§ 03.08Siding — TX + OH
The board you can see is one of seven layers.
Six of those layers decide how long your wall stays dry, holds paint, and reads tight at year fifteen. We open every layer in order — sheathing, wrap, flashing, rainscreen, board, trim, finish — and we name the material before we leave.
Three questions decide the material for ninety percent of houses we walk.
Tap an answer in each row. The card on the right updates with the material we would put on your wall — vinyl, engineered wood, or fiber-cement — and the reason. No email, no phone number, no brochure.
Tell us how you live in the house.
Three quick questions, one material read. The result tracks your budget, your climate, and how long you plan to own — not the brochure that came with the truck.
Walk this through with our estimatorThe router is a starting read. The walk-through finalizes it against your wall, your budget, and the elevation you are actually looking at.
Three materials. Seven criteria. One score we will defend.
Vinyl, engineered wood, and fiber-cement — scored zero to five on hail, UV, freeze-thaw, trim-cleanness, paint adhesion, partial-repair matchability, and what a buyer reads at the curb. Cost-per-square-foot and expected life printed across the top. No marketing adjectives — every number we would defend with the truck stocked behind us.
- $3 – $7 / sq ft
- 15 – 25 yrs
- no paint cycle (color baked in)
- 5–10 yr ownership, value-driven, smaller elevations
- $6 – $11 / sq ft
- 30 – 40 yrs
- 8 – 12 yrs (factory-primed)
- forever-home owners, mixed-budget, trim-detail-heavy elevations
- $8 – $14 / sq ft
- 40 – 50 yrs
- 7 – 10 yrs (ColorPlus 15-yr)
- 15+ yr ownership, south/west walls, hail-zone elevations
Cost ranges are full-installed, dependent on house geometry, trim package, and tear-off condition. The walk-through gives you the actual number against your wall, not a calculator guess.
Two states. Two climates. Two different reads on the same material.
We work in Dallas-Fort Worth and Cleveland — the south wall in Plano and the north wall in Lakewood see entirely different weather, and the right siding tracks that. Below, the stresses we measure on each wall and what we put on it.
UV first. Hail second. Heat behind everything.
A south wall in DFW pulls 100°F-plus surface temperatures from May through September and takes a 1.0″–1.5″ hail event roughly every spring. Vinyl gets brittle. Painted wood blisters by year five. Fiber-cement holds.
- 1,800+ kWh/m² annual on south walls
- 1.0″ – 1.75″ events, late spring
- 110°F+ on dark south elevations
- spring fronts, hurricane remnants
Hardie ColorPlus on south + west; LP SmartSide on north + back; vinyl only on small flips.
Freeze-thaw first. Wind-driven rain second. UV is a side-show.
Ohio walls cycle through freezing 40+ times a season, then take wind-driven rain off Lake Erie and the Ohio River valleys. Vinyl cracks at corners by year ten. Paint adhesion is the ledger entry that matters most.
- 40 – 70 cycles per winter
- 50+ mph spring fronts
- 15 – 25 lb/sq ft typical
- 1,200 kWh/m² — milder than TX
LP SmartSide for the trim cleanness and seal-tolerance; Hardie when the budget allows; vinyl on the rear elevation only.
Which wall is yours? The walk-through prints a climate read against your house, not a state-level average. We will name the material and the install detail before we leave.
Walk it with our estimatorThe board you can see is one of seven layers. Six of them decide how long the wall lasts.
The board is the layer the buyer reads. Every layer behind it is what decides whether the wall stays dry, holds paint, and reads tight at year fifteen. We open every layer, in this order, every job — start at the bottom.
- Finish + caulk
- Siding board
- Rainscreen / strapping
- Flashing tape + window pans
- House wrap
- Sheathing inspect + repair
- Wall framing (your house)
- Finish + caulk
Color-stable finish on factory-primed boards, butyl caulk at every penetration. The visible plane the buyer reads at the curb.
- Siding board
Hardie ColorPlus, LP SmartSide, or insulated vinyl. Coursed to spec, blind-nailed where the manufacturer requires, lock-jointed at corners.
- Rainscreen / strapping
On wood-based products, a 1/4-inch furring layer behind the board so wind-driven water can drop down the wall instead of soaking the wrap. The detail vinyl lets you skip — and the reason wood-based jobs hold longer.
- Flashing tape + window pans
Continuous flashing tape at every penetration; butyl pan flashing under every window opening. The water plane that decides whether a leak rots the framing or sheds out the bottom.
- House wrap
Tyvek CommercialWrap or equivalent, lapped per manufacturer spec, sealed at every horizontal seam. We tape it; we do not staple-and-pray.
- Sheathing inspect + repair
Every soft section of OSB or plywood cut back to sound wood and replaced. We do not re-side over rotted sheathing — the warranty does not cover that, and you would feel it in two winters.
- Wall framing (your house)
Studs, top plate, bottom plate. We do not touch this unless we find something that needs sistering. When we do, you see it before anything goes back on.
Open the wall on your house? Once we walk it, every layer above gets a yes/no against your sheathing, your wrap, and the trim plane you already have.
Open my wall with an estimator§ 12Continue the manual — related to this page
§ 03.10Remodeling
Exterior painting + limewash
Same paint, four walls, four different jobs.
Two-coat exterior paint scoped per elevation — Sherwin-Williams Duration on the south and west, Resilience on the north, Aura on premium east walls, limewash on stone and brick. Real prep, UV-stable caulks, climate window honored.
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§ 03.11Remodeling
Rotted wood + trim repair
Source first. Trim second.
Rot is a water problem, not a wood problem. We meter the wood, fix the upstream detail (kickout, drip edge, sealant pan), then rebuild the trim in PVC, Hardie, or primed wood per the run.
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§ 03.12Remodeling
Stucco repair
Hairline cracks are not remediation.
A moisture meter, a probe, and a read of the crack pattern before we write a number. Patch, partial, or full repair only when the wall is genuinely failing. Texas + Northeast Ohio.
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§ 02.05HVAC
Windows + glass
Five symptoms, five honest verdicts.
Most window calls are not a full replacement. Fog is a glass swap. Drafts are a sash. A stuck sash is hardware. A rotted sill is the only one that needs the whole unit. We walk it with you.
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§ 04.01Programs
Insurance claims
Your storm. Your scope. Your carrier's check.
Fifteen years on the carrier side. Documented loss, written scope, adjuster meeting on-site. Out-of-pocket: deductible only.
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§ 06Reach the dispatch desk
A senior estimator. Walking your wall.
The estimator who would build your scope walks every wall, opens any soft fascia, and prints a material recommendation against your wall — vinyl, LP SmartSide, or Hardie — with the seven-layer install spec that goes with it. You leave with a real number.
(214) 578-9961