Fiber Cement Siding Panels

These fiber cement siding panels could be eighty, or more, years old. They're on an old house in Meredith, NH. When installed there was no need to paint them. For some reason, people decide to go down that road of no return. Copyright 2017 Tim Carter

Fiber Cement Siding Panels Are Man-Made Rock

Fiber cement siding panels are excellent materials to cover the exterior of a home. There are thousands and thousands of homes and businesses that have this magic siding on their exterior walls.

The panels are so weather resistant for many many years special ones were made as roofing shingles! The panels used to be made with:

Portland cement
fine silica sand
asbestos

It's important to realize all three of those ingredients are rock or derivatives of rock and water causes no harm to any of them.

Modern fiber cement siding panels contain wood fiber in place of the asbestos. Wood fibers in fiber cement siding absorb water. A point often overlooked is this water can freeze and expand in cold climates.

The red piece of siding is made with fiber cement that contains wood fibers. It was installed too close to a porch deck, got wet, absorbed water and delaminated. If this siding had contained asbestos or fiberglass instead of wood fiber, the damage would have never happened. Copyright 2017 Tim Carter

Fiberglass Would Be A Better Component

Another key point is fiberglass strands have been used for decades to reinforce concrete slabs. It's an inexpensive building material and it's waterproof.

It would be easy to substitute small fiberglass strands in modern fiber cement siding panels. The new cement siding would then last as long as the original product that contained asbestos.

At the present time my opinion is wood fiber is used as a form of planned obsolescence. If pieces of siding go bad, then you need to buy new to replace it.

Old Fiber Cement Siding On Historic Buildings

You can find durable fiber cement siding on tens of thousands of buildings in the USA. There are no less than ten buildings within a one-mile radius of Meredith, NH where I live.

This is an historic house in Meredith, NH that is covered with original fiber cement panels. They are in excellent shape except for a few places where the siding has been bumped. This house was probably built in the late 1800s and covered with the fiber cement in the 1920s or 1930s. Copyright 2017 Tim Carter

You can find hundreds and hundreds of old historic homes in just one day if you walk around an old East-Coast city!