It’s bad from the outside, but the inside is so much worse. And it gets worse the more you look at it. So many details that are just so awful. Living in this “house” is probably miserable.
Is ‘siding’ the stuff the walls are made out of? (Sorry, me being a railway enthusiast, ‘siding’ means something completely different).
What material is that?
Yep! 99% sure the siding here is vinyl. That’s the cheapest option for house exteriors so it’s very popular in the US.
If you have the budget, you can also get siding made from aluminum. It’s all meant to mimic the look of real wood planks.
What does siding mean in railway enthusiast vernacular?
Thanks for the explanation. Vinyl seems like an odd choice of material for exterior cladding, where I live it’s normally timber, brick or sometimes steel sheeting (mainly for sheds and garages).
A railway siding is a piece of rail track that is commonly used for storing, loading or unloading trains away from the track where regular traffic runs.
Vinyl is used because it’s pretty weatherproof, easy to work with, and works well in most climates. In certain desert areas in the US, houses can get hot enough for vinyl to melt and sag, but that’s more common when there’s been a fire near the house. Given that the siding is over the vapor barrier, exterior insulation (either extruded polystyrene foam or polyisocyanurate foam) and exterior cladding, it’s mostly there for keeping moisture off the cladding, etc., and for appearance. Wood/timber siding requires more maintenance than vinyl does; you need to paint wood regularly, or else you risk it rotting out. Timber homes also tend to have less insulation, which is becoming more of a problem as climate change speeds up. (We replaced the rotted-out siding on our house with concrete fiberboard siding; it installs and looks like wood siding, but can’t rot.) Masonry homes in general, but especially masonry that’s a load-bearing component (rather than a facing on a timber-framed building) is very expensive compared to vinyl, and maintenance–tuck pointing–can get quite expensive. That said, properly done masonry construction can last centuries.
You may have heard of PVC (Poly VINYL Chloride I think) cladding - same thing. In the UK it’s predominately used for soffit and fascia (the normally white plastic bits between the top of a house wall and the beginning of the roof tiles where your gutter lives) It’s worth noting that PVC cladding is only to “pretty-up” finished buildings. It has zero construction strength but when fitted properly will stop all water penetration. Give it a wash once a year and it’s as good as new.