Siding is hard to pin down to an exact timeline because every home is different — the size, how tall it is, how many different sections and angles there are all factor in. But as a general rule, expect close to a week for most Des Moines homes. Vinyl and aluminum wrap installs go on faster and might come in a day or two shorter. LP SmartSide takes a bit longer because of the precision the product requires to install correctly. Either way, a week is a reasonable expectation for an average home. Here's how the process typically goes: materials arrive a couple days before the crew to stage the job. Then our crew shows up with a trailer, we do full tear-off and clean up, make any repairs to the underlying structure that are needed, and wrap the home. Then siding installation begins. When the job is done everything goes with us — though occasionally due to size constraints materials might get picked up the following day.

For our region, LP SmartSide is simply the best siding product available. Here's why we stand behind it: It has a 1.75 inch hail warranty — meaning it's tested and warranted to withstand significant hail impact. In Iowa that matters. A lot. It doesn't delaminate like other engineered wood or hard board products. It doesn't crack or snap like cement board. It doesn't fade and get brittle like vinyl. It's resilient, it's durable, and it's built for the kind of weather we get in the Midwest. The pre-painted LP SmartSide comes with an internal flashing system built in, which is a detail most homeowners never think about until they have a water problem. And here's something vinyl can never offer — if you want to change the color of your home down the road, or you need spot color matching after a repair, LP SmartSide can be painted. Vinyl is whatever color it is forever. The color on LP SmartSide is also rated to last at least 15 years. That's not a guess — it's part of the warranty.

The signs depend on what type of siding you currently have, because different products fail in different ways. Masonite siding — look for swelling at the bottom edges and around nail penetrations. That swelling means it's taking on water, and once that starts it can't be reversed. It's done. Wood siding — when it starts absorbing water it stops holding paint. If you're repainting every couple of years and it still looks bad, the siding is the problem not the paint. Vinyl siding — fading, cracking, and brittleness are the telltale signs. Vinyl gets brittle over time, especially in Iowa winters, and once it starts cracking it's only getting worse. Cement board — delamination, cracking, and sections breaking away from the home. Cement board that's failing tends to fail in visible, obvious ways. Metal siding — chalking, denting, and damage is mostly cosmetic but metal is notoriously difficult to repair and match. If you're dealing with ongoing cosmetic issues and can't get a good match, replacement often makes more sense than chasing repairs. If you're not sure what you have or what stage it's in, a free consultation is the fastest way to get a straight answer.

Honestly — not dramatically on its own. Siding doesn't inherently carry an R-value that's going to change your energy bills in a meaningful way. Even vinyl with foam backing doesn't move the needle much in terms of actual insulation performance. I'd rather give you a straight answer than oversell it. Where siding replacement can help is sealing the home against wind penetration, depending on how compromised your current siding is. A tight, properly installed siding system keeps air where it belongs. The bigger opportunity — and this is something we see fairly regularly — is what we find when the old siding comes off. Occasionally we open up a wall and find insulation that was never there, or insulation that has deteriorated over decades. When that happens, siding replacement becomes an opportunity to address something that actually will impact your energy efficiency. It's not guaranteed, but it's worth knowing going in that we pay attention to what's underneath and flag it when we find it.

LP SmartSide comes with one of the strongest warranties in the siding industry: 50-year substrate warranty — the engineered wood core of the product 15-year paint warranty — the finish holds its color 1.75 inch hail warranty — warranted against hail impact up to 1.75 inches 5-year labor warranty through Taylor Exteriors When you're comparing siding bids, ask every contractor what warranty they're offering and whether it covers hail. Most siding products don't have a hail warranty at all. That alone tells you something about how LP SmartSide is built differently.