Owning a home can be a lot like owning a car: there’s usually something that needs to be replaced. Unless you’re a multimillionaire, the trick to keeping up with maintenance is knowing what can wait, what’s waited too long already, and what you can reasonably do without (for now, at least).
Of all the things that should be replaced sooner than later, your house’s siding is one of the most crucial. How do you know if you need new siding? Look for faded color, warped or rotting sections, bubbles, holes, or dry rot. Those are the signs, but if you truly need new siding, odds are you’ve already noticed the symptoms: peeling paint, loose wallpaper inside your home, higher heating bills, and unsightly mold.
If you need new siding there aren’t really any quick fixes. It’s time to bite the bullet and call in the professionals.
From there, it’s just a matter of deciding what kind of siding you’d like to have installed. There are a number of popular options, including wood, fiber cement, stone, and even though it seems to have a bad reputation, vinyl.
Because vinyl siding is simply unfashionable these days, it has a number of objective benefits that are often overlooked by those shopping for (or selling) new home siding.
First, replacement vinyl siding offers more aesthetic options than any other material. With hundreds of colors to choose from and a multitude of other accents available, vinyl siding is the most customizable of all siding options.
Better yet, vinyl siding requires virtually no maintenance. Once you decide on a color, you can be secure in knowing that it won’t fade for decades to come, unlike painted wood siding that needs frequent repainting. Wood is also prone to rot which requires costly and time-consuming repairs. Vinyl is undoubtedly the best bang for any homeowner’s buck when it comes to longevity.
Insulated vinyl siding is available to homeowners looking to increase their house’s energy efficiency, helping to retain heat which escapes through wall studs. Most homes have insulation only in between wall studs – and since studs can make up as much as 25% of every wall, that’s like having a whole side of your house completely uninsulated. Insulated vinyl siding can help make up that deficit.
While these benefits are certainly each compelling on their own, if you consider them all together you end up with compelling evidence that vinyl siding is a surprisingly green option for environmentally-conscious consumers. While PVC isn’t as green as wood or stone to initially manufacture, its light weight means it required less energy to transport and install, and its durability means that it makes up for this over the course of its working lifetime. From installation to replacement, vinyl requires less energy and materials over a longer period of time than any other alternative. Plus, insulated options mean less energy spent on simple home heating. If that’s not green, nothing is.
If you’re sold on vinyl for your Connecticut home call Aladdin Inc. in Hamden, with over 60 years of home improvement experience and counting, they’re the most trusted name in the state for exterior services, remodeling, and vinyl siding installation.
