Whatcom County What LP SmartSide Actually Is
LP SmartSide is an engineered wood siding product made from strand board — wood fibers bonded with resins and waxes under heat and pressure, then coated with a resin-saturated overlay and factory primer. It's a legitimate building product with real strengths: it's lighter than fiber cement, easier on saw blades, faster to install for crews used to working with wood, and it takes paint well. A lot of siding contractors in the Pacific Northwest use it successfully, and homeowners who maintain it properly can get a good run out of it.
We're not writing this page to trash LP SmartSide. We're writing it because homeowners in Whatcom County ask us why we don't install it, and they deserve a straight answer instead of a sales pitch. The short version: it's a wood product asked to perform in a climate that's hard on wood, and the margin for error — both in installation and long-term maintenance — is thinner than most homeowners realize when they sign the contract.
The Core Material Difference
The single biggest thing to understand is what each product is actually made of. LP SmartSide is wood-based. James Hardie fiber cement is cement, sand, and cellulose fiber. That difference drives almost everything else on this page — how each product handles moisture, how it ages, what happens at cut edges, and what it takes to keep it looking good over twenty or thirty years.
| Factor | LP SmartSide (engineered wood) | James Hardie (fiber cement) |
|---|---|---|
| Base material | Wood strand board with resin overlay | Cement, sand, cellulose fiber |
| Moisture behavior | Can swell, delaminate, or rot if water gets past the surface | Non-combustible, dimensionally stable, engineered for wet climates |
| Cut-edge treatment | Must be sealed at every cut or the edge is exposed to moisture | Factory-engineered edges; less field sealing required |
| Finish | Field-painted or factory-primed, needs repainting on a cycle | ColorPlus factory finish baked on, warrantied against fade and peel |
| Combustibility | Wood-based, combustible | Non-combustible |
| Typical maintenance | Regular inspection, caulk touch-up, repainting every several years | Occasional rinse and caulk check; no repainting cycle with ColorPlus |
Moisture Is the Whole Ballgame Here
Whatcom County isn't a mild, dry siding climate. We get salt air rolling in off the water, driving rain that hits walls sideways for days at a stretch, and a long moss season where north-facing walls and anything under tree cover stays damp for weeks on end. That combination is exactly the scenario engineered wood siding struggles with. LP's manufacturing process and warranty coverage have improved a lot over the years, and the product performs reasonably well when it's installed correctly and maintained on schedule — but "installed correctly and maintained on schedule" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Wood-based siding fails the same way almost every time: moisture gets past the surface at a seam, a cut edge, a nail hole, or a spot where caulk has failed, and then it doesn't dry out fast enough before the next round of rain hits. In a drier climate that's a minor risk. In Whatcom County, where a wall can stay wet for a week between storms and moss holds moisture against the surface even longer, it's a real and recurring risk over the life of the siding. Fiber cement doesn't have that failure mode — it doesn't swell, it doesn't delaminate, and moss and mildew don't feed on it the way they can on wood substrates.
Where Moisture Problems Actually Start
- Field cuts that weren't sealed with the manufacturer's specified primer or sealant before installation
- Butt joints and seams where caulk has shrunk, cracked, or was never installed to spec
- Nail heads that weren't set and sealed properly, leaving an entry point for water
- Areas under roof overhangs, decks, or tree canopy that stay damp longer and grow moss
- Grade contact or insufficient clearance at the bottom course, where splashback keeps the siding wet
Installation Sensitivity
Every siding product has an install spec, but not every product punishes deviation from that spec equally. Fiber cement is more forgiving of small installation variances because the material itself doesn't care much about a little extra moisture exposure at an edge. Engineered wood siding is much less forgiving — a cut edge that doesn't get primed before it goes up, or a joint that gets caulked with the wrong product, can turn into a moisture problem years down the road that isn't visible until the damage is already done underneath the surface.
That puts a lot of weight on installer discipline: every single field cut sealed, every joint caulked correctly, proper clearances maintained at grade and roof lines, and fasteners set to spec. We've seen good work and we've seen rushed work on this product across the industry, and the problem is that from the outside, a rushed install and a careful install look identical on the day the crew leaves. The difference only shows up five, ten, or fifteen years later — long after the crew that installed it has moved on to other jobs.
Warranty Structure: Read the Fine Print
LP's warranty coverage has come a long way and is genuinely reasonable on paper. But like most engineered wood siding warranties, it typically requires the homeowner to follow a maintenance schedule — inspections, caulk touch-ups, repainting within specified intervals — to keep full coverage in force. If that maintenance lapses, coverage can be reduced or void when a claim actually comes up. That's a normal structure for a wood-based product, but it means the homeowner is carrying ongoing responsibility for keeping the warranty alive, not just for keeping the house looking good.
James Hardie's ColorPlus warranty is structured differently because the product doesn't need the same maintenance cycle. There's no repainting schedule to keep track of, no caulk-and-inspect calendar tied to warranty validity, and the transferable coverage is built around a product that isn't asking the homeowner to actively maintain its moisture resistance year after year.
Appearance and Finish Over Time
LP SmartSide typically ships primed, and the homeowner (or the installing contractor) applies the finish paint. That paint job is only as good as the prep and the paint used, and it's on a repainting clock — most manufacturers and painters recommend recoating within a several-year window to keep the substrate protected, not just to keep it looking fresh. Skip that cycle in a wet climate and you're not just risking faded color, you're risking the moisture protection the paint film provides.
James Hardie's ColorPlus finish is baked on at the factory under controlled conditions, which gives more consistent color and adhesion than field-applied paint, and it's warrantied not to fade or peel for a long period. For a homeowner who doesn't want siding maintenance on their calendar every few years, that's a meaningful practical difference, not just a marketing point.
Fire and Pest Considerations
Two other factors worth naming plainly. First, fiber cement is non-combustible, while engineered wood siding, like any wood-based product, is combustible. That matters more in some parts of Washington than others, but it's a legitimate factor in a material decision and insurers increasingly take note of it. Second, wood-based products are, by nature, more attractive to wood-destroying insects than cement-based products, though LP's manufacturing process does address this to a degree. Fiber cement simply removes that category of risk entirely.
Why We Standardized on James Hardie
We made a decision as a company to install one fiber cement system — James Hardie — rather than offering a menu of products with different risk profiles. Part of that is climate: Whatcom County's combination of salt air, sustained driving rain, and a long moss season rewards a material that doesn't depend on flawless field sealing and an ongoing maintenance calendar to stay watertight. Part of it is accountability: when we only install one system, we know that system inside and out, we install it to spec every time, and we're not learning the quirks of five different products across five different job sites.
Hardie's HZ product lines are engineered specifically for climate zones like ours, the ColorPlus finish removes the repainting cycle from the homeowner's to-do list, and the non-combustible, dimensionally stable material holds up to the kind of weather this county throws at a house for nine months of the year. That's the trade-off we landed on after weighing what actually happens to siding here over a couple of decades, not just what it looks like on installation day.
A Quick Gut-Check Before You Choose a Siding Material
- Are you comfortable committing to a repainting and caulk-inspection schedule to keep the warranty valid?
- Does your property have shaded, north-facing, or tree-covered walls that stay damp longer?
- Is the crew installing it experienced specifically with that product's field-sealing requirements?
- Does the warranty require documented maintenance, and are you prepared to keep those records?
- How does the material perform specifically in coastal, high-rainfall Pacific Northwest conditions — not just in a national average?
If you're planning a siding project in Whatcom County and want a straightforward assessment of your home's exposure, existing siding condition, and what a James Hardie installation would actually involve, we're happy to walk the property with you and give you a free, no-pressure estimate.