Seminole Siding Two Different Ideas About What Siding Should Be Made Of
When homeowners in Seminole ask us why we only install James Hardie fiber cement and not LP SmartSide, the honest answer starts with what each product actually is. Fiber cement is sand, cement, and cellulose fiber pressed and cured into a dense, non-combustible board. Engineered wood siding like LP SmartSide is wood strands bonded with resins and coated with a wax-based treatment, then finished with a protective overlay. Both are legitimate, engineered products with decades of manufacturing behind them. But they respond very differently to the specific punishment a Pinellas County exterior takes year after year, and that difference is what shaped our standard.
What LP SmartSide Gets Right
We'll say this plainly: LP SmartSide is a real improvement over old-school raw wood siding. The strand-and-resin construction resists splitting, the factory treatment fights fungal decay better than untreated lumber, and it's noticeably lighter than fiber cement, which can make installation faster and less physically demanding. For a lot of the country, especially drier climates, it performs reliably for many years. It's also often less expensive up front than a full ColorPlus fiber cement system, which matters to a lot of homeowners.
Where it gets harder is when you put wood-based siding, even a well-engineered version of it, into the environment we actually work in.
The Trade-Offs That Matter Here
Seminole sits on a peninsula between the Gulf and Tampa Bay, which means the exterior of a home isn't dealing with one stressor — it's dealing with several at once, constantly:
- Wind-driven rain. Tropical storms and summer squalls don't just wet a wall, they drive water sideways into seams, laps, and fastener points. Any wood-based product is only as good as every joint, cut edge, and caulk line staying sealed for the life of the siding. Fiber cement's mineral composition simply doesn't swell, wick, or rot the way wood fiber can once moisture finds a way in.
- Year-round UV load. Florida sun is intense and constant, not seasonal. Engineered wood's factory finish is a coating on top of an organic substrate — it protects the wood as long as the coating holds. Fiber cement with a ColorPlus finish is baked onto a substrate that doesn't expand and contract with heat the way wood strands do, so the finish tends to hold its bond longer under that same sun.
- Salt air. We're close enough to the water that airborne salt is a constant, low-level exposure on siding, trim, and fasteners. Salt accelerates the breakdown of coatings and speeds moisture uptake at any compromised edge. A cement-based board doesn't feed decay organisms the way a cellulose-based board can once its protective layer is breached.
- Hurricane-force wind exposure. Beyond the risk of wind-driven rain intrusion, high wind events put real mechanical stress on siding attachment. Fiber cement's density and manufacturer-rated wind performance give us a product we're comfortable standing behind through storm season, installed to spec.
None of this means every LP SmartSide installation in Florida fails. Plenty are maintained well and hold up. But "maintained well" is the operative phrase — engineered wood siding asks for more vigilance on caulking, touch-up, and edge sealing in our climate than fiber cement does, and that maintenance burden is exactly what a lot of homeowners are trying to get away from when they replace siding in the first place.
Why We Standardized on James Hardie
We made a decision as a company to install one product system, correctly, rather than offer several products and hope each holds up. James Hardie's HZ5 line is engineered specifically for higher-moisture, higher-humidity climate zones like ours, which covers the realistic range of what a Pinellas County exterior will face. The ColorPlus finish is factory-applied and backed by its own finish warranty, separate from the substrate warranty on the board itself — so a homeowner isn't relying on a single coat of site-applied paint to do all the work over 15-20 years. And because it's non-combustible, it adds a layer of fire resistance that no wood-based product, however well engineered, can claim.
Installation Is Half the Equation
We'd be doing homeowners a disservice if we implied the material alone solves everything. Fiber cement performs the way it's rated to perform only when it's cut, fastened, flashed, and caulked correctly — proper clearance at grade, correct fastener spacing, sealed butt joints, and flashing details that actually shed water rather than trap it. That's the installation discipline our crews are trained around, because a great board installed loosely will still let water in, and a good product poorly installed is worse than no upgrade at all.
The Bottom Line
We're not going to tell you LP SmartSide is a bad product — it isn't. We're telling you that for a home in Seminole, taking on hurricane winds, salt air, wind-driven rain, and relentless UV every single year, we'd rather put our name behind a non-combustible, climate-engineered material with a strong factory finish than a wood-based product that needs more ongoing attention to perform the same job. That's the trade-off we made, and it's why fiber cement is the only siding we install.
If you're weighing siding options for your home, we're happy to walk through what each product would actually mean for your specific house — no pressure, no obligation. Reach out for a free estimate and we'll give you a straight answer.