities that were left behind due to these types of improper renovations.

I took a couple more photos that show the length of the area I would have to replace. As you can see there are a number of "obstacles" and height variances along the way that I'll have to deal with...fun stuff, huh!

 

I'm a painter, not a carpenter but it might be a good idea to remove the 1st row of brick pavers so you can better remove the shingles and the PVC 1xs will be thicker than the shingles.

 

The more I look at this situation the messier it is getting! @marksr, I assumed that the shingles stopped at the top of the patio, but your comment got me looking at them a little more closely, specifically around the basement window well. Based on the picture below, the shingles drop down behind the pavers a good few inches. If all of them are like this, then yeah, this job just became that much more difficult...

 

I know it's been a while on this. I spent a lot of time considering various solutions, many of which were suggested by you fine people here on this forum, and which I utilized. So I thought I'd update this thread with the solution I ended up taking.


Above is the section I worked on. It was the least "risky" in that this is the wall into the garage which sits on a cement slab (no basement or foundation to worry about)


Another angle showing the back of the garage wall, which will need to be addressed eventually as well.


Close-up of some of the wood rot along the wall before I started pulling up bricks and taking shingling off.


Starting to pull off shingles and encountering more rot. Note that what's left of the shingles extended several inches below the brick patio surface. Even the lowest 1x12 sheathing board under the shingles was rotted, so we had to rip this board out as well, exposing the 2x4 studs behind it (and my garage).


More bricks pulled up. I actually encountered a large carpenter ant nest while pulling off the shingles, which didn't help things one bit.


Sill plate was practically rotted all the way through, which detoured me a bit since I didn't really have the expertise to replace this.


Fortunately, I had a great handyman to help me with the job of replacing the sill plate.


New sill plate.


Now for a couple products to help with the waterproofing of this wall:
1. Ice & Water Barrier - normally used in roofing, i settled on this material to serve as a barrier to be placed between the 2x4 studs and a new 1x12 sheathing board, which is made of PVC.
2. NDS Mini Channel - because of the grade of the existing patio anything I do to the wall will still suffer from the problem of water pooling up against it, which I'm certain will just do more damage of some sort over the long run. So I decided to install this channel drain to direct water away from the house. Fortunately, there is a downspout located at the end of the house that connects to a french drain which goes out to the yard.


Begin installing ice and water shield behind existing shingles.

 

Another shot of the ice and water shield after it's been stapled into place.


The stuff is advertised as "self-healing" and so water penetration from stray water through staple or nail holes should be insignificant.


Install AZEK 12" PVC Trim board over ice and water shield, replacing the original rotted out wood sheathing.


Close-up of the PVC trim board.


Wide angle of the work so far.


Note that the ice and water shield extends below the grade of the brick patio to act as a sort of flashing in case water makes its way behind the trim board or though final caulking between the patio and wall when this job is finished up.


I wish I would have taken more pictures of the actual process of installing the channel drain, but I just didn't think to do it. Note I still have some rot to deal with on the door frame.


A closeup shot of the channel drain.


This is at the corner of the house, a 2" pipe runs into the existing downspot drain, which goes underground into a french drain out in our backyard.


Closeup of the channel drain and new wall. I left about a 1/2" gap between the mortar and PVC trim to fill with foam backer rod and DAP Concrete Sealant

 

Put in new cedar shingles and paint.


So that's it! Except...what I repaired so far is just a small portion of the overall patio. As you can see from the pictures below I have quite a bit ahead of me! I plan on installing channel drains on only certain parts of the rest of the patio, not all of it. There's serious pooling and draining issue where that bay window meets the sun room that would definitely benefit from a channel drain

Hope this helps anyone out there who might have run into an issue in their own house that is similar to mine!

 

Sorry for the formatting issue with my previous posts. I had too many pictures to fit into one post so I had to break it up between three new posts, which are now in a somewhat jumbled order when reading from the top of this thread.

 

The channel drain was a good move. Nice job.

 

Looks good .............