Chuckanut Exterior An Honest Answer to a Question We Get Often
Homeowners in Chuckanut and along the Chuckanut Drive corridor ask us regularly why we don't offer LP SmartSide as an option. It's a fair question. LP SmartSide is a legitimate, widely used engineered wood siding product, and plenty of contractors install it well. We simply made a decision, years ago, to standardize on James Hardie fiber cement for every home we side in Whatcom County. This page explains the reasoning honestly, including what SmartSide does right, so you can make an informed decision even if you end up choosing a different contractor.
We're not here to tell you SmartSide is a bad product. We're here to tell you why it's not the product we're willing to put our name behind, given the specific climate we work in.
What LP SmartSide Actually Is
LP SmartSide is an engineered wood product, built from strand-based wood substrate (similar in concept to OSB) that's treated with zinc borate for insect and fungal resistance, then bonded with resins and coated with a wax-impregnated surface layer. It's manufactured to look like traditional wood lap siding, board-and-batten, or panel siding, and it comes primed or pre-finished depending on the line.
What It Gets Right
- Lighter and easier to handle on-site than fiber cement, which can speed up installation labor
- Genuinely good impact resistance for an engineered wood product — it holds up to hail and incidental contact better than plain OSB or hardboard ever did
- Lower material cost than most fiber cement options, which matters on tight budgets
- A real improvement over the hardboard siding failures of the 1990s, thanks to zinc borate treatment and better resin bonding
None of that is spin. LP has put real engineering into solving the problems that sank an earlier generation of wood-composite siding. We respect that. It's just not enough to change our answer for this region.
The Trade-Off: It's Still Wood at Its Core
Underneath the treatment and the coating, SmartSide is still a wood-fiber product. Wood-fiber products and sustained moisture exposure have a complicated relationship, no matter how good the borate treatment or the factory finish is. The engineering reduces the risk — it doesn't eliminate the underlying chemistry.
That distinction matters a lot more in Chuckanut than it would in a dry inland climate. Whatcom County sits right on the Salish Sea, and homes along Chuckanut Drive and the surrounding bluffs take on salt-laden air, long stretches of driving rain off the water, and a moss season that can run most of the year on north- and west-facing walls. Any siding product here needs to shrug off near-constant moisture cycling for decades, not just survive a lab humidity test.
Where the Risk Shows Up
SmartSide's failure points, when they happen, are almost never on the flat field of the panel. They show up at the edges — cut ends, butt joints, and fastener penetrations — where the factory treatment and finish are interrupted. If those cut edges aren't field-sealed exactly to spec, every single time, moisture has a path into the substrate. In a climate with occasional rain, a missed detail might go unnoticed for years. In a climate with sustained coastal moisture and long moss seasons, the margin for a missed detail is much smaller.
Installation Sensitivity Is the Real Issue
This is the heart of why we walked away from the product. SmartSide's real-world performance depends enormously on installation discipline: correct clearance from grade and roof lines, precise flashing and kick-out detailing, factory-spec caulking of every cut edge and joint, and a repaint/recaulk maintenance schedule the homeowner actually keeps up with. Get all of that right, every time, on every home, and it performs reasonably well. Miss one flashing detail or one unsealed cut edge on a wall that catches driving rain off the water, and moisture finds a way in behind the cladding.
We install crews at volume, on production schedules, across multiple job sites. We didn't want a siding system where the difference between a good installation and a problem installation comes down to whether every single cut edge got caulked before the next guy hung the next board. We'd rather install a product whose water-resistance doesn't hinge on that level of field perfection.
Maintenance Burden Over Time
SmartSide is a paint-grade or factory-finished product, and either way it's on a repaint and recaulk cycle, typically every 7-10 years depending on sun and moisture exposure — sooner on walls that take the brunt of coastal weather. That's not a defect; it's simply what wood-based siding requires to keep water out over its life. But it's an ongoing cost and an ongoing homeowner responsibility that a lot of buyers don't fully budget for when they compare sticker prices at the time of installation.
