You are not buying siding. You are buying a wall.
Most siding projects start with a color card and a brand name. That is the smallest part of what you are buying.
Siding is not a waterproof layer. No cladding is. Wind-driven rain gets past laps, butt joints, and fastener holes on every house ever built. The assembly behind the siding accepts that water, drains it back out, and lets the wall dry. Code requires both a barrier and a means of draining what gets past the cladding.
The cladding decides how the house looks. The system behind it decides whether the sheathing is sound in twenty-five years.
James Hardie fiber cement: what the extra money buys
Hardie is what we steer most homeowners toward, and here is why. The line runs from HardiePlank lap siding at 5/16 in. thick up to Artisan at 5/8 in., double that thickness, plus panel, shingle, trim, and soffit.
HZ5 is the part that matters in Pennsylvania
Every company here says it uses HZ5 product because our winters are cold. Few show the receipt. James Hardie publishes separate instructions for HZ5 and HZ10, and at roof-to-wall, deck-to-wall, and slabs, paths, and steps, HZ5 requires a minimum 2 in. clearance where HZ10 allows 1 in. to 2 in.
Mountville, Lancaster, York, Hershey, Carlisle. Every ZIP code in the state is HZ5, and there is no HZ10 territory anywhere in Pennsylvania. If a bid does not say HZ5, ask why.
James Hardie's February 2024 specification lists HardiePlank water absorption at 36 percent by mass under ASTM C1185. The board drinks water and Pennsylvania freezes it. It is tested to pass that standard's freeze-thaw cycling, so this is not a fragile product, but passing assumes it is not sitting in snow, splash-back, or ice-dam meltwater. HZ5 plank also carries an integral drip edge that HZ10 plank does not.
ColorPlus or primed and field painted
ColorPlus is a baked factory finish with the board edges sealed. Primed board costs less and allows any color, but James Hardie requires it to be painted within 180 days of installation. On ColorPlus, nail heads and butt joints are not caulked, because the caulk and the factory finish weather differently.
Read the warranty the way it is written
James Hardie publishes a 30-year non-prorated limited warranty across its siding, trim, and soffit lines. On every one of them it covers the substrate: the fiber cement board, not the paint. The finish carries its own separate warranty, and this is where most contractor pages get it wrong.
James Hardie's 15-year express limited finish warranty, effective February 2024, covers peeling, cracking, and chipping, and it is prorated. Full paint-and-labor reimbursement, capped at $2.15 per square foot, applies in year one, then declines 6.67 percent a year until nothing remains after year 15. Normal fading and chalking are excluded. Only excess color change is covered, defined as more than four delta E units in three years.
Improper installation is an explicit exclusion in both warranties, and both transfer only once. A manufacturer warranty is worth what your installer's flashing detail is worth.
What the installation demands
HardiePlank weighs 2.31 pounds per square foot, so a 12 ft plank is a two-person carry. Cutting it releases respirable crystalline silica, which OSHA regulates under 29 CFR 1926.1153 at a permissible exposure limit of 50 micrograms per cubic meter. That is a crew-safety matter during install week, not a hazard in your finished house, and it is something you can check from the kitchen window: on a compliant job the saw has dust collection on it and nobody is dry-sweeping the driveway. Blind nailing is preferred and must not be mixed with face nailing. Field cuts get sealed, and butt joints meet in moderate contact over 6 in. joint flashing.
Most full James Hardie projects we do land between $25,000 and $45,000, depending on home size, trim detail, and how much tear-off the house needs. The labor picture above is most of the reason.
Premium vinyl: what separates it from builder grade
We install vinyl and stand behind it. The biggest variable in a vinyl job is not the vinyl, it is the installation. The waviness homeowners blame on the material is almost always an installation failure.
ASTM D3679 sets the floor for vinyl siding at 0.035 in. nominal thickness, so "meets ASTM" is an entry ticket, not a quality mark. What separates premium is what happens above that floor:
- Thickness. Builder grade runs .035 to .040, mid-range .042 to .044, premium .044 to .046 and up. Thickness buys rigidity and dent resistance.
- Projection. How far the panel stands off the wall, typically 5/8 to 3/4 in. on premium against roughly 1/2 in. on builder grade. It deepens the shadow line and stiffens the panel.
- The nail hem. Builder grade uses a single layer of vinyl with punched slots, so a fastener can tear through under wind load. Premium panels fold the hem back on itself. That is exactly the part cheap panels cut.
- The lock and the finish. A weak lock lets panels release in wind. Color is co-extruded through a capstock layer, so there is no paint film to peel. Ask whether the product is PEPA certified, meaning validated to at least 110 mph.
Insulated vinyl adds contoured foam behind the panel, worth roughly R-2 to R-3, with the thickest premium lines claiming around R-5. We will not sell that to you as an energy payback. The real argument is structural: the foam backs the panel across its full face, so it cannot oil-can or telegraph a wavy wall.
Vinyl's honest win is that it never needs painting, because the color is in the material rather than a film on top of it. It is far lighter than fiber cement, and a damaged panel swaps out in minutes. The limits are just as real. All vinyl fades, and a fresh panel will not match an eighteen-year-old wall. Up close it reads as vinyl, since lapped seams and J-channel are part of the system. It softens around 160 degrees, so a grill parked too close can distort a wall. Fiber cement is noncombustible, with an ASTM E84 flame spread index of 0.
