LP SmartSide Engineered Wood Siding New Option For Homeowners

If you have decided against stucco, stone, metal or vinyl for your replacement siding you are likely considering lap, panel or shake siding.

After making that style decision the next one is selecting the material.

There are an increasing number of siding material options — wood, fiber cement, fiberglass — and among those options is a relatively new engineered wood siding product called SmartSide by LP Building Products.

SmartSide looks and feels like cedar while providing some of the advantages of wood.

LP’s proprietary manufacturing process begins with wood strands or fiber which are then treated with a resin binder and compressed to create a board touted as offering superior strength while remaining relatively lightweight.

That durability and lighter weight makes SmartSide siding easy to handle on a job site and allows for selling it in 16-foot lengths, meaning fewer seams and less waste than other types of wood or engineered wood siding.

Each SmartSide board is treated with zinc borate which protects the siding against termites and fungus.

The siding can be purchased pre-primed and ready for paint immediately after being installed.

LP SmartSide’s exterior is compressd to provide the look of a wood finish.

SmartSide by LP is also considered eco-friendly because only small, fast-growing trees are used to manufacture the wood-engineered siding.

Any part of the tree not used to make the siding is typically used to help fuel the mill manufacturing the siding.

SmartSide is LP’s next-generation engineered wood product replacing Inner-Seal siding, which was not made or treated like SmartSide is, which resulted in an inferior siding product that failed in the marketplace, Ben Skoog, Business Marketing Manager for SmartSide, told bobvila.com.

Since revamping how its engineered wood product is manufactured and treated, LP’s SmartSide products have reportedly been used on more than 1.5 million homes. LP offers a 5/50 year transferable limited warranty. The siding warranty includes a 100% replacement on materials and labor against “peeling, blistering, cracking or erosion of the factory finish.”

It also offers the original and one subsequent owner a 50-year warranty against “fungal degradation, buckling and cracking, peeling, separating, chipping flaking or rupturing of the resin-impregnated surface overlay.

For help in determining whether SmartSiding is right for your project contact AskAmek for assistance. Call 952-888-1200.