Removing vinyl/aluminum siding

[Don M]

Yellow jackets are pretty nasty & aggressive.

[phil]

43 times at once, wow that would be traumatic.

[SouthernLady]

Holy stinkin' cow, Melissa! I would be dead if I went through what you did! Goodness, that makes me want to yank up my cushions off my porch wicker...

Phil, I think what you are calling a bumble bee is a wood boaring bee. They look very similar to a bumble bee, but they boar holes into wood. Perfectly round holes about the size of a nickel. My grandparents had a lot of these during the hot summer months at their 1790s house. I was terrified as a child, but my grandfather--who was an avid beekeeper--assured me they are harmless unless you bother them. Harmless to people, that is. They do harm to wood siding!

If you have honey bees, call animal control! Do not kill honeybees! There is a mite that has gotten into the US which is wiping out the honeybee population in many areas. They killed off my grandfather's hives not long after he died and have greatly affected the honeybee population in my area. If you notice, depending on where you live, you don't see many anymore. What you do see are the violent bees--wasps, yellow jackets, etc. Honeybees can only sting once. When they sting, their stinger comes out in their victim. Not so with wasps and yellow jackets. They sting you repeatedly, the little devils. Thus, honeybees will not hurt you unless they feel threatened. If you have an infestation of honeybees, what you most likely have is a swarm trying to find somewhere to go. A skilled beekeeper--which animal control can find--will be able to preserve the colony while also getting rid of your problem.


Cute, fuzzy honeybee



Here, some poor soul thought it a good idea to pose for this picture with a yellowjacket. These little devils vary a tad by region, but you get the idea of the difference.

[Don M]

Southern Lady is exactly correct; the wood boring bees are called carpenter bees here in Pennsylvania. We see a lot of them boring holes in our barn; my son swats them with a badmitten racquet! In addition to the mite that is affecting honey bees other insecticides used in agriculture have been incriminated in "hive collapse" is the term for the dramatic decrease in honey bees.

[JRC]

Phil, I think what you are calling a bumble bee is a wood boaring bee. They look very similar to a bumble bee, but they boar holes into wood. Perfectly round holes about the size of a nickel. My grandparents had a lot of these during the hot summer months at their 1790s house. I was terrified as a child, but my grandfather--who was an avid beekeeper--assured me they are harmless unless you bother them. Harmless to people, that is. They do harm to wood siding!

I don't know if it's true for all varieties of carpenter bees, but the male bees are the more aggressive, but can't sting.

http://ento.psu.edu/extension/factsheets/carpenter-bees

The male bee is unable to sting. It is the male carpenter bee, which is most often noticed. They hover in the vicinity of the nest and will dart after any other flying insect that ventures into their territory. A common behavior of the males is to approach people if they move quickly or wave a hand in the air. The males may even hover a short distance from people causing unnecessary panic. The female however, is capable of stinging but seldom does. She must be extremely provoked (i.e. handled) before she will sting.

Somewhat back on topic, I love to see houses have their aluminum or vinyl siding removed.

Unfortunately, in Youngstown, stripped aluminum siding is usually a sign of blight. Strippers will steal the aluminum siding off of vacant houses, to sell to unscrupulous scrap yards. But, even still, I think the house often looks better without the siding.

[Wackyshack]

Way late to the game, but seeing as I am 3/4 of the way through my tin can siding adventure I had to chime in.
I hated the fact that the house was encased like a tin can. The house had no pizzaz as the long time owners covered that all up almost to the glass on the windows so they never had to paint again!

What I found during the unveiling process:
Roof returns were ripped off leaving gaping holes so the cold air could get in.
I also found a pair of 1920's button fly suspendered trousers in one of the holes.
The sils to the window had been chopped off. Go around the windows??? WHY that is work!
The decorative moldings at the top of the window were torn off.
All the decorations such as the dental work, bed moldings, the rain guard, decorative shingles and gingerbread trim were hacked off. I found the outlines of it from former paint jobs.
Water managed to get behind the siding, I had rot around a few of the windows.
Claps were split and some had to be replaced.
Texas sized paint chips as the paint baked off down to the wood. In other places where there
was plenty of shade I had to deal with alligatored paint and used a heat gun to get that off.
The siding used to cover my porch which was the facia boards were imploding cost me unforseen
money to get fixed so I could put the corbels back on the porch.

My house was added on the North side. The drunken weasels who did the job left the vertical corner boards on the house and just put up the claps on the addition. I was faced with marrying the addition to the original structure by stripping off all the claps (which were also put up without a story pole and Blind Freddie must have done the job because they were 3", 3-3/4", 4" staggered all over the place) This was done on entire front of the house except under the porch which were original and untouched.
I needed a rain guard, copies of fancy shingles to match what was there, top molding on the windows, sils, facia on the porch repaired, missing corbels custom made and replaced, new gingerbread purchased and installed, top of the peak area painted (too high for me) 2 rotted porch poles fixed, new gutter, new bed molding repair to soffits and facia boards, holes from missing roof returns repaired. What looked like $2-3grand before the siding came off and the nightmare began, turned into $13,000 by the time it was done.

You never know what lurks beneath the shadows. Happy I did it but the cost stopped us dead until we can save to move on to the next thing that needs attention.

Here is the before and after of the house... hardly looks like we did that much because the siding covered so many nightmares.
http://s166.photobucket.com/user/Wackys ... g.html?o=1

theold claps
http://s166.photobucket.com/user/Wackys ... rt=6&o=118

Story pole??? we don't need no freakin' story pole...
http://s166.photobucket.com/user/Wackys ... .html?o=11


The house in the "during stage" http://s166.photobucket.com/user/Wackys ... rt=6&o=117

[CrestwoodCottage]

Wackyshack,

Your house looks great! I'm expecting it to cost several thousands to redo the vinyl siding if we don't end up restoring it back to wood but it sounds like I should add about 5k to that! Lol, you're probably going to be able to sit back and say "told ya so" in about a year!

[phil]

the "bee movie" with Seinfeld explains it pretty well on a less than technical level.
- i don't know what the bumble bees were or if that is the correct term, they were big round ones. they were really a minor issue to deal with.
the ones that infested my porch were definitely wasps or yellowjackets. wow did they ever multiply, I guess other swarms must have joined them over the summer, it was quite an event. I guess I was lucky because I was out there buggering around with their home all summer and they didn't come after me. Had it been any other place I might have torn in to tackle the hive but being inside my porch I didn't want to take the 100 year old shingles apart so I had to deal with it without aving access to the actual hive.

[Wackyshack]

Phil "yuk" to your whole yellow jacket problem. We had to call Orkin in to get rid of them inside our house wall off the porch this year.

Cedar,
It is worth the adventure and result to take off the siding. The reward is in itself. I was just hoping to forewarn with the "got caught - twice" tag line so just in case you were really on a tight budget, to find things that can't wait to be fixed once exposed will leave you in dire straits. I had started with the back of the house first. That was $6 grand. Then my contractor told me due to that side being exposed to the weather I wouldn't be putting up with all the same problems found the front 3 times worse! The siding I took down by the kitchen held no new surprises though.... see sometimes it does work!!!!

[kelt65]

I find this so strange that anyone would call a wasp or a yellow jacket or hornet a bee or confuse them in any way ... is this a regional thing, like the way people here call all soft drinks "cokes"?