Lynden Siding What LP SmartSide Is
LP SmartSide is an engineered wood siding product — strands of wood fiber bonded with resin under heat and pressure, then coated with a proprietary overlay and factory primer. It's been on the market for decades, it's less expensive than fiber cement, and it's easy for crews to cut and nail. For a lot of the country, it performs reasonably well. We don't dispute any of that.
We just don't install it on homes in Lynden. Here's the honest reasoning, not a sales pitch.
What It Gets Right
- Lighter and easier to handle than fiber cement, which can speed up installation on straightforward elevations.
- Lower material cost up front compared to James Hardie fiber cement.
- Impact resistance is generally good for an engineered wood product — it holds up to the occasional bump better than raw lumber siding.
None of that is in dispute. The issue isn't what the product is made of on day one — it's what happens to it over fifteen or twenty Whatcom County winters.
Where It Runs Into Trouble Here
It's Still Wood at Its Core
Underneath the resin overlay, LP SmartSide is still a wood-based product. Wood-based sidings are dimensionally stable as long as the protective surface layer stays intact everywhere — every cut end, every seam, every nail penetration, every piece of trim intersection. The moment moisture finds a way past that surface — through a compromised caulk joint, a missed touch-up on a field cut, or a fastener that's backed out — the substrate underneath can begin to swell, delaminate, or soften. That failure mode doesn't happen with fiber cement, which has no wood fiber to swell in the first place.
Lynden's Climate Doesn't Give Siding a Break
This part of Whatcom County sits close enough to the Salish Sea that homes deal with salt-laden air on top of the Pacific Northwest's long, wet winters. Driving rain off Puget Sound and the foothills pushes water sideways into siding joints rather than letting it run straight down, and the moss and algae growth that thrives in our damp shoulder seasons holds moisture against exterior surfaces for weeks at a time. That's a demanding environment for any siding, but it's a particularly unforgiving one for a product whose long-term performance depends on an unbroken protective layer over a wood-based core.
Maintenance Isn't Optional — It's Structural
LP SmartSide's warranty coverage is written around ongoing homeowner maintenance: caulked joints have to be inspected regularly and re-caulked promptly when they fail, cut edges have to be field-treated with sealant at installation and re-sealed if ever exposed, and paint has to be kept intact. Skip a step, or let a caulk joint sit cracked through one wet Whatcom County winter, and you're not just risking a cosmetic issue — you're risking the kind of moisture intrusion that can compromise the coverage itself. We don't think it's fair to hand a homeowner a siding system where a missed caulking cycle can turn into a substrate problem.
Side-by-Side, Plainly
| Factor | LP SmartSide | James Hardie Fiber Cement |
|---|---|---|
| Core material | Engineered wood strand (OSB-based) | Cement, sand, and cellulose fiber |
| Moisture behavior if surface is compromised | Can swell or delaminate at the core | No wood fiber to swell — dimensionally stable |
| Combustibility | Combustible (wood-based) | Non-combustible |
| Maintenance dependency for warranty | Caulk and touch-up schedule is warranty-critical | Factory ColorPlus finish reduces repainting burden |
| Climate engineering | General-purpose product line | HZ5 line engineered for Pacific Northwest moisture exposure |
Why We Install Hardie Instead
James Hardie fiber cement solves the specific problem that keeps us away from LP SmartSide: there's no wood substrate to protect from moisture in the first place. A nick in the finish or a caulk joint that fails a season late doesn't set off the same chain reaction, because the material underneath isn't going to swell or delaminate. Hardie's ColorPlus factory finish is baked on rather than field-applied, which matters in a climate where paint gets tested hard by driving rain and long damp stretches. And Hardie's HZ5 product line is specifically engineered for high-moisture regions like ours, not a general-purpose formulation.
Hardie is also non-combustible, which matters to us as a standard regardless of a given home's wildfire exposure. And its warranty structure doesn't hinge on a homeowner keeping up with a caulk-and-touch-up calendar to stay valid — it's a meaningfully different risk profile for something that's going to sit on the outside of a house through decades of Whatcom County weather.
We standardized on one product because we'd rather stand behind a smaller number of installations we fully trust than offer a menu of options we have reservations about. That's the whole reason this page exists.
Talk to Us Before You Decide
If you're comparing siding options for a home in Lynden, we're happy to walk through what we've laid out here in person — no pressure, no sales script. Reach out for a free estimate and we'll look at your specific home, your exposure, and what actually makes sense for it.