Lynden Cemplank is fiber cement siding, same basic recipe as what we install on every home we side: cellulose fiber, sand, and portland cement pressed into planks. So when a homeowner in Lynden asks why we don't carry it, the honest answer isn't that it's a bad product. It's that we've narrowed our entire business down to one fiber cement system, and after years of installs across Whatcom County, that system is James Hardie, not Cemplank.
What Cemplank Gets Right
Credit where it's due: Cemplank is a legitimate fiber cement product, not vinyl or engineered wood dressed up to look tougher than it is. It's non-combustible, it resists rot better than wood or LP SmartSide, and it holds paint or factory finish reasonably well. For a lot of markets, it's a perfectly serviceable siding choice, and price-shopping contractors who install both brands will tell you the material cost isn't wildly different.
Where It Falls Short for This Climate
Lynden sits in a corner of Whatcom County that gets hit from two directions: driving rain off the Pacific systems that funnel through the Fraser Valley, and enough proximity to Bellingham Bay and the Salish Sea that salt air is a real factor on siding, trim, and fasteners. Add a moss season that can run eight months out of the year on north-facing walls, and you've got a climate that's genuinely hard on exterior products. That's the lens we evaluate every siding line through, and it's where the gap between Cemplank and Hardie shows up.
- Regional engineering: James Hardie builds region-specific formulations (its HZ product lines) engineered for exactly the wet, moderate-freeze conditions we get here. Cemplank is a more generalized product without that same climate-zone-specific engineering behind it.
- Factory finish: Hardie's ColorPlus finish is baked on in a controlled factory process with a dedicated finish warranty. A lot of Cemplank product in this market ships primed rather than fully factory-finished, which shifts more of the finish quality, and the long-term color performance, onto the field paint job and whoever's holding the sprayer that day.
- Warranty structure: Hardie's warranties are well-established, transferable to a new owner if the home sells, and backed by a manufacturer with decades of fiber cement history in the Pacific Northwest specifically. Cemplank's warranty paperwork exists too, but the claims process and manufacturer support network we've dealt with is thinner, and thinner support matters most exactly when a product is failing.
- Consistency and availability: Distribution and product runs for Cemplank have been less consistent in our experience than Hardie's. Batch-to-batch color and texture variation is a real problem when you're trying to match a repair or an addition to existing siding five years down the road.
Why We Only Carry One Brand
We used to install more than one fiber cement line. What changed our mind wasn't a single bad experience with Cemplank, it was the accumulated cost of running two systems: two sets of installation specs, two warranty processes to track, two finish systems to keep touch-up paint matched to, and two manufacturers to call when something needed resolving under warranty. Standardizing on Hardie let us get genuinely good at one system instead of adequate at two, and in a climate that punishes sloppy installation, that matters more than most homeowners realize going in.
It also means every crew member on a Lynden job has installed the exact same product dozens of times, knows the fastener spacing, the flashing details around windows and doors, and the clearances that keep moss and moisture from working into seams. That kind of repetition is where a fiber cement job actually earns its 30-plus-year lifespan, or falls short of it.
The Honest Trade-off
If price is the only factor, Cemplank installed by a contractor who knows the product well can be a reasonable siding choice, and we're not going to tell a homeowner otherwise. What we won't do is install a second product line we can't back with the same depth of installation experience and warranty confidence we have with Hardie. That's a standard we set for our own crews, not a claim about what happens on someone else's Cemplank job.
| Factor | Cemplank | James Hardie |
|---|---|---|
| Base material | Fiber cement | Fiber cement |
| Climate-specific product line | General formulation | HZ lines engineered by climate zone |
| Factory finish | Often primed, field-painted | ColorPlus factory finish available |
| Warranty transferability | Varies | Transferable to new owners |
| Our installation experience | Limited, phased out | Standardized across all crews |
What This Means for Your Home
A Lynden home facing the weather patterns Whatcom County sees needs siding that's been engineered for that specific mix of rain, humidity, and moss pressure, installed by people who've done it enough times to get every detail right. That's why James Hardie is the only fiber cement product on our trucks, and it's the standard we'll walk you through if you're weighing your options for a siding project.
If you're comparing siding products for an upcoming project, we're happy to walk your home, look at your specific exposure, and give you a straight, no-pressure estimate for what a properly installed Hardie system would look like on your house.