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Vinyl vs Fibre Cement Siding: Cost, Look, Winter, Fire, Install Difficulty and the 30-Year Bill, Compared Honestly for an Ontario House
Exterior Finishes
Vinyl or Fibre Cement? Twice the Price for a Wall That Looks Like Wood, Does Not Burn, and Punishes a Careless Installer
This is the decision most Ontario re-sides come down to, and it is not close on price: mid-grade vinyl is $9.50 a square foot installed and mid-grade fibre cement is $18. On a 2,000 sq ft wall that is $17,000 apart before anyone touches the tearoff. What the extra money buys is a flat, heavy board that holds paint, takes a hailstone, will not melt beside the barbecue and looks like painted wood from the sidewalk. What it costs you, beyond the money, is that fibre cement is a hard product to install and a cheap fibre cement quote is the one to be afraid of.
Side by side
| Vinyl | Fibre cement | |
|---|---|---|
| Installed, mid grade | $9.50 | $18 |
| Installed, builder / premium | $7.50 / $12.50 | $16 / $22 |
| What it is | Extruded PVC panel, 0.040 to 0.046 in. thick, colour all the way through | Portland cement, sand and cellulose fibre pressed into a 5/16 in. board, primed or factory painted |
| Weight of a 12 ft board | About 2 lb; one person, no problem | About 25 lb; two people or a hook, and it snaps if you carry it flat |
| Look from the road | Vinyl. The seams every 12 ft and the J-channel at every window give it away | Painted wood. Flat, sharp shadow line, butt joints that disappear if the trim is done right |
| Minus 25 in January | Brittle. A thin panel cracks if a shovel or a hockey puck finds it | Does not care |
| Plus 30 in July | Expands about 1/2 in. over a 12 ft panel; ripples if it was nailed tight | Moves almost nothing |
| Fire | Melts at about 75 C, burns; the barbecue and the neighbour’s fire are both a problem | Non-combustible. Will not feed a fire from the grass or the house next door |
| Hail and ladders | Dents and cracks | Chips at the edges, otherwise shrugs |
| Paint | Never, or once at $3.50 a foot with a vinyl-safe light colour | Factory finish lasts about 15 years; repaint at $3.50 a foot |
| Maintenance | Hose it | Hose it; caulk the trim joints every 10 years |
| Install difficulty | Low skill, high care: loose nailing and expansion gaps are the whole trick | High skill: clearances, flashing behind every butt joint, primed cuts, the right nails, silica dust |
| Resale | Expected on a $500,000 house; a minus on a $1.2 million one | Reads as quality everywhere |
Both rates include the sheathing membrane and normal flashing allowance. Neither includes tearoff, rot, scaffolding or trim beyond the basics, which are the same for both and sit on the siding cost page.
What vinyl is actually good at
Being cheap and staying out of trouble. A mid-grade vinyl panel in a sensible colour, nailed loose by someone who read the manual, goes on an Ontario house in a week and comes off in 30 years looking faded and otherwise fine. It is the only cladding you can put on in a Simcoe January at the normal rate, it never needs paint, and when a panel does crack you unzip it and put in a new one for the price of a service call.
Its problems are all about movement and thickness. Vinyl grows and shrinks with the temperature, so it hangs on its nails rather than being pinned by them: head 1/32 in. off the panel, centred in the slot, every 16 in., and a 1/4 in. gap at every J-channel. Tight nailing is why it ripples in August. A 0.040 in. builder panel is also brittle enough at minus 25 that the kid’s hockey practice against the garage ends in a hole. The premium panel is 0.046 in., or vinyl with a foam backing that stiffens it, and that is the one to put on a wall that faces the street or the driveway.
What fibre cement is actually good at
Looking like wood and behaving like a sidewalk. The board is flat and heavy, so it lies down on the wall with a crisp shadow line, and the factory paint is baked on in a controlled room instead of brushed on a ladder. It does not burn, it does not move with the weather, it does not care about woodpeckers, and a hailstorm that leaves a vinyl wall looking like a golf ball leaves fibre cement alone. It is the finish I put on the ICF houses I build when the client wants the look of painted wood without the staining; what it needs on an ICF wall, and what it costs there, is on the ICF finishes page.
The catch is the install. Fibre cement is heavy, dusty and brittle on the edges, and every one of its rules exists because the board fails if you break it. Six inches of clearance from grade, 1 in. from a roof surface, 2 in. where the manufacturer says so at a deck. Every cut end primed before it goes on. A strip of flashing behind every butt joint, and the joints never caulked, because caulk traps water in the end grain of the board and it swells. The right nail, the right depth, into framing and not just sheathing. The cuts made with shears or a dust-collecting saw, because the dust is silica and the crew is breathing it all week. An installer who has done it a hundred times charges $18 and the wall lasts 50 years. An installer who priced it at $14 to get the job has skipped something on that list, and you find out which one in about five years when the bottom course at the deck has gone soft.
