Ontario's Plain-English Guide to Custom Home Buildingπ 705-533-1633 | βοΈ 1-866-868-6606 | βοΈ info@icfhome.ca
Cedar Siding Cost and Maintenance in Ontario: Knotty, Clear and Prefinished, the Rainscreen It Needs, the Stain Schedule, and What Real Wood Costs Over 30 Years
Exterior Finishes
Cedar Siding: The Only Cladding on This Site That Is Actually Wood, What It Costs to Put Up, and What It Costs to Keep Up
Cedar is what every other siding is trying to look like, and it costs about what fibre cement does to install: $17 a square foot for knotty, $20 for a mid-grade prefinished board, $26 for clear vertical grain, plus $2.50 for the strapping behind it that no honest installer will skip. Where it differs from everything else is afterwards. A stained cedar wall wants a new coat every five to seven years at $4.50 a square foot, and over 30 years that is more than the siding cost. Or you let it go silver and spend nothing, which is a real choice and the right one on a lot of cottages. What you cannot do is put it up like vinyl, stain it once and forget it.
The numbers
| Grade | Installed | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Builder | $17 | Knotty cedar, bevel or channel, site-stained one coat. Tight knots, some sap, the cottage look. Fine for a cottage. |
| Mid | $20 | Select knotty or better, factory-finished on all six sides with a solid or semi-transparent stain, stainless fasteners. The one to buy for a house. |
| Premium | $26 | Clear vertical grain, prefinished, wider profiles, shiplap or a custom pattern, mitred corners. The wall on the architecture magazine cover. |
| Goes with it | Rate | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Rainscreen strapping, 3/8 or 3/4 in. | $2.50 per sq ft | Not optional on cedar. Every manufacturer and the cedar associations want a drained, vented cavity behind it. |
| Stain, two coats | $4.50 per sq ft | Every 3 to 5 years for a semi-transparent stain, 7 to 10 for a solid one, on a sunny wall. Call it every 5 to 7 on average over the house. |
| Waste | 10% | 12% in board and batten. Carried in the rate. |
| Tearoff of old wood siding | $2.50 per sq ft | Plus the $550 bin, on a re-side. |
The rate carries the boards, stainless or hot-dipped fasteners, corner boards, the sheathing membrane and the standard flashing. The strapping is the line that makes cedar $19.50 to $28.50 on the wall, and it is the line that gets left off the quote that looks good. The exterior cladding cost calculator adds it automatically.
Why cedar needs a rainscreen and the others only like one
Wood moves with moisture. A cedar board nailed flat to the house wrap gets wet on the face, stays dry on the back, and cups toward the dry side, which pulls the nails and opens the laps. Water that gets behind it, and some always does, sits against the wrap with no air to dry it, and the back of the board stays wet long enough to grow the black you see on cedar that was put up wrong. The stain on the face fails from behind, blistering off a board that is damp on the back, and the owner blames the stain.
Strapping fixes all of it. Vertical furring at 16 in. over the sheathing membrane holds the boards 3/8 or 3/4 in. off the wall, open at the bottom behind a bug screen and at the top under the soffit. Air moves up the cavity, the back of the board dries at the same rate as the front, the board stays flat, and the water that gets in runs down the wrap and out. On the rainscreen guide you will see that other sidings benefit from the same cavity. Cedar does not benefit from it; cedar needs it, and a cedar quote without a strapping line is a quote for a wall that will cup.
On the ICF houses I build, the strapping screws to the webs and the foam is the drainage plane, and cedar is one of the better finishes for an ICF wall for that reason; the full list with costs is in the best exterior finishes for ICF walls.
What the stain schedule actually looks like
There are three ways to finish cedar and the choice sets the bill for the next 30 years.
Semi-transparent stain. Shows the grain, looks the best, lasts the least: three to five years on a south wall before it goes patchy, longer on the north. Recoating is easy because it does not peel, it fades, and the new coat goes over the old after a wash. Factory-applied on all six sides at the mid grade, which is worth the money because the back and the ends get coated, and the site crew never coats the back.
Solid stain. Looks like paint, hides the grain and the knots, lasts seven to ten years. When it fails it peels, and a peeling solid stain means scraping before the next coat, which is a different and worse job than washing. Most prefinished cedar in a colour is a solid stain.
Nothing. Cedar with no finish goes silver-grey over two or three years, unevenly at first and then all over, and after that it does not change much for decades. The wood is still fine; the oils in it are why it is used for siding at all. On a cottage, on a modern house that was designed for it, on the north side of a barn, this is the right answer and it costs zero. The one rule is that it still needs the rainscreen, and it still needs the 6 in. off the ground, because grey cedar in a snowbank rots the same as brown cedar.
