Rental house patch job held up for 6 years, until last week

I patched a crack on my buddy's rental siding in Columbus with that mesh tape and flex filler back in 2019. It survived two winters and a hailstorm fine, but last week the whole patch popped out when the temp dropped to 9 degrees. The siding panel itself flexed too much around the edges, so the filler just separated. Is there a trick to keeping patches flexible in extreme cold, or should I have used a heat gun to soften the panel before applying? Has anyone else had a patch fail years later in a deep freeze?

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1 Comment

rowanjenkins14d ago

Wait, you're telling me a patch in Ohio lasted six whole years and you're surprised it gave up? That's like a solid gold run for rental property repairs, most of those things don't make it past the first summer. Honestly, the real trick is probably to just call it a seasonal feature, like how the siding changes color or how the crack reappears every leap year. I mean, at 9 degrees, that panel was probably contracting so hard it would've popped off a store-bought patch too. Maybe try one of those rubberized roof sealants next time, but idk, at some point you just gotta accept that the house is gonna do what it wants.

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