Anacortes Siding What LP SmartSide Actually Is
LP SmartSide is an engineered wood siding product made from wood strands bonded with resin, then treated with a zinc borate preservative and coated with a wax-based moisture barrier. It's manufactured to resemble traditional wood lap or panel siding, comes pre-primed or factory-finished in LP's ExpertFinish line, and installs with standard framing nails, which makes it familiar territory for a lot of crews. It's a legitimate, engineered product — not a cheap knockoff — and it has earned a place in a lot of homes across the country.
We get asked about it regularly here in Anacortes, usually by homeowners comparing bids or replacing failed original siding on a Skagit County home. This page explains why, after weighing the trade-offs against what our climate does to a home over twenty or thirty years, we made the call to install only James Hardie fiber cement.
What LP SmartSide Gets Right
Credit where it's due. LP SmartSide has real advantages that make it a reasonable choice in the right setting:
- Workability: It cuts, nails, and handles like wood, so labor is often faster and less specialized than fiber cement.
- Impact resistance: The strand construction holds up reasonably well against hail and incidental impact compared to vinyl.
- Lower material cost: It generally sits below fiber cement on a per-square-foot basis.
- Factory-finish option: ExpertFinish products arrive with a baked-on coating rather than requiring field painting.
In a dry inland climate with moderate rainfall, a lot of these installations perform fine for years. The problem isn't the product in the abstract — it's what happens when you put an engineered wood product through decade after decade of what Anacortes throws at a house.
Why Anacortes' Climate Is a Tough Test for Any Wood-Based Siding
Anacortes sits on Fidalgo Island, surrounded by Rosario Strait, Guemes Channel, and the saltwater of the Salish Sea. That proximity means airborne salt is a constant on this siding, year-round, whether or not a home has a direct water view. Salt is corrosive to fasteners and abrasive to coatings, and it accelerates the breakdown of any protective finish over time.
Layer on top of that the driving rain that comes through Skagit County in fall and winter storms — rain that doesn't fall straight down but gets pushed sideways into wall assemblies by wind off the water — and you have conditions that stress every seam, joint, and cut edge on a home's exterior. Add a long moss and algae season, common to the whole Puget Sound region, where damp, shaded north- and west-facing walls stay wet for extended stretches between dry spells, and you're asking a lot of any siding material that has wood as its base ingredient.
None of this means LP SmartSide "fails" here. It means the margin for error — in installation quality, in maintenance follow-through, in how a homeowner treats the siding over the years — gets a lot thinner than it would in a drier climate.
The Core Trade-off: It's Still an Engineered Wood Product
Wood strand siding, no matter how well it's treated and coated, shares a fundamental characteristic with all wood-based products: it's dimensionally reactive to moisture, and its weak points are the cut edges and joints where the factory coating doesn't reach.
Cut Edges and Field Cuts
Every piece of LP SmartSide that gets trimmed on site — at corners, around windows, at butt joints — exposes raw, uncoated material unless the installer field-seals that cut with the manufacturer-specified sealant or primer. Skip that step, or apply it inconsistently, and that edge becomes the entry point for moisture. In a climate with as much sideways rain as ours, those cut edges take a beating.
Caulk and Paint Maintenance
LP SmartSide relies on caulked joints and, in many cases, field-applied or touched-up paint to stay sealed. Caulk has a service life measured in years, not decades — UV exposure and the flex of a wood-based substrate through wet-dry cycles will eventually crack or pull away from a joint. That means the siding's moisture protection depends on an ongoing maintenance schedule that has to be kept up by the homeowner, year after year, or the product's own installation and moisture warranty coverage can be affected.
Swelling and Buckling
When moisture does get behind the coating — through a missed cut edge, a failed caulk joint, or a fastener that wasn't seated correctly — wood strand material can swell, and repeated wet-dry cycling can lead to buckling or edge softening over time. This is a known characteristic of strand-based wood siding generally, and it's the reason manufacturers are so specific about clearances, flashing, and fastening in their install instructions.
