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Exterior Cladding Options

Some options include:

• granite stone
• hardieshingle
• slop-dash stucco
• light weight
• foam knee braces

Solid wood

• Pros: It makes for a great looking traditional finish to a home. Certainly with FSC wood, extraction can be sustainable, and very little pollution is generated in production and manufacturing. Wood is abundantly available to us in Canada, provided that forests are managed properly.
• Cons: It is not the most durable choice to protect your home from weather, and clearly it’s not the best to resist fire. It can be susceptible to damage from insects and rodents, as well mold and rot from moisture.
• Cost: $8 to $15 per square foot installed, depending on type of wood and style.
• Expected lifespan: 25 to 55 years

Note: There are companies that offer pre-painted wood products, a quality that you cannot match on a ladder with a brush. Several coats of paint are applied, to both sides, so your job is simply to cut it, paint the ends, and install it. A reputable company will give you a warrantly up around 15 years, and up to 30 if you apply a coat within that first 15 years.

If you prefer to paint your siding yourself, it will be a lot easier (and a better quality) if you do it on the ground before installation. It will require significant space to paint, but also to build drying racks.

Composite wood

• Pros: It makes use of post-industrial waste that might otherwise head for a landfill. Installation can actually be easier than conventional wood, due to not having knots to contend with.Composite wood refers to the repurposing of waste wood into usable products. Small chips and sawdust can be steam pressed into a very close likeness of actual wood siding, including the addition of realistic looking ‘grain’.
• Cons: Composite wood faces the same challenges as solid wood in regards to performance and risk. Though raw material use is effectively eliminated, there is higher pollution during manufacturing than raw wood.
• Cost: $6.00 to $ 11.50 per square foot installed.
• Expected lifespan: 25 years and over.

Cedar shingles

Cedar is a wood commonly used outdoors because it is highly resistant to rotting.  Left untreated its lifespan isn’t as greatly affected as other woods, but the look certainly is. Cedar will turn grey through exposure to weather and UV rays, and since that won’t be even, the resulting colour won’t be either. So required maintenance depends a lot on your taste.

• Pros: Wood is a natural product, and due to the length of cedar shingles (approximately 18″), they can make use of shorter pieces of wood such as stumps that would often be left in forests, or post industrial waste. If you don’t mind the look of greying cedar, you won’t need to do a lot of maintenance.
• Cons: Very expensive and time consuming to install. And if you DO mind the look of greying cedar, like all wood products, it will require regular repainting, staining or oiling.
• Cost: Due to the size of shingles and the cost of cedar, you can expect to pay around $20 to $30 per square foot installed.
• Lifespan: In and around 50 years, much longer with treated shingles and proper installation.

Note: In this writer’s experience, a step that is often missed in the installation of cedar shakes is creating an air space and drainage plane. One of the cheapest and most effective spacers can be a dimpled foundation membrane cut into 2″ strips. This method allows for an air space, but also allows vertical drainage, where a strip of solid wood limits air flow and drying.

Brick and stone

• Pros: Very low maintenance and its performance is excellent. Brick and stone resist weathering, and are virtually unassailable from pests, insects, mold, and fire.
• Cons: Regarding brick and fabricated stone products, production is very clean but demand a significant amount of embodied energy throughout the extraction and production process. Moreover, it is not easy to install.
• Cost: Very expensive.
• Expected Lifespan: longer than yours.

Stucco

• Pros: Performs well against pests and rodents; raw materials are relatively abundant; fairly resistant to fire.Stucco refers to a thin coating of cement that is applied to exterior walls.
• Cons: Concrete is highly polluting and energy intensive in its production; poor resistance to weathering; difficult to install and maintain.
• Cost: $7 to $12 per square foot installed.
• Expected lifespan: 50-75 years.

Acrylic coatings

Acrylic siding materials are composed of concrete, glass fiber and polystyrene. Suppliers sometimes claim that in addition to siding they also act as insulators, but there isn’t much truth to that. Any insulation value

• Pros: Performs well against pests and mold and it’s quite versatile.might have would be ineffective if you install it properly, which includes an air space between it and your main wall system.
• Cons: High pollution and embodied energy in the extraction and manufacturing process; materials can be scarce; poor resistance to weather and fire; not easy to install and maintain.
• Cost: $7 to $ 12 per square foot installed.
• Expected lifespan: 25 years and over.

Fiber cement, hardieboard

• Pros: Very strong and very durable; resistant to fire, insects and decay.Fibre cement was developed by James Hardie industries over a century ago. The original product was made from cement and asbestos, modern day production has replaced the asbestos with healthier alternatives. Fiber cement board can be molded to any style, even to look like wood.
• Cons: High pollution and energy consumption during production. This is a popular product in warmer dryer climates, but it doesn’t perform as well in northern climates. While the product itself is durable, paint will often chip off during the freeze / thaw cycle.
• Cost: $12 to $18 per square foot installed, depending on style.
• Expected lifespan: 40 years or more

Metal

• Pros: Highly resistant to weathering, excellent performance against mold and parasites, easy to install and maintain. It’s durable and fairly versatile, and when the day comes that someone is taking down your home, it will unquestionably be recycled.
• Cons: Production (mining) is not at all green, metal has a high embodied energy.
• Cost: $7 to $ 12 per square foot installed.
• Expected lifespan: 40 years and over.

Many types and styles of metal siding can be found. Pre-finished steel, galvanized steel, copper, zinc, most commonly of course would be aluminum siding.

Vinyl / PVC siding

• Pros: Highly resistant to weathering. Very good against pests and mold. Fairly easy to install and easy to maintain.
• Cons: Cons: It is derived in part from natural gas, which is not renewable, however the largest component that goes into its manufacturing is salt. For consideration in developments and construction that require fire ratings, vinyl siding may need to be used with other building materials to achieve certain fire ratings. Vinyl is technically recyclable but very rarely recycled.
• Cost: $3 to $ 9 per square foot installed.
• Lifespan: 40 years and over.

Overhangs/soffits

One of the greatest ways you can protect your home is through design. Good overhangs will mean that the majority of rain will not even touch your walls, this fact alone will greatly increase the lifespan of whatever cladding you put on your home.

Rain and UV rays are the two main factors that will cause the siding of your home to age and deteriorate, sizable overhangs can help protect you from both. Along with protecting your siding, shading techniques play an essential role in passive solar design to avoid overheating.

It’s important to remember that the exterior wall surface of your home needs to be able to be able to dry. That means allowing any water that gets in to drain out, and letting humid air escape.