Q: How long is your installer warranty?

A: Our installer warranty is 5 years, as well as the product manufacturer's warranty (typically 25-35 years). This means that any deficiencies that happen to your house as result of our installation (nobody is perfect, even if we strive to be), will be fixed by us free of charge for at least 5 years. Any deficiencies in the material itself is covered by the manufacturer for about 25-35 years or longer depending on the material.

Q: Only a few pieces of Vinyl siding are damaged on my house, can only those pieces be replaced or must we change the whole wall?

A: It depends. Is your wall south facing, north facing? How long has your siding been on your house? What colour is your siding? These are all things that factor into this. 

Because the sun effects the fade of the colour and some colours fade worse than others, this is a complicated question. As a typical rule of thumb, if your north wall is damaged (which does not get sun exposure), and the siding is relatively new (newer than 20 years), there is a good chance we can replace just the broken pieces. If it's a south wall, its almost guaranteed that we cannot replace just the broken pieces without them sticking out like a sore thumb.

Also colours like Red, Blue, dark grey, and darker colours in general will fade more. Red and blue are typically the worst for fade. Lighter colours like white and linen fade much less so, so there is a chance that we can patch in those pieces regardless of the wall it's on.

Because these types of things are situational, give us a call or email and we will be happy to consult with you and give you the information you need to best judge what solution works best for you.

Q: The insurance company is only giving us a partial renovation (one or two walls opposed to the entire house), even though the siding colour is faded, does not exist anymore or there is damage on the walls they are not covering, what can I do?

A: Give us a call right away! We deal with the insurance companies on a daily basis and advocate on behalf of the customer. If they are eager to sign you a cheque for the partial job, stop and give us a call before you take their first offer. Many insurance companies these days will quickly hand out cheques for partial jobs only for the homeowner to find out later that siding does not exist anymore or the job cannot be completely properly.  At that point, there is nothing you can do besides pay out of pocket because you already took the payment from the insurance company.

We will work with you and your insurance company to address obsolete siding. For example, we often send siding samples to the Insurance Claims Collaborative (ICC) to generate an ICC report to prove that your siding does not exist or cannot be matched properly. This results in the insurance company having to pay out for an entire renovation to restore your home to predamaged condition using a like and kind material.

Q: My siding colour or profile is discontinued, is there something close that matches, or should I redo my entire house?

A: Again, this is entirely situational. Some manufacturers have colours and profiles that match very closely to other manufacturer's that you wouldn't be able to tell from one wall to another. Typically you cannot patch another material on the same wall though. If you have questions about this, let us know and we will work with you to figure out what we can do to save you the most amount of money.

Q: Can I upgrade from vinyl siding to something better? I heard a lot about Hardie board, how does that stand up to the elements? How much more expensive is it?

A: Of course you can always upgrade. Hardie board is a cement siding product that is hail and fire resistant. However, the big hail storm of 2020 in the north east, even the hardie board was damaged from how intense the hail was, which created a whole bunch of new problems. Because it is cement board, once the paint is cracked opened, the water will eat away at the cement product, much like getting inside drywall wet. In western Canada where we have lots of quick temperature changes, you can get perspiration and moisture build up on the back of the siding, that can actually rot away the sheeting of your house because it is trapped inside.

Many installers aren't aware that James Hardie will not give their best manufacterer warranty unless hardie board is strapped/lathed out from the wall with wood on the studs, and a bug screen system put into place to keep critters and bugs from going behind the space behind the siding. This also can create problems around windows and inside corners once the wall is built out, causing us to put new battens around all your windows to accommodate everything being built out more. All this combined can lead to a much more expensive job than initially thought, and can even be more than double the cost of Vinyl siding.

However if you like the look of Hardie board siding, there is another alternative, called Eco-side Engineered wood product from Kaycan (a manufacturer based in Carstairs Alberta). It's a wood product that looks much like James Hardie (the picture at the top of our page is a house we did with this material) that is treated with paint that does not require the wood strapping system underneath to attain the manufacturer's warranty. Plus it's a company based out of Alberta. The owners of Old Tyme Exteriors are one of the first people to have used this newer product in Alberta and we are a preferred contractor for Kaycan with this material. The best part is that it doesn't cost that much more than vinyl siding, and is a much more economically (and environmentally) friendly upgrade.

If you don't want the eco-side product, we are still happy to give you cement board if you desire. Plus there are some other alternatives, like Steel siding that can stand up to the elements as well. Give us a call and we will work with you on whatever you are looking for!

Q: My house has stucco on it right now, can we put siding on it, how expensive would that be?

A: Yes you can. Depending on the type of stucco, we can nail siding on it with cement nails, or even strap the entire house with wood and put the siding on top of that. Otherwise we can tear the stucco off (typically not recommended as by this point it's probably part of your structure and vapor barrier) or even put level wall insulation over top and nail on that. However this can be much more expensive to change over, because no matter what you do, tear off stucco, strap it, insulate it, etc, these can greatly impact the price of your project. Check out our stucco and insulation renovations section of our Residential Renovations section of the site.

Q: Can I make a change to the project once work has begun?

A: It depends on the type of change and when the request occurs, but typically you can do this. Please note that such changes can greatly impact the cost, but we will work with you every step of the way.