I don't know if they stand behind the warranty or not as we never had to use it on our old house or so far our new one.

You can paint the color, but as you said it would void the color warranty. We always picked just the pre-primed and painted and in our harsh climate you're lucky to have a paint job last 5 years on wood. After 5 years on hardi it looked brand new still. We still had wood on our detached garage at our old house and it looked like it would need painting next year when we sold it, but the house looked freshly painted and they were both done at the same time.

No flaking or disintegrating and it is not pressed/glued together wood, but cementious type siding. I guess if you crushed it could disintegrate. However DH recently mowed the grass in our rocky yard and a rock hit the siding really hard, it made an indentation, but no disintegrating or anything.

It won't rot and termites don't eat it. Rated like stone and brick for insurance purposes, and stands up great to hail.

The gotcha is make sure they read up on how to install it as nail heads are not supposed to be sunken into the siding, but should be flush with it. Also they need a different blade on the saw used than what would be used for wood and to avoid breathing in the dust just like is needed when cutting concrete.

Thanks Lyfia

So i am assuming there are special nails - of is it regular nails - and just do not sink them? Can you get nails that match the color, or will I get a can of touch up paint?

Another questions for the board - Can Hardiplank be powerwashed to keep it clean year over year? If not what methods do people use?

thanks all

Paint warranties are a funny thing - it doesn't mean the paint won't fade over 15 years. It just means that it won't fail.

Hardi plank is cement fiber board and is tough. You can cut it with a masonry blade - but the cut ends are solid. No flaking.

Yes - you can paint the boards but if you do - make sure you use the very best exterior paint you can by. Don't even think about going cheap on the paint.

I suggest looking into plastic or other fiber boards for the trim around windows and doors - much easier to install. For the facia, wrapped boards in vinyl or aluminum make sense.

The one caution on the Hardi is that if you pay for the factory painted boards they will need to be touched up after installtation - and the touched up spots will be noticable next to factory applied painted areas . You can't get siding installers to be careful when they put up the boards and they will get scratched. We found it cheaper to get primed boards and have the painting done on site. That also allows you to test the color so you can see it on site before committing to the color. It is amazing how paint colors change once they are in natural light.

Hardi is great stuff. To me Cedar is a maintenance nightmare.

Most nails shouldn't be visible, the siding should overlap it only where end boards meet may you have some that might need touching up. The installation instructions are on the manufacturers website I suggest you read them and also give to your contractor so it is installed correctly if you are worried about any warranty.

It is "regular" nails as in you can buy them at any home improvement store, might not be the same style nail used for Cedar though. Not sure about that one as I've never installed cedar.

There is a big difference between the look and maintenance of Hardiplank and cedar siding. Out of curiousity, what do your elevations show? I would think that changing from a cedar shingle siding to (I assume) a lap Hardieplank would affect the look of your house. What do the elevations show and what do you prefer. Secondly, how do you feel about maintenance? Do you like the look of cedar as it "ages" or would you want it to keeps it's color by re-staining on a regular basis?

If you do go with a FC product, I would also encourage you to look a composite board for the trim. Azek and Miratec make very good products.

Good luck!

Sniffdog. Just to clarify - you bought this primed lets say a reg white color and had a painter come in a paint it once it was installed - correct? How does this paint job hold up and what brand of paint is considered good for this application?

Jaymielo - Right now we have old damaged cedar lap siding. It was poorly maintained, had woodpecker attacks, etc. That along with the amount we have to ripdown with the remodel -it was not cost effective. If i could afford it - without question i would go with Cedar shingle, and keep it a light restained look - i do think thats beautiful. However its alot of maintenance and we have alot of woodpeckers!!

I also like the hardiplank -so its really not a hard decision.

doogan, I'm sorry. I misread your OP. I must have had shingles on the brain. I completely agree that if both products are a lap siding (and you have a lot of woodpeckers) that a FC board product like Hardie is the way to go. We choose a fiber cement product for exactly the same reason. We just didn't want the maintenance of wood. I would still definitely recommend composite trim boards as well. I'm fairly certain that in addition to the two manufacturers I mention above that Hardi also has a product. GL with your build.

