Replies

1. 
   shoppit | Sep 20, 2005 07:11am | #1

   I did my entire house with grey Nailite Perfection Plus, about five years ago.  At the time, price was about the same as Certainteed (about $200 per square), I just liked the look of the Nailite and it was a little easier to get here.  I trimmed out with Synboard, similar to current Azek or Kleer.  It looks very nice; if it's faded any, I can't tell.  It's important to install to spec, particularly nailing loose and spacing for the ambient temperature.  The only problem so far is that pieces that were cut to fit windows, peaks and rakes were not properly nailed, so they slipped down and I eventually had to face nail a few.

   Another reason I chose Nailite was that they also made very realistic looking brick panels.  One of my two chimneys was mostly encased by the house, surrounded by very steep roofs, so I decided to construct them from wood and finish it with the Nailite brick.  By the time I bought the materials and discovered what a absolute mess of a design they had, I was fully commited to the product, so we did the best we could to make it work.   If you have any thoughts of doing this, I strongly recommend you get your hands on a few brick panels and corners for examination.

   A couple years later, I noticed that the roof shingles and gutter around that chimney had an increasingly ugly red stain.  I called Nailite, a rep came by (unannounced) two months later and two months after that a letter from Nailite to say that the panels appeared to be bleeding the coloring and would be replaced under warrantee.  Nailite has an independant contractor from North Carolina that visits different regions of the country when they have enough warrantee work to justify the trip.  Despite having detailed pictures of my chimney and my warnings of the difficulty of reaching the chimney, Nailite considered my job a one day filler to tack onto anything larger.

   Six months later, they called to say they'd be here in a few weeks (third week of December) and I said that I didn't want to attempt this job in the winter around the holidays.  I heard from them again six months later, when they wanted to do the job late July, when I was going to be away on vacation (again, no flexibility on dates).    They contacted me again in December and I again said not in the winter.  Six months later, they called and we agreed on a date in early September.  When they didn't show, I called to find they were still in North Carolina because the replacement product for the big job they were doing in my region hadn't shipped.   A week later they called to say they were heading this way and they'd be here in a week.  Again they didn't show and I had to call several times to find out they were behind on their big job.  After missing me on a day by day basis, they showed up on a Sunday morning, took one look at the job, said there was no way they could do it without a lift (which they couldn't rent on a Sunday), and had to be back to North Carolina on Monday, so they left.  A couple of weeks later, Nailite informed me that they were re-assigning the job to a local contractor, which didn't thrill me, considering that for the past two years, Nailite was telling me how great their NC contractor was for this type of job.  In desperation, I accepted this new contractor, which I would have done two years prior if they had been offered to me.  They ultimately did a very nice job, although two weeks late because Nailite didn't ship them all of the replacement product in time, then the lift became unavailable.

   Now, if that isn't bad enough, the new product is bleeding down my roof again.  Upon closer inspection, I believe that it is not the panels themselves, but the mortar colored caulk that's necessary to fill the holes and gaps left by the crappy interconnect between the panels and the corners to keep out the rain.  I'm not doing a thing about it; I'd rather have a badly stained roof than deal with Nailite again.

   So in the end, Nailite did replace the product under warrantee (I had to pay $250 for the contractor to replace the Tyvec, which I thought necessary but Nailite wouldn't include), but it took two years and lots of aggrevation.