Rule of thumb: the cheap vinyl quote is probably just cheap. The cheap fibre cement quote is the one to worry about.
A 2,000 sq ft re-side, both ways, over 30 years
A 1985 two-storey, 2,000 sq ft of net wall, original vinyl coming off, 15 openings, no house wrap on the old sheathing. The prep is the same for both: tearoff 2,000 at $2.00 is $4,000, bin $550, house wrap 2,000 at $0.85 is $1,700, flashing kits 15 at $85 is $1,275. That is $7,525 of common cost.
Vinyl, mid grade: 2,000 at $9.50 is $19,000. With the prep, $26,525 before HST, $29,973 with.
Fibre cement, mid grade, prefinished: 2,000 at $18 is $36,000. With the prep, $43,525 before HST, $49,183 with.
Now run them out. The vinyl, at 30 years, is faded on the south wall and has had two or three panels replaced; call it $800 of repairs over the life and probably a re-side coming. The fibre cement wanted a repaint at about year 15, 2,000 at $3.50, $7,000, and a tube of caulk at the trim joints every decade. So, before HST, about $27,325 for the vinyl house and $50,525 for the fibre cement house over the 30 years. The fibre cement does not win on money and I am not going to pretend it does. It wins on how the house looks every one of those 30 years, on fire, on hail, and on what the buyer thinks when they pull up. Whether that is worth $23,000 depends on the house and the street, and on a $450,000 bungalow it often is not.
If the quote you are holding splits the difference, $13 or $14 a foot for “fibre cement”, read it against the quote comparison grid before you sign; that price is either a thinner off-brand board, a crew without the training, or the flashing left out.
How I would decide
- Budget is the whole decision: mid vinyl, 0.044 in. or better, in a mid-tone colour that hides fade. Not the builder panel.
- The house is worth over about $900,000 or sits on a street of brick and stone: fibre cement, or a mix with stone on the front. Vinyl reads as a shortcut there and the buyer counts it against you.
- Fire is a real exposure: cottage in the bush, a neighbour 10 ft away, a wood stove chimney: fibre cement. Vinyl melts off the wall from radiant heat before anything is on fire.
- Hail country, a driveway full of hockey, a ladder-happy owner: fibre cement, or premium vinyl at the least.
- The only crew you can find has never installed fibre cement: vinyl, or wait for a crew that has. A bad fibre cement job costs more than a good vinyl one and lasts less.
- You want the fibre cement look for less and can live with a wood product: read engineered wood vs fibre cement; LP SmartSide is $17 at mid and a lot easier to put up.
Questions people ask
Is fibre cement siding worth the extra cost over vinyl?
On looks, fire and durability, yes. On money over 30 years, no: a 2,000 sq ft wall is about $27,000 in vinyl and $50,000 in fibre cement including a repaint, before HST. Decide on the house and the street, not the spreadsheet.
Does vinyl siding crack in cold weather?
The thin builder panel does, from impact, at minus 20 and below. Mid and premium panels are thicker and survive. Most winter cracks are at the garage, the driveway and wherever the shovel leans.
Can fibre cement be installed in winter?
Yes, at the normal rate; it is cut and nailed, not troweled. The caulking at the trim joints wants a day above 5 C, and the crew wants a day without ice on the ladders.
Which looks better, vinyl or fibre cement?
Fibre cement, by a distance, because the board is flat, the seams are hidden and the paint is a real paint. Premium vinyl with a foam back is flatter than the cheap stuff, and from across the street a good vinyl job in a matte colour is not embarrassing.
Why is fibre cement so hard to install?
It is heavy, it breaks if it is carried flat, the dust is silica, and the warranty depends on clearances, primed cuts and a flashing strip behind every joint. A crew that skips the flashing saves an hour a day and the wall rots from the joints out.
Price both and decide
The exterior cladding cost calculator prices your walls in vinyl and in fibre cement side by side, with the tearoff and flashing both need, and lets you put fibre cement on the front and vinyl on the back to see what the mix saves. Quotes in hand? The $99 review checks that the fibre cement one actually has the flashing and the clearances in it.
Sources and further reading
- Vinyl Siding Institute: the installation manual every vinyl warranty points to: loose nailing, expansion gaps, laps and the J-channel details.
- James Hardie installation instructions: the clearances, fastening, flashing and primed-cut rules a fibre-cement warranty depends on; the installer is held to this sheet.
- 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.
