How Much Distance From Siding To Dirt

Making the situation worse is a downspout pouring water right into the pile.

How much distance from siding to dirt.

To preserve your home s exterior siding and foundation you must ensure that dirt dense vegetation mulch or anything the can hold moisture against your home is properly cleared away. Any contact with any building siding material and the ground or even placing it too close to ground level invites damage from insects carpenter ants termits or from water and rot. Use commercial grade metal edging for drip edges. All siding should ideally have at least 6 to 8 inches clearance above the ground.

It comes in 1 8 and 3 16 widths that are 4 tall and 10 or 16 long. The reason for this clearance requirement is that while moisture will rot wood and damage other siding even if the ground isn t holding. Keep all building siding 6 8 above soil surface slope away don t trap water in mulch beds nor against foundation walls. The exterior of the house is aluminum siding and brick.

I cannot just arbitrarily say wood cannot be 6 inches from soil. The dirt should never touch the siding a minimum of 2 of concrete between dirt and siding. On 2 sides of the house the siding is touching the dirt which i know is a no no. James i had always understood the dew point in mass to be about 8 inches the distance to keep wood above grade but that s from instinct or common sense or experience.

No rolled plastic from a box store. That would vary with the installation but siding should pretty much never finish at the patio surface there should always be a gap and that will vary from 2 6 depending on the type of patio materials. No code ref here but then again we just changed to the 2003 irc. You can see where the mulch touching the siding blocked the painters.

So when referring to wood siding the distance from the soil necessitates the use of preservative treated wood. Code clearance between siding and patio. This is heavy duty stuff. Dirt and mulch are seen here piled against the structure.

May 12 2018 at 3 14 pm. Wood siding stucco vinyl brick. I recently bought a somewhat older home. I ve already pulled all plants touching the siding.