Whichever you choose, the fasteners are stainless steel, or hot-dipped galvanized at the least. A bright or electroplated nail reacts with the tannin in the wood and leaves a black streak running down from every nail head within a year, and there is no fixing that short of bleaching the wall. The mid rate assumes stainless. The builder rate sometimes does not; ask.
A 2,000 sq ft wall over 30 years, three materials
A new build, 2,000 sq ft of net wall, 15 openings, trim in the same family for each. The siding only; soffit, eaves and stone on the front are the same for all three and sit elsewhere.
Cedar, mid grade prefinished, semi-transparent. Siding 2,000 at $20 is $40,000. Rainscreen 2,000 at $2.50 is $5,000. Day one: $45,000. Restain at about years 6, 12, 18 and 24, four times at 2,000 x $4.50, $9,000 each, $36,000. Thirty-year cost: $81,000 before HST. If you let it go grey instead, $45,000 and a wall that looks like a boathouse, which on some houses is the point.
Fibre cement, mid grade prefinished. 2,000 at $18 is $36,000. One repaint at about year 15, 2,000 at $3.50, $7,000. Thirty-year cost: $43,000.
Vinyl, mid grade. 2,000 at $9.50 is $19,000. Nothing after, if you can live with the fade. Thirty-year cost: $19,000, and at year 30 it is tired.
So cedar stained is about twice fibre cement over the life and four times vinyl. The money is not the reason to choose cedar and nobody who chooses it thinks it is. The reason is that it is wood, and it looks and smells and ages like wood, and the other two are a picture of it. If the budget wants the look at less, engineered wood at $17 is wood strands under a resin face and gets most of the way there with a 15-year finish.
What good cedar installers do
- Strap it, vertical furring over the sheathing membrane, open at the bottom with insect screen and vented at the top. Shown on the quote as its own line.
- Prefinished on six sides, or back-primed on site before it goes up, and every cut end coated before the board is nailed. The end grain is where cedar drinks, and the ends at the corner boards and the window trim are the first place a wall fails.
- Stainless fasteners, ring-shank, one nail per bearing on bevel siding, placed above the lap of the board below so the boards can move. Two nails across a wide board splits it in the first dry winter.
- Clearances like any wood: 6 in. from grade, 1 in. off a roof, 2 in. over a deck, and never in contact with a concrete step or a stone cap where it wicks.
- Flashing at the openings and a kick-out where a roof meets the wall, like any siding, and a drip cap over every window and door that the boards sit above, not against. The flashing details are the same ones every cladding wants.
- Acclimatize the boards a week on site under cover before they go up, especially kiln-dried cedar in a humid August, so the first gaps that open are the ones the boards would have had anyway.
Questions people ask
How much does cedar siding cost installed in Ontario?
$17 a square foot for knotty cedar, $20 for mid-grade prefinished, $26 for clear, before HST, plus $2.50 for the rainscreen strapping it needs. So $19.50 to $28.50 on the wall. Tearoff on a re-side is $2.50 a square foot plus a $550 bin.
How often does cedar siding need to be stained?
Every three to five years for a semi-transparent stain on a sunny wall, seven to ten for a solid stain. At $4.50 a square foot for two coats, a 2,000 sq ft wall is $9,000 a coat. Or let it grey and never stain it, which costs nothing and suits a lot of houses.
Does cedar siding need a rainscreen?
Yes. Wood nailed flat to the wrap gets wet on the back, cups, pulls its nails and grows black. Strapping at $2.50 a square foot keeps the back of the board as dry as the front. A cedar quote without a strapping line is a wall that will cup.
Is cedar siding worth it compared with fibre cement?
On money, no: about $81,000 against $43,000 on a 2,000 sq ft wall over 30 years with the staining. On looks and on the fact that it is real wood, that is the whole reason people buy it. Let it go grey and the 30-year cost drops to $45,000.
Why is my cedar siding turning black?
Either the nails are not stainless and the tannin in the wood is reacting with them, which streaks down from each nail head, or the back of the board is staying wet because there is no rainscreen, which shows as blotches. The first is the fasteners; the second is the wall.
Price it with the strapping in
The exterior cladding cost calculator prices cedar with the rainscreen line turned on and lets you set the stain schedule to see the 30-year number beside fibre cement and vinyl. If you have a cedar quote with no strapping on it, the $99 review will say so in writing, with the manufacturer’s page that agrees.
Sources and further reading
- Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation: the Canadian wall-assembly and moisture research behind rainscreens and the second plane of protection.
- Ontario’s Building Code, Section 9.27 Cladding: the first and second planes of protection, sheathing membrane, flashing at openings and transitions, and the clearances from grade and roofs that every siding and stucco job has to meet.
- ICFhome.ca: where I build the ICF houses these exterior details come from.
