Ferndale Siding LP SmartSide Isn't a Bad Product — It's the Wrong Fit for This Coastline
Homeowners in Ferndale ask us about LP SmartSide often enough that we think it deserves a straight answer instead of a sales pitch. LP SmartSide is an engineered wood siding — strand board made from wood fibers, resin, and a zinc borate treatment (LP calls it SmartGuard) designed to resist fungal decay and termites. It's a legitimate product, widely used, and for a lot of the country it performs fine. We just don't install it here, and we want to explain why rather than just say no.
What LP SmartSide Gets Right
To be fair to the product: it's lighter and easier to handle than fiber cement, which can lower labor time on a job. It takes paint well, holds up reasonably to impact, and the SmartGuard treatment does address the classic weak point of old-school wood siding — untreated rot. It's also generally less expensive than fiber cement, which matters to a lot of budgets. None of that is in dispute.
Why Whatcom County's Climate Changes the Math
The issue isn't the factory treatment — it's what happens at the job site and over the following fifteen or twenty years. LP SmartSide is still an engineered wood product at its core, and wood-based sidings behave differently than cement-based ones when they're exposed to sustained moisture. Ferndale sits close enough to the water that salt air is a real factor on fasteners and trim, and Whatcom County gets long stretches of driving rain off the Sound, not just light drizzle. Add in the extended moss and algae season that shows up on north-facing walls and shaded elevations around here, and you've got a climate that keeps siding wet for longer than it does in drier parts of the country.
Engineered wood siding depends heavily on every seam, cut edge, and fastener penetration being properly sealed and kept sealed. Field-cut edges have to be primed before installation, joints have to be caulked correctly, and that caulking has to be maintained — not just installed once and forgotten. In a climate with this much sustained moisture exposure, any gap in that maintenance chain gives water a path into the substrate, and wood-based material responds to trapped moisture very differently than fiber cement does. It swells, and swelling at seams and butt joints is hard to fully reverse.
Installation Sensitivity Is the Real Story
A lot of siding problems aren't about the material failing on its own — they're about installation tolerances. LP SmartSide's performance is more sensitive to correct field practices (edge sealing, fastener placement, clearance from grade and hardscape, caulk maintenance schedules) than fiber cement is. That's a fair trade-off for some contractors and some climates. But on a coastal Whatcom County home taking on salt-laden, wind-driven rain for a good chunk of the year, we'd rather not build a home's weather barrier around a product where a missed maintenance cycle or an imperfect field cut becomes the difference between twenty trouble-free years and an expensive repair.
We also look at warranty structure. Manufacturer warranties on engineered wood products typically carry maintenance obligations attached — you have to keep up with caulking, painting, and edge sealing on schedule to keep coverage intact. That's a reasonable ask on paper, but it puts the long-term performance of the siding partly in the hands of whoever owns the house down the road, not just the installer.
Why We Install James Hardie Instead
This is the whole reason we standardized on James Hardie fiber cement and stopped installing everything else, including LP SmartSide. Fiber cement is cement, sand, and cellulose fiber — not an organic wood substrate, so it doesn't swell or rot the way wood-based products can if moisture gets past a seam. Hardie's ColorPlus finish is baked on at the factory under controlled conditions, not field-painted, which means better fade resistance and a coating that isn't dependent on site conditions the day it was applied. Hardie also builds region-specific HZ product lines engineered for exactly the kind of wet, coastal exposure Ferndale sees, and it's non-combustible, which matters more every fire season in this state.
| LP SmartSide | James Hardie Fiber Cement | |
|---|---|---|
| Core material | Engineered wood strand | Cement, sand, cellulose fiber |
| Finish | Field-painted | Factory-baked ColorPlus |
| Moisture response | Can swell at seams if maintenance lapses | Not organic — doesn't rot or swell the same way |
| Combustibility | Wood-based | Non-combustible |
| Maintenance dependency | Higher — caulk/paint schedule tied to warranty | Lower — factory finish, transferable warranty |
We're not telling homeowners LP SmartSide is junk — plenty of houses around the country wear it just fine. We're telling you why, for a company that only wants to put one product on a home and stand behind it for decades in this specific climate, fiber cement is the one we chose. If you're weighing siding options for a Ferndale home and want a straight, no-pressure look at what actually makes sense for your house and your budget, we're happy to walk the property with you and give you a free estimate.