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Vinyl siding melts??????

edwardh1 | Posted in Construction Techniques on May 2, 2009 08:22am

Local article in newspaper paper says two homes in a mid price subdivision have melting vinyl caused by reflections from next door house’s high reflectance energy efficient windows. they had a pix of the melting- looked like giant paint type bubbles


Edited 5/2/2009 1:23 pm ET by edwardh1

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  1. DanH | May 02, 2009 08:33pm | #1

    Yep, happens fairly regularly, when a neighboring house just happens to be situated a certain way. And you should see what a slightly exuberant charcoal grill fire can do.

    The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. -John Kenneth Galbraith
  2. tek | May 02, 2009 11:26pm | #2

    Probably one of those subdivisions where the houses are 3 feet apart...

  3. Grier | May 02, 2009 11:47pm | #3

    I STILL swear one of my co-worker's nylon tool bags caught on fire, due to a reflection from a 1 x 1 window. He had taken it off and set it on the driveway outside the shop for a few minutes. Next thing we knew, it just burst into flames!

    But, having spent a fair amout of time working in between these houses (New Urbanistic Development, so they were close together) doing exterior trim, I knew those little 1x windows could reflect a lot of heat. I could feel it as I walked by, like wow!, what was that heat flash?

    Nobody ever believed my theory, btw.

    (Also, it was about 110 degrees that day.)

  4. Snort | May 03, 2009 03:32am | #4

    There's other things that melt vinyl. Bout 20 years ago, I was working on a subdivision trim crew. Cabinet guys had just been in, and chucked all their boxes off the back porch and up against the house.

    It took a lot of medication to trim those sheit boxes, and after one of the prescribed breaks on that back deck, we hear cries or "far, far"

    Wild roach, don't let anybody tell ya, pot ain't hazardous to your health... burning, melting vinyl makes you lose your appetite quickly.

    http://www.tvwsolar.com

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  5. seajai | May 06, 2009 05:20am | #5

    This sounds like a job for the Mythbusters

    1. DonCanDo | May 06, 2009 05:47am | #6

      No myth.  This was discussed a while ago: http://forums.taunton.com/tp-breaktime/messages?msg=85134.1  Apparently, it's quite uncommmon, but can happen.

      I particularly like this pic: http://forums.taunton.com/n/mb/at.asp?webtag=tp-breaktime&guid=48D88038-9DFA-4373-80EC-3F2DE56BD682&frames=no because you can see the path of the reflection as the sun travels across the sky

      1. edwardh1 | May 06, 2009 02:23pm | #8

        Thats the look of the pix shown in out newspaper

    2. User avater
      IMERC | May 06, 2009 01:22pm | #7

      IIRC they already did it...

      siding melts from focused sunlight.... 

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      WOW!!! What a Ride!

      Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!

       

      "Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints"

  6. JohnFinn | May 06, 2009 02:31pm | #9

    There is a subdivision close to me built in the mid-late 80's.
    The "builder" (using that term very loosely here)had okayed
    the used of a reflective sheathing (I think it was ThermoPly) behind the
    vinyl siding. Nearly every house with a good amount of southern exposure had melting/wavy siding as a result. Surprisingly, many areas showed the siding was really thinned out from the heat, so it not only was the ThermoPly, but also thin gauge cheapo siding.

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