I used Certainteed fiber cement siding on my house in 2004. I won't use anything else...
This stuff gives me the same insurance rating as a brick house, it is virtually indestructable, and I got it pre-painted and did the touch up on site.
I installed it myself using a siding air nail gun with the approved galvanized siding nails on the top edge of the siding where the next piece overlaps to cover the nails.

I had to weld two pieces of metal together one day and didn't have a table to weld them. I clamped both pieces to a piece of the siding and welded them together. Other than a burn mark, there was no damage.
I am a FIRM believer in fiber cement siding.

Our old house was primed hardie with SW Exterior super paint and so is our new one. Old one look freshly painted after 5 years. New one is less than a year, but I expect it to hold up just like our old house.

Our whole exterior is Hardi (except where we have stone) trim, soffits, and siding. Makes for easy maintenance.

We have Hardi (brand specific) on our lake home the we built 5 years ago and it looks like the day we painted it. Love the stuff!

The boards were delivered with a primer already on them. After the siding and trim was installed, then they painted.

We used Sherwin Williams DURATION on the exterior. According to my builder and the painter - it's a high quality exterior paint.

We used HardiShingles and love them! The lumber yard where we bought our HardiShingles got them pre-painted by a company called Weiss, which gives a 25-year warranty on the paint. They have lots of colors to pick from, or do custom colors. We had no problem with damage to paint during installation (zero touch-up needed); but admittedly we have a very careful builder.

We also bought matching caulk and a couple extra gallons of paint, 'just in case.' Except for decorative pieces, we trimmed with Azak. We used some of the extra paint for some Azak on which we mounted exterior lights, and it blends with the adjacent shingles perfectly. Low maintenance is our goal! We're very happy we went this route.

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We used hardieplank on our residing a couple years ago (after a big stucco disaster). We bought the preprimed and had it painted afterwards with Sherwin Williams Duration - our painter said it was the best and would hold up the longest. It's been 2 years since the paint job and except for a few spider eggs and dirt spots, it looks like it went on yesterday. (Our wood soffits, otoh, which were also painted 2 years ago, are already peeling in spots).

We used a rainscreen behind ours (a version of homeslicker from Benjamin Obdyke) but that was more because our walls were wet starting out and not because the hardie requires it. I do expect that it will help the longevity of the paint job though. We used Azek for the trim, again because we didn't want to deal with painting wood every couple years. The Azek, too, looks like it was just painted yesterday.

One thing you do want to make sure (that I didn't see mentioned yet) is that Hardie specifies in the install instructions that all cut ends be primed before installing. My contractors just kept can of primer by the saw and would slap some primer on whenever they made a cut. It helps keep the ends sealed.

I will say that there are a few spots where they must have forgotten to do this or just put a really thin coat on, because if I look at it in a certain light at a certain angle, I can see that the end 2" or so of the board looks a bit puffy compared to the rest of the board. But you really really have to be looking for this - no one else has ever noticed (course we're talking about 2 spots over a 3000 sq ft house - only someone totally obsessed and would see that, LOL!). Then again, we started our install in November, finished in February, and couldn't paint it til the weather broke in June. Hardie specifies that the preprimed should be painted within 6 months of install, and we went longer than that in some parts of the house. So could be partly our fault too. At any rate, it doesn't appear to be affecting the integrity of the board and now that it's painted, the "puffy" area isn't getting bigger or disintegrating, so it's not a big deal in my book.

We've been really happy with the hardieplank - we like the look and we love the ease of maintenance. There's lots of pictures of the hardie-in-progress at the stucco disaster link above if you care to check them out. Good luck!

Does anyone know first-hand how the factory paint job does after 15 or more years?

We have Hardi....going on 11 years now. Looks great. Was painted on site and we are just now needing to repaint.

The longevity of any painted painted surface is largely due to prep as well as geographical location. If hardie is not primed all 4 sides from the factory, i would recommend back priming as well as priming all cut ends, stated above.
A quality paint along with proper priming/prep can stretch the life of a paint project considerably.

Anyone with paint peeling/cracking on HardiePlank Colorplus lap siding [the pre-painted stuff] please email me. Particularly interested in Canadian and the Northern States.
thanx.