Skipped or delayed maintenance is where we see engineered wood siding get into trouble — not because the product failed on day one, but because a recaulk cycle got pushed back two or three years and a coastal wall kept absorbing moisture in the meantime.
Warranty Structure
LP's warranty on SmartSide is meaningful, but like most engineered wood siding warranties, it's prorated over time and carries installation and maintenance requirements — miss the maintenance schedule and you can affect your own coverage. We wanted to offer our clients a stronger, more straightforward warranty position, and that's a meaningful part of why we standardized on Hardie instead.
| Factor | LP SmartSide (Engineered Wood) | James Hardie (Fiber Cement) |
|---|---|---|
| Core material | Wood strand substrate, resin-bonded, borate-treated | Cement, sand, and cellulose fiber — non-combustible |
| Moisture behavior | Resistant when detailed correctly; vulnerable at cut edges/joints | Dimensionally stable; doesn't absorb and swell like wood fiber |
| Coastal/moss climate fit | Workable, but leans on flawless field detailing | Engineered HZ lines built for high-moisture, marine climates |
| Finish | Primed or factory pre-finished; repaint cycle required | ColorPlus factory finish; far longer repaint interval |
| Fire rating | Treated wood product | Non-combustible |
| Typical maintenance | Recaulk/repaint roughly every 7-10 years | Occasional wash and caulk touch-up; no full repaint cycle |
| Warranty structure | Prorated, maintenance-dependent | Strong transferable warranty |
| Relative material cost | Lower | Moderate to higher |
Why We Standardized on James Hardie Instead
James Hardie fiber cement isn't wood at all — it's cement, sand, and cellulose fiber, which means it doesn't swell, rot, or feed fungal growth the way any wood-fiber product can if water gets behind it. That's a meaningfully different risk profile for a home sitting in a moss belt with salt air rolling off the water most of the year.
Hardie also builds specific product lines engineered for exactly this kind of climate — their HZ10 line is formulated for cold, wet, marine-influenced regions like ours, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all national product. The factory-applied ColorPlus finish is baked on under controlled conditions and holds color and integrity far longer than a field-applied or factory-primed paint job, which means fewer repaint cycles over the life of the siding. It's non-combustible, which matters given the wildfire smoke and ember exposure the broader Pacific Northwest has seen in recent summers. And the installation tolerances, while still important, don't carry the same edge-sealing sensitivity that keeps us up at night with engineered wood.
None of this means Hardie is maintenance-free or magic — it still needs to be installed to spec, with correct clearances and flashing, like anything else. It means the consequences of a small field mistake are less severe, and the material itself isn't fighting moisture chemistry from day one.
What to Ask Any Contractor Before You Choose a Siding
Whether you go with SmartSide, Hardie, or something else, these are the questions that actually separate a good installation from a risky one:
- Will every cut edge and factory edge be sealed per the manufacturer's written installation instructions, not just "as needed"?
- What's the specified clearance from grade, decks, and roof lines, and will it be measured and documented?
- Who is responsible for kick-out flashing at roof-to-wall intersections, and is it in the written scope of work?
- What does the manufacturer's warranty actually require of you as the homeowner to stay valid?
- What's the realistic maintenance schedule for this specific product in a coastal Whatcom County climate — not a national average?
- Can the contractor show you the manufacturer's installation manual for your specific product line and confirm they follow it?
The Bottom Line for Chuckanut Homeowners
LP SmartSide is a legitimate product that a lot of homeowners have had good experiences with, particularly in drier climates where the margin for a missed field detail is wider. Our concern isn't with the product on paper — it's with betting a 30-year siding decision, in a salt-air, driving-rain, long-moss-season environment, on every cut edge and every flashing detail being sealed perfectly, forever, by every crew, on every wall. We didn't want that exposure for our clients, so we stopped installing it and put our reputation behind James Hardie fiber cement instead.
If you're weighing siding options for a home in Chuckanut or elsewhere in Whatcom County, we're happy to walk through what we see in this climate and why, with no pressure either way. Reach out for a free estimate and we'll take an honest look at your home's exposure, your budget, and what actually makes sense for your walls.