Installation Sensitivity Is the Real Risk
LP publishes a detailed installation guide with specific requirements: minimum clearance from grade, deck, and roof lines; specific nail placement and spacing; required sealing of every field cut; particular flashing details at penetrations and horizontal trim. These aren't suggestions — they're the conditions under which the product's limited warranty actually applies.
The trouble is that a lot of these details are invisible once the siding is up. A homeowner comparing bids can't see whether a crew is sealing every cut end or skipping it to save time. They can't see whether ground clearance was held to spec, or whether a nail was driven flush instead of overdriven. Those installation details are exactly the kind of thing that separates a siding job that lasts twenty-five trouble-free years from one that starts showing edge swelling or paint failure in year six — and they're also exactly the details that determine whether a warranty claim gets honored or denied.
We're not willing to put our name on a product where that much of the long-term performance rides on installation precision we'd have to police cut-by-cut, on every job, forever, in a climate that doesn't forgive shortcuts.
Comparing the Products Side by Side
| Factor | LP SmartSide (Engineered Wood) | James Hardie Fiber Cement |
|---|---|---|
| Base material | Wood strands + resin, zinc borate treated | Cement, sand, cellulose fiber |
| Combustibility | Combustible (wood-based) | Non-combustible |
| Moisture behavior | Can swell/soften if coating or seals fail | Dimensionally stable when properly installed |
| Finish | Primed or factory-coated; touch-up paint common over time | ColorPlus baked-on finish, no field painting needed |
| Climate engineering | General product line | HZ5 formulation engineered for Pacific Northwest moisture exposure |
| Maintenance dependency | Ongoing caulk/paint upkeep required for warranty performance | Lower ongoing maintenance; periodic inspection and caulking of trim joints |
| Warranty structure | Limited warranty, workmanship and installation exclusions common | Non-prorated, transferable limited warranty |
| Salt air resistance | Coating-dependent | Cement substrate is inherently salt-inert |
Warranty Structure Is Part of the Decision
Warranty language matters more than most homeowners realize until they need it. LP's coverage, like most engineered wood siding warranties, includes installation and maintenance requirements that have to be documented and followed to keep the coverage intact — and many wood-based product warranties reduce in value over time (prorated coverage) rather than holding steady. James Hardie's fiber cement products carry a non-prorated, transferable limited warranty when installed to spec, which means the coverage doesn't erode simply because years have passed, and it can pass to the next owner if the home sells. For a homeowner making a twenty-plus-year decision, that structural difference is worth understanding before signing a contract, not after a claim gets denied.
Why We Standardized on James Hardie
We made the decision to install only James Hardie fiber cement siding because it removes the variables that worry us most in this climate: it's non-combustible, it doesn't rely on an intact coating over reactive wood substrate to stay stable, and Hardie's HZ5 product line is specifically engineered for the wet, salt-exposed conditions common to Western Washington. The ColorPlus factory finish means we're not asking a homeowner to plan on repainting in eight or ten years, and the transferable warranty holds its value instead of prorating away. For homes on Fidalgo Island and across Skagit County dealing with salt air, driving rain, and long stretches of damp, mossy weather, that combination is what we're comfortable standing behind.
What to Ask Before You Choose a Siding Product or Contractor
- Ask any contractor whether they follow the manufacturer's published installation guide to the letter, including clearances and field-cut sealing — and ask how they verify it, not just whether they claim to.
- Ask what the warranty actually covers, whether it's prorated, and whether it transfers if you sell the home.
- Ask what ongoing maintenance the product requires to keep that warranty valid, and be honest with yourself about whether that maintenance will actually happen.
- Ask how the product performs specifically in salt air and high-moisture climates, not just its general national performance record.
- Get multiple written bids that specify the exact product line, not just "fiber cement" or "engineered wood" as a category.
- Walk a completed local installation if the contractor can show you one, and look closely at trim joints, corners, and ground clearance.
Get an Honest Look at Your Home
Every home on Fidalgo Island faces its own mix of sun exposure, wind, and moisture depending on where it sits. We're happy to walk your property, look at what's on it now, and give you a straight assessment of what we'd recommend and why — no pressure, no obligation. Reach out for a free estimate and we'll talk through the options in plain terms.