Which one belongs on your house
How long you are staying. If this is the last siding job the house gets while you own it, go Hardie. Quality vinyl, well installed, runs roughly 30 to 40 years here, and its aesthetic life ends before its functional life does.
Architecture and HOA. Older homes, historic districts, anything with real trim proportions: Hardie. A wide trim board holds a line that J-channel cannot imitate. On a 1990s colonial or a ranch, premium vinyl looks right. Check your covenants before you settle on a color.
Exposure. A west wall with no shade, kids and a basketball hoop over the driveway, or a grill or fire pit near the house all argue for fiber cement.
Budget. If choosing Hardie means cutting the flashing work or hiring the cheapest crew willing to hang it, buy premium vinyl and a correct system instead. That is the better wall, and it is not a close call.
Resale. National cost-versus-value reporting shows both siding replacements returning well, with fiber cement leading. Treat that as directional, not as a number for your address.
We install both, so we have no stake in where you land. If you want that sorted on your own house, that is what the walk-through is for.
The system: the part you never see again
Code requires a continuous water-resistive barrier over the sheathing, lapped shingle-fashion: upper course over lower by at least 2 in., vertical joints by at least 6 in. Every layer laps over the one below so water is handed downward and out. A reverse lap is a funnel into the wall.
Plain housewrap pulled tight is a barrier with almost no drainage. Drainable wraps and drainage mats create the gap, measured under ASTM E2273. A furred rainscreen, 3/8 to 3/4 in. deep with the bottom screened, does more. It matters most under fiber cement, which absorbs water and needs to dry from the back.
Flashing is where houses are won and lost
Kickout flashing has been required by the residential code since 2009, and inspectors still list it among the most frequently found exterior defects. Where a roof edge dies into a wall, step flashing carries water down the intersection. Without a kickout to turn that stream into the gutter, water shoots off the last piece of step flashing and lands behind the siding at one spot. Every rainfall. The same square foot.
The part itself is simple: a 110-degree kick, at least 4 in. up the wall and 4 in. onto the roof, minimum 0.019 in. corrosion-resistant metal, tucked under the barrier. The expense comes from latency. Modern claddings hide the damage for years, so the first symptom is often a soft rim joist found at re-side.
Windows follow a fixed order: sill pan with end dams, then jambs, then head. Head flashing laps over the nailing flange, and the barrier laps over the head flashing, never the reverse. The bottom flange over a sill pan is deliberately left unsealed, because that opening is the drain.
Penetrations, trim, and fasteners
Every hose bib, dryer vent, and light fixture punches through the drainage plane. Those get sealed to the barrier with a preformed flashing or membrane rather than with caulk at the siding face, and fixtures land on mounting blocks. Trim is a per-detail decision: fiber cement weathers with the siding, cellular PVC belongs where things stay wet near grade, and horizontal trim wants metal cap flashing with a drip edge.
Fasteners are not a place to save. Fiber cement holds moisture against the shank, so electro-galvanized nails will rust-streak a new wall within a few seasons. Hot-dip galvanized to ASTM A153 is the practical minimum. Vinyl has the opposite requirement: the head sits about 1/32 in. proud of the nail hem, the thickness of a dime, so the panel can slide. A 12 ft 6 in. panel moves half an inch or more across a year here. Nail it tight and it buckles in the first hot spell.
Where caulk belongs, and where it does not
Caulk is a sacrificial, secondary defense. When caulk is doing work that flashing should be doing, that is a design problem papered over. Specify an ASTM C920 elastomeric sealant, not painter's acrylic. And some openings are supposed to stay open:
- The 1/4 in. gap above horizontal flashing on fiber cement
- The bottom flange of a window installed over a sill pan
- Weep holes and weep slots in vinyl panels, J-channel, and window frames
- The bottom edge of mounting blocks and trim, which are sealed on top and sides only
- The clearance above a roof or deck, and the base of a rainscreen
What we find when the old siding comes off
Tear-off is the first time anyone sees the sheathing. The recurring finds are rot at window corners, concentrated rot where a kickout was never installed, missing barrier, and delaminated OSB. Nobody can price that before the wall is open, so a proposal should carry a unit price for repair, photographs of what was found, and your approval before repairs proceed.
Questions to ask any contractor
Bring these to every bid you collect, ours included.
- What water-resistive barrier are you installing, is it drainable, and will there be a rainscreen gap?
- Will you install kickout flashing at every roof-to-wall intersection, and can you point out each one on the house?
- Do windows get sill pan flashing, with the bottom flange left open to drain and head flashing over the nailing flange?
- What fasteners, and do they meet the siding manufacturer's warranty requirements?
- Are penetrations sealed at the barrier or at the siding face, and will fixtures land on mounting blocks?
- What are you deliberately leaving uncaulked, and why?
- How is rotten sheathing handled: unit price, photographs, and homeowner approval before work proceeds?
The best material installed badly loses
Every warranty above carries the same exclusion: improper installation is not covered. You can buy the 30-year board and end up with a much shorter wall, and the owner finds out at tear-off, when soft sheathing comes off a corner that looked fine from the street.
That is the honest reason our calendar looks the way it does. The crews we trust with a wall are booked well ahead of the season, and we would rather say so than promise a start date we cannot keep. If you want this wall opened next spring, the walk-through happens now.