Ferndale Exterior What LP SmartSide Actually Is
LP SmartSide is an engineered wood siding product made by LP Building Solutions. Instead of solid lumber, it's built from wood strands bonded with resin under heat and pressure, then treated with a zinc borate additive meant to resist fungal decay and insect damage, and finished with a factory primer coat. It comes in lap siding, panels, trim, and soffit, and it has earned a real place in the market as a step up from raw OSB or untreated wood products.
We get asked about it often, especially from homeowners comparing bids. This page explains why Ferndale Exterior Co doesn't install it, without pretending it's a bad product — it isn't. It's a matter of what holds up best against the specific weather Whatcom County throws at a house year after year.
What LP SmartSide Gets Right
To be fair to the product, there are real advantages that explain why it's popular nationally:
- Lower material cost than fiber cement in most markets
- Lighter weight, which can mean faster installation and less strain on crews
- Easier to cut on site — no silica dust extraction setup required like fiber cement demands
- Decent impact resistance for a wood-based product, better than thin vinyl in a hard freeze or hail event
- Wide trim and accessory matching so a full exterior package is easy to source from one manufacturer
If you live somewhere dry with mild winters, LP SmartSide installed correctly and maintained on schedule can perform for a long time. That's just not the climate we build in.
Why Ferndale's Climate Changes the Math
Ferndale sits close enough to Bellingham Bay and the Salish Sea that salt-laden air is a real, daily factor on exterior materials — not an occasional coastal storm event. Combine that with Whatcom County's driving rain, which regularly comes in sideways off the water rather than straight down, and a long moss season that can run from fall through spring on north-facing and shaded walls, and you have conditions that stress-test any wood-based product's weak points: the cut ends, the seams, and anywhere the factory coating has been breached.
Where Wood-Based Substrate Struggles
LP SmartSide's core is still wood strand, which means it can absorb moisture at any point where the protective coating isn't perfectly intact — a field cut, a nail hole, a scuffed corner, or a seam where caulking has failed. Once moisture gets into the substrate, the classic failure mode is edge swelling ("flare"), where the bottom edge of a lap board puffs up and never lays flat again. This isn't a hypothetical risk in a dry inland climate — it's a documented pattern in wet coastal climates like ours, which is exactly the environment Ferndale and the rest of Whatcom County sit in.
Moss and Sustained Dampness
Moss doesn't just grow on roofs. On shaded siding that stays damp for extended stretches, moss and algae growth can hold moisture against the surface far longer than a sunny wall would ever experience. On a coated fiber cement product this is a cosmetic cleaning issue. On any wood-based product, sustained surface dampness is exactly the condition the zinc borate treatment is designed to fight — which means the margin for coating failure to turn into substrate damage is thinner here than almost anywhere inland.
The Installation-Sensitivity Problem
LP SmartSide's warranty coverage and real-world performance are both heavily dependent on installation being done to an exact spec: correct gap spacing at every butt joint, complete caulking at every penetration, proper flashing above every window and door, and a repainting schedule that keeps the factory primer's topcoat intact. Miss any one of those steps — a nail driven too tight, a caulk joint skipped behind a downspout, a repaint deferred by a couple years — and the product's vulnerable point (the wood core) is exposed to exactly the moisture load our climate provides.
That's not a knock on the crews who install it well. It's a statement about risk tolerance. We don't want a homeowner's siding warranty resting on every single joint being perfect for the next 20 years in a climate that doesn't forgive missed maintenance.
LP SmartSide vs. James Hardie: The Practical Differences
| Factor | LP SmartSide | James Hardie Fiber Cement |
|---|---|---|
| Core material | Engineered wood strand (resin-bonded) | Cement, sand, and cellulose fiber — non-combustible |
| Moisture response | Can swell/flare at exposed cuts, seams, or coating breaks | Does not swell, rot, or support fungal growth |
| Factory finish | Primed; topcoat paint required and maintained by homeowner | ColorPlus baked-on finish, multiple coats, factory cured |
| Repaint cycle to keep warranty valid | Typically every several years per manufacturer schedule | Not required for ColorPlus finish; 15-year finish warranty |
| Salt air / coastal tolerance | Performance depends on unbroken coating and upkeep | Engineered HZ product lines for wind, rain, and moisture exposure |
| Fire rating | Combustible wood-based product | Non-combustible |
| Relative material cost | Lower | Higher |
The cost gap is real, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. What that gap buys is a product whose core material physically cannot rot, swell, or feed fungal growth, and a factory finish that's built to go a decade and a half without a repaint — which matters when your painter has to work around a wet season that runs a good chunk of the year here.
What This Looks Like Over 15-20 Years
A homeowner who installs LP SmartSide and stays perfectly current on caulk inspection and repainting can get a long service life out of it — that's a fair statement. The exposure we're not comfortable installing into is the more common scenario: a house that gets repainted a couple years late, a caulk joint that opens up behind a gutter, or a north wall that stays shaded and damp most of the year. Over a decade or two in Whatcom County's rain and salt air, those small deferred-maintenance items are where wood-based siding loses the argument to fiber cement.
Why We Standardized on James Hardie
We made a decision as a company to install one product line — James Hardie — rather than offer a menu of siding options at different price points. A few reasons drove that:
- Non-combustible core. Cement-based, not wood-based, so there's no fiber to rot, swell, or attract fungal decay.
- Climate-engineered product lines. Hardie's HZ5 formulation is built specifically for wetter, colder climate zones like ours, not a one-size-fits-all national spec.
- ColorPlus factory finish. Multiple coats baked on under controlled conditions, with a 15-year finish warranty and no repaint requirement to keep that warranty intact.
- Strong transferable warranty. Coverage that follows the house, which matters to buyers and to resale value.
- A proven track record in exactly this kind of driving-rain, salt-air, long-moss-season environment.
Installing one product well, to spec, every time, is how we keep our workmanship warranty meaningful. Splitting our crews' expertise across several siding systems with different installation rules is how mistakes creep in.
Questions to Ask Any Contractor Proposing LP SmartSide
If another contractor has quoted LP SmartSide for your Ferndale or Whatcom County home, it's worth asking a few direct questions before you sign anything:
- What repainting schedule does the manufacturer require to keep the warranty valid, and who's responsible for tracking it?
- What happens to the warranty if a field cut or seam isn't fully sealed?
- How is the product rated for coastal salt exposure specifically, not just general moisture resistance?
- What's the manufacturer's guidance for north-facing or heavily shaded walls with sustained moss and algae exposure?
- Is the warranty transferable if you sell the house within the coverage period?
None of these are trick questions — a contractor who installs the product regularly should have straight answers. If the answers involve a maintenance schedule you're not confident you'll keep up with for the next 15-20 years, that's worth weighing against the upfront cost savings.
Our Bottom Line
LP SmartSide isn't a scam product or a bad product — it's a reasonable engineered-wood siding that performs fine in the right conditions with disciplined upkeep. Whatcom County's combination of salt air, driving rain, and a moss season that can run half the year isn't the forgiving environment that product needs. We'd rather install a smaller number of products extremely well than stretch our crews across several systems with different tolerances for error. That's why every siding job we take on is James Hardie fiber cement, and why we're upfront about it before you ever get a bid from us.
If you're weighing siding options for a home in Ferndale or elsewhere in Whatcom County, we're happy to walk your house, point out what your current siding is telling us, and put together a free, no-pressure estimate for what a Hardie install would look like.