What Happens If the Siding on Your House Turns Out to Be Defective?

Thomas Williams, All American Renovations

Elite member of James Hardie™ ALLIANCE · Metro Atlanta and Middle Georgia · October 2026

On our jobs you find out from me, usually before you’d have noticed anything. Then it comes off and the right material goes on.

It’s happened twice, on two different jobs, and the two defects failed in completely different ways. I’ll give you both with the clock running, and then I’ll tell you why it went the way it did — because the reason has almost nothing to do with the product.

The fear underneath this question isn’t that a board might be bad. Boards are made in a factory by the thousand; some of them are wrong. The fear is being stuck in the middle — the contractor says it’s the manufacturer, the manufacturer says it’s the installation, and you’re the one standing in your own yard looking at siding you’ve already paid for while two companies point at each other.

The FIRST ONE: A FLAW IN THE FINISH

A factory defect in the finish on a house we were part way through.

— I found it. The homeowner hadn’t noticed and had no reason to.

— One phone call to our James Hardie tech rep.

— He was at the house the next day.

— Replacement material was on site that afternoon.

— The defective boards came off and the corrected finish went on the following morning.

And the homeowner found out because I told her. Not because she spotted something. Not because a crew was standing around in her yard looking worried.

THE SECOND ONE: THE BOARDS WERE THE WRONG WIDTH

Different job, different product, a defect you’d never think to look for.

This was a primed-and-painted job on a historic home. The siding arrived from the factory at inconsistent widths. An eighth of an inch per board.

An eighth of an inch sounds like nothing. Stack it up a wall and it adds up — every course sitting a little off from the one below it, reveals that don’t line up, and a finished wall that looks subtly wrong in a way nobody can put their finger on.

We halted work. Pulled every board that had the defect in it. Got material at the right spec delivered, and redid the work that had already gone up.

Here’s that one in the homeowners’ words rather than mine:

“All the siding came in inconsistent width from the factory… it was just an eighth of an inch issue, but it added up and Thomas noticed it immediately and they halted work. They pulled all the boards off that had the defect in them and then he ensured that we got material that was the right spec out here and they redid the work.”

“He took care of that issue before we even had a chance to see it.”

“I hadn’t even come out here before we even looked at anything.”

That last part is the whole post and I couldn’t have written it myself. I can tell you I’d call you before you noticed. A customer telling you he never got the chance to notice is a different kind of evidence.

TWO OF THEM IN SIX MONTHS — LET ME SAY THAT OUT LOUD RATHER THAN LET YOU FIND IT

Both of those were last year, about six months apart. I’d rather tell you that than have you work it out from two videos.

And I’ll be straight about what it is and isn’t. It’s very uncommon for us — two in six months after eighteen years and hundreds of houses, and they were unrelated failures: one in the finish, one in the dimensions.

But here’s what I actually think about it, and it’s the reason this page exists:

Products aren’t perfect. Nobody would ever believe they are. Anybody who tells you their siding has never arrived wrong is either new or not telling you.

It’s how the manufacturer — and more importantly the contractor — deals with the imperfections and the mistakes that makes the difference for the customer.

That’s the whole thing. The question was never whether it happens.

WHY BOTH OF THOSE MOVED THAT FAST

Not because we’re special. Because of something you can’t see on a proposal.

Eighteen years with the same manufacturer buys you exactly one thing, and it isn’t a discount.

It’s that when I call and say there’s a problem, they believe there’s a problem.

My reps know I can tell the difference between a genuine factory defect and a bad install — mostly because they spent years teaching me the difference, and because I’ve called them about my own crew’s work before. They know I’m not crying wolf. So the conversation starts at “what do you need” instead of “are you sure.”

That’s the whole mechanism. A contractor who’s called his rep twice in three years, or who has a reputation for blaming the product every time something goes sideways, gets a slower and more sceptical version of that phone call. Not because anybody’s being unfair — because that’s how trust works in every trade there is.

And on the second one, notice what actually caught it. Not the manufacturer, and not an inspection. Somebody who knew what a correct board looks like