Help!! siding problem???

DaveO · 02-26-2006, 05:43 PM

Progress Energy has been replacing elec. meters in my area with new ones that can be remotely read. Yea, less people snooping around my place. The have already replaced one of my meters that is for the well power. But they couldn't replace my main meter due to the trim on my siding covering part of the meter. They asked me to remove it and call then to come back. I have NO CLUE on how to remove the trim and/or the siding, and keep it intact for re installation. I didn't put this up, I bought the house this way. If any of y'all have experience with vinyl siding and aluminum trim, please help me to figure this out. Here is my situation:

And closer

Thanks in advance for any advice y'all can give.

Dave

macdaddy · 02-26-2006, 06:32 PM

Dave O, If you have to take the siding down you will have to start at the top and work your way down to the meter. If you just pry the top piece off it will expose the nails of the next row down. Actually it goes fast once you get the first one off and it goes up equally fast. If needed you could buy just one row of siding at Lowes or Home Depo for about four bucks. The side trim can just be left in place. Once you remove the first one it will all make sense. Last week you asked me a question in my photo album. If you have a chance go there for the answer. The windows in that picture is the reason I had to remove and reinstall siding.

macdaddy

Travis Porter · 02-26-2006, 08:12 PM

It really isn't too hard to take off and fix. What I would do is determine the best sections of siding to remove. I would take the siding off first above and below the meter box to the next section. You start on the upper most siding joint to work your way down. You open the siding joint with a couple of putty knives and a flat pry bar. Be gentle and take your time and work from one end to the other. It is just a locked plastic joint no glue. Once you get the highest joint open that you want to take off you pull the nails and work your way down. Use the pry bar and off course a hammer to pull your nails. Now you can remove I believe what is called the j trim. That will give you access to your meter base. You might be able to use one small piece of the trim but you will need to buy one piece of j trim and it comes in long sections and you would want to make it match. You will need some roofing nails say 1 1/2" galvanized. Use this to reinstall the j trim. The nails should not be all the way set. They should just hold the trim and siding snug to allow for expansion and contraction. Oh, all of this can be cut with you power tools and other stuff. I would use tin snips and/or a utility knife. Once you get your j trim up, adjust the cuts of your siding to allow a 1/8" gap on each end of the siding. The siding you took off should be big enough so you shouldn't have to trim much.

The hardest part of all of it is opening the snap lock joint of the siding and not cracking or breaking it as it can get brittle. If the siding pieces are very long you don't really have to take them all the way down just pull the nails far enough back so you can bow it out of the way. My .02

Good luck!!

DaveO · 02-26-2006, 08:49 PM

Thanks for the advice so far. It never dawned on me that the new opening would have to be bigger, the meter is the same size, but I will make the opening bigger so I don't run into this problem again. Travis your explanation was excellent, but one thing I found is that there are small nails in the interlocking joint between the siding pieces. The nails are driven in far enough than I can't get a hold of them to pull them out. I tried to drive the nails all the way through, but had no luck. I had hoped it would be a matter of just prying lose a interlocking joint, but there seems to be some red-neck engineering going on here. I might just try Mike Davis's suggestion and rip off the trim pieces and see if that gives enough clearance, then cut the hole a little larger and apply new trim.

Dave

froglips · 02-26-2006, 09:35 PM

One "thought", and yes I did pick a bad day to stop sniffing glue....

If you remove just the small trim, could you put a piece of wood in the opening and then have them attach the meter so it sits just proud of your siding?

I checked my meter and its not recessed, as yours appears to be.

Jim

McRabbet · 02-26-2006, 10:50 PM

Dave,

Yesterday, I watched a Home Improvement Segment on the DIY Channel that involved replacing a window with a garden window and they went through the process of removing the vinyl siding that overlapped it. Check out the following link to see if this will help you get the siding off. As Travis suggests above, the lower edge of each piece of siding has a hook that catches the top of the piece below it -- if you work open one of these carefully, you should be able to get a flat pry bar up under the nails holding that piece at the top. Unlike his suggestion, they started low and worked up and removed siding from between the trim piece at a corner (like at your meter box) and the window to its left (like your door at the left of your picture). At the bottom of the page in the link above, there are other links that covered Adjustments and Reinstalling the Siding. My .02 - HTH.

Rob

DaveO · 02-26-2006, 11:19 PM

Thanks Rob, I will give that a try. I still think that I have nails where they souldn't be though. But that is the story of any work I have done on this piece-meal house of mine. 30 years old with 3 additions..it's a red-neck Hilton, with a nice woodshop

Dave

chris99z71 · 02-27-2006, 11:03 AM

DaveO,
A year and a half ago I took my "vacation" to go re-side my parent's house in NY. I had never done vinyl siding and I had imagined it to be much harder than it really is.
Siding is installed from the bottom up. First, a metal starter strip is put on the bottom. The first (bottom) course of siding snaps into that at the bottom and then is nailed at the top. Each following course on the way up is snapped into the course below and nailed at the top. The very top row is snapped into the row below and then into some sort of trim piece along the top with no nails.
My advice would be to start at the top. Pop the top row out of the top trim piece. This will expose the nails for the piece below. Pulling the nails will be much easier this way than going at them blind from below. You'll destroy much less siding this way. You only need to strip to just below the box.
Next, after that wall is stripped between the door and the inside corner, I'd have the power company come do their thing. Then I'd buy some J-channel and trim out the new box and re-side around it.
It sounds like alot of work, but I'd estimate that it'd take about 30 min to strip the wall carefully and then maybe an hour to re-side it after the new box has been installed.
One other concern that I've got - where is the cable going to and from the meter run? Is it behind the siding, through the wall or what? Is the way the cable is run up to code and will they install the new meter this way? Not trying to scare you, just thinking out loud.

NCPete · 02-27-2006, 11:54 AM

they just replaced my meter, and all they do is open the box, unplug the meter, and put a new one in. same box, different digital meter.

DaveD · 02-27-2006, 04:52 PM

Well I wouldn't take the siding off above the meter (and work my way down).

I'd cut (hack?) the 3 trim pieces off around the meter box. That should allow you to pry the siding off (a little)next to the box. Start with that piece that is right at the bottom of the box (the one with the 'tail' on it). Pry it just enough to get some aviation/tin snips on it and cut it so the bottom of the electrical box is clear.

Now you should be able to pry a little on the vertical parts next to the box and trim it with the tin/aviation snips. Work your way up to the piece on the top of the box and do the same thing.

You have to cut enough clearance so they can pull the bottom of the meter box face out (probably 1+" or so) and then drop it down about 3/4".

After they replace the meter head get some vinyl trim channel from the borg and trim it out the right way.

I would think the way that is currently trimmed out water can get behind the top trim piece and find its way behind the siding at the lower left of the meter housing.

That vinyl job around the meter base is a real hack job. Hopefully they did a better job around the windows/doors.

That meter almost looks like a rework/retrofit. Low to the ground so a midget can read it. Was that area behind the wall the meter is on a added wall sometime in the past? Could the meter have been originally on the wall on the right (and higher up)?

DaveO · 02-27-2006, 09:53 PM

Originally Posted by DaveD

That meter almost looks like a rework/retrofit. Low to the ground so a midget can read it. Was that area behind the wall the meter is on a added wall sometime in the past? Could the meter have been originally on the wall on the right (and higher up)?

Oh so many things have been added to my house it's not funny. The meter is on an addition. I added the decking uderneath it that makes the meter so low. The original deck stopped 2" shy of butting up to the bumpout to the right of the meter and had its corner clipped at a 45° angle. It was wasted space and asking for my daughter to fall off the end, so I filled it in.
Dave

ChrisC · 03-01-2006, 08:55 AM

Dave,

Sounds like you've got some good advice on removing the siding.

So, check this link out about the new PE meters in your area.

http://www.wral.com/news/7553215/detail.html

NCPete · 03-01-2006, 09:10 AM

good, one more thing to look forward to when I get home. A new BIG electric bill. I'll betcha we forgot to turn down the thermostat, too. What do the cats care if it is 70 in the house? We just got our new meters in a few weeks ago.

Travis Porter · 03-01-2006, 11:25 AM

Can't say much about the new meters, but my electric bill has gone through the roof. We heat with it, but over $500 for a month is not a pleasant experience. What makes it bad is this has been a very mild winter....

ChrisC · 03-01-2006, 01:06 PM

Yeah,

The woodshop I work at while in high school(mid 80's), had the same thing happen.

One day, out of the blue, the power co. shows up(one man) tells the owner he will be "upgrading" the power co. owned meter/equipment. We had 3 phase, and the power co. meter/distribution equipent was located inside the building. This fella works two whole days.

Next months bill was $200 more. The power bill was ALWAYS within $20-30 dollars for each month, depending on the time of year.

The power co. (Dominion NC Power) couldn't/wouldn't explain it. They had their people come look at the new equipment, but said everything checked fine.

Outcome!!!! the bill never went down to where it was before. The owner complained to the power co. for years, but to no avail.

I guess they know they have a monoply on electicity.

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