By Lora Pabst
In Sunday's Whistleblower column , I wrote about something strangehappening in a Woodbury development. Sunlightreflecting off of energy-efficient windows is creating a strong enough heat to warp the vinyl siding.Several sidingexperts said they only knew of isolated cases across the country.Statebuilding officials said they hadn't heard much about the problem. But I was suspectingthat Whistleblower readers might speak up once the story was published.
Sure enough,homeowners reported similar incidents in Rosemount and Albertville.Some amateur physicists (maybe some professionals too) wrote comments on the story questioning thesituation or offering tips.The homeowners are still working with their builder to find a fix, but they also wanted to get the word out to put some pressure on the window and vinyl siding industries. We'll keep checking in with the residents of Fairway Meadows to see if their siding woes come to an end.
My colleague James Eli Shiffer wrote in Saturday's paper about the problems of a state-paid van service in transporting a 4-year-old boy fromday care to an autism treatment program. Also in recent days, a man whose car was beaten up by uneven pavement in a construction zone told his story to Roadguy . Finally, a tip to Whistleblower about the city of Minneapolis's hard-line parking enforcement around the new Gopher stadium led to my colleague Curt Brown's story Friday about the "parking wars"between the city and local merchants .