Two eras of housing, two failure patterns
Upper Arlington splits roughly in two. The older core holds colonials and Tudors from the 1920s through the 1940s, built on board sheathing with wood windows and masonry details that give the streets their character. Around that core spread the postwar neighborhoods, ranches and split-levels from the 1950s and 60s, many still wearing early generations of siding. The two eras perform and fail differently, and we detail them differently.
In the prewar homes, the original wood windows are usually the biggest thermal liability and the strongest character feature at the same time. The job is to fix the thermal problem without erasing the divided-lite patterns and narrow sightlines that define these facades. We treat that as a specification problem. Materials we specify include units from Marvin, Andersen, and Pella where profiles and muntin layouts suit the original architecture. Every opening is flashed, air-sealed, and insulated before the trim goes back on. Homes built before 1978 call for lead-safe work practices, so we plan containment before the first sash comes out.
The postwar stock has a quieter problem. Much of it was sided over board sheathing without a modern water-resistive barrier, which means the cladding itself has been doing the moisture-management work for decades. When we replace siding on these homes, we open the wall, install a continuous drainage plane, and detail the flashing at windows, penetrations, and transitions before any new cladding goes up. For cladding we specify LP SmartSide and James Hardie, installed per manufacturer documentation.
What the tree canopy asks of a roof edge
Upper Arlington’s mature canopy shades roofs through humid summers, and it loads gutters hard every fall. A gutter system sized when the trees were half their current height may no longer match the leaf load above it. An overwhelmed gutter sheets water down the fascia and drops it at the foundation, where clay soils hold it against basement walls through every freeze-thaw cycle. We size gutters and downspouts to the actual roof area, plan a debris strategy for the leaf load, and carry water well away from the house. On the roof itself, Ohio wind and hail events argue for impact-rated shingles, and weak attic air-sealing announces itself as ice dams at the eaves in the first hard winter.
If you own a home in Upper Arlington and want the exterior detailed to match the way it was built, tell us what you’re seeing. We’ll look at the whole assembly, not just the surface.