On Jun 17, 8:43 pm, kramer31 wrote:
My wife and I just purchased our first home (well technically the
close hasn't happened yet, but it's going through escrow).

The home inspector recommended that we replace the siding, so we are
going to do that. Right now the siding is some sort of old composite
that is falling apart. We are trying to decide what to put up.

Vinyl is very durable and doesn't need painting but most vinyl that I
have seen is kind of ugly.

If we get cedar siding that is stained and sealed, how often will it
have to be stained and sealed?

If we get a composite siding, how often will that have to be stained
and sealed? And what is the best type of composite siding to get?

Thanks in advance for the advice.

The uglyness factor is strictly personal preference. Your preference
nay vary from mine, but I think vinyl looks ugly. Ny neighborhood is
all 1920's houses, mixture of cedar clapboards, cedar shakes, and
stucco. Some people get tired of the maintenace of cedar siding, so
they cover it with stucco. Some people may argue that vinyl looks OK,
but it certainly looks out of place in my neighborhood.

People say vinyl and aluminum are "maintenance free". I prefer to
think of them as "unmaintainable". It gets dmamaged and you are often
SOL. Yes, you just wash down the vinyl or aluminum siding every year
or two, but once it gets damaged, often you are out of luck because
you can't find a matching replacement. They don't make the same vinyl
patterns for 100 years in a row. Around here, we get windstorms every
few years, and it is common to see large pieces of vinyl siding
missing from houses. Doesn't happen to my cedar. We also get ice
storms occassionally, last big one a tree came down and hit the side
of our house. All I did was replace a couple clapboards (exact match
to the 80 year old stuff easily obtainable), and then paint that
section of wall. If I had vinyl or aluminum, I probably would have
had to do an extensive search for an approximate match, and even then
probably would have had to replace the whole section of that wall.

Yes, you do have to maintain cedar. Around here, everybody paints it,
and once you paint then you have to continue to paint rather than
stain. If my house hadn't been painted way back than, I would much
prefer stain. Prep work would be minimized, and then you would apply
a stain every 5-10 years. In New England, the standard seems to be
let cedar shakes weather naturally. Lifetime seems to be 100+ years,
way longer than any viinyl siding job will ever last. This is as long
as you like the effect of weathered gray cedar shakes.

Cost of cedar will be much greater than vinyl or aluminum.

No first hand experience with cement siding, but I believe it does a
decent job of combining all the best attributes of wood vs. vinyl or
aluminum. As long as you like the look of cement siding. I have the
impression it lasts forever, replacements should hopefully be
available 20+ years after you originally install the siding so that
you can repair damage. Holds paint well, so you don't have to paint
all the time.

If you have environmental concerns, cedar is a renewable resource,
however it comes from cutting old growth forests. Vinyl is a
petroleum product. Aluminum is recyclable. Cement is probably the
best overall because it is a mineral that is not in short supply, and
it last a long time.

Ken