Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 14, 1995                   TAG: 9505170015
SECTION: HOMES                    PAGE: E-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ELEANOR CHARLES THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

VINYL SIDING NO LONGER SEEN AS 2ND CHOICE

But in the last five years it has become something of a Cinderella of the siding industry, swept from its humble beginnings by consumer demand for maintenance-free living. Manufacturers have created an ever-widening variety of sidings and trims in period and contemporary styles. And vinyl, once synonymous with modest homes, is increasingly being used in upscale housing, even for homes with price tags over $1 million.

``Vinyl has become the product of choice,'' said Lisa Macchi, district manager in the new homes division of Coldwell Banker Schlott in New Jersey. ``It's a maintenance issue. We carry 150 new home projects in the tri-state area, in price ranges from $150,000 to $2 million, and it's not the building community choosing vinyl for economic reasons, it's a customer-driven success.''

``People today,'' she added, ``don't have the time to paint their houses as they did generations ago and they don't want the constantly escalating expense of repainting every few years, whether it's a new house or a resale.''

Still, caution is the watchword when dealing with home buyers, according to some brokers. ``I don't tell people that a house is sided in vinyl at first,'' said Ron Molloy, an agent with Coldwell Banker Schlott in Greenwich, Conn. ``Once they have fallen in love with the house and I do tell them, it doesn't matter.''

An environmental measure that inadvertently boosted vinyl's popularity occurred in 1979 when the Federal Consumer Products Safety Commission removed lead from all over-the-counter paints, and followed that action by removing mercury in 1990.

Lead in amounts up to 50 percent at the turn of the century had been reduced to 30 percent in the '40s and .05 percent in the '60s, but even the smaller amounts combined with other additives made paint nicely opaque, completely covering and clinging to the surface. Mercury, in proportions of around 200 parts per million, helped prevent mildewing of surfaces and deterioration of paint in the can.

After the two elements were removed, painted houses began to deteriorate faster, revealing vinyl's most touted advantage - the saving of many thousands of dollars for frequent repainting, stripping or sandblasting wooden houses.

Homes that are finished with the better grades of vinyl are almost impossible to distinguish from wood. Vinyl can be molded to look like custom-milled clapboards, shiplap, cedar shakes, pediments, trellises, columns, railings, beading, Victorian and Carpenter Gothic decorative work, shutters and window and door frames.

Research by Alcoa, a major producer of vinyl building products, indicates that 53 percent of the homes using vinyl siding throughout the country are priced from $100,000 up, an 11 percent increase from 1990. In addition, 48 percent of all re-siding in 1994 was done with vinyl. Plywood is next in popularity with 13 percent.

Vinyl's ability to withstand extreme climatic conditions for decades, and its manufacture and delivery to the builder's exact specifications - no warps, no knots, no surprises - have made it the first choice of many developers.

``Every house we build is 100 percent vinyl or vinyl combined with brick or stone,'' said Robert Allen, senior vice president of Beazer Homes, based in Atlanta. In the company's subdivisions of 60 to 300 homes in several states, warranties of 50 years are offered on 1,200- to 4,500-square-foot houses priced from $100,000 to $300,000.

Jon Fleming, a partner in Vinylume, a family-owned business in Greenwich, Conn., has been working with vinyl since 1968. To date the company has vinyl-sided about 1,050 renovated or new Greenwich homes, and hundreds more in southwestern Connecticut and Westchester County. ``We do 150 to 175 houses a year, primarily as an alternative to painting,'' said Fleming, ``or to alter the style of a house,'' a project that can be prohibitively expensive in wood. ``Vinyl accessories,'' he said, ``produce excellent results in transforming a ranch into a colonial, or a colonial into a Greek Revival.''

Libby and Thomas Hollahan turned to vinyl for still another reason. They bought their 1929 home in White Plains, N.J., four years ago and last fall decided to have it painted. ``There was a very high lead content in the existing paint,'' said Libby Hollahan, ``and when we looked at vinyl siding as an alternative it turned out to be the most cost effective way of taking care of lead abatement.''

The New York State Health Department agrees. ``Peeling paint should be removed,'' said Thomas Carroll, the department's senior sanitarian. ``Then, as long as the siding is done properly, covering everything, any paint that falls off will be sealed inside, causing no harm.''

The cost of sanding and repainting over old lead-based paint on a typical four-bedroom, two-story colonial of 3,000 square feet is around $12,000. Stripping down to the wood, priming, repainting and disposing of the lead debris in a toxic waste dump can be two to two and one-half times the $18,000 cost of vinyl siding.

But that does not mean that vinyl will never need painting. ``All vinyl siding is expected to weather,'' said Kim Lenz, spokeswoman for Alcoa. So-called limited lifetime guarantees cover the siding itself, particularly the better grades that are between .044 and .048 inches thick. They are guaranteed not to wave or bow, while thicknesses of .040 to .043 might. The median thickness is one 32d of an inch.

Various manufacturer's warranties against fading expire between five and 10 years. Anyone planning to add to a vinyl house had better do it before the sixth year or be prepared to paint, because the addition will not match the original color.

Another environmental measure that increased vinyl's desirability went into effect in 1989, when federal restrictions on logging in 12 Western states were imposed to protect the spotted owl, salmon, grizzly bear and other endangered species. Wood became more expensive and less available.

Peak lumber production in 1987, according to the Western Wood Products Association in Portland, Ore., was 23.9 billion board feet. It dropped to 17.4 billion board feet in 1994, a 27 percent reduction.

While many architects whose clients insist on using vinyl have found the experience gratifying, many others won't even consider it. Alan Shope, for example, of Shope Reno Wharton Associates, Greenwich architects, said:

``I have designed large homes from Maine to Florida. People have asked for vinyl and we have said no. I'm not comfortable with fake plastic material. You can't beat tried and true wood shingles and stone. And I don't like the ticking sound that vinyl emanates in the sun.''

As a self-described ``lover of lead paint,'' he found ways of circumventing problems of mildew and peeling paint exacerbated by the absence of lead and mercury. He uses stains rather than paint, dipping the shingles in a preservative and weathering oil, covering all four surfaces with stain and sealing the ends - ``where most moisture accumulates,'' he said. He said that the treatment wpuld last for 10 years.

In spite of such resistance, vinyl statistics are continuing to be pumped upwards by people who spend anywhere from $70,000 to $3 million or more on their houses. ``In 1987 the United States produced 15.6 million squares, or 100 square-foot units, of vinyl,'' said Rich Gottwald, technical director of the Vinyl Siding Institute in Bowie, Md. ``In 1993 we produced 24.2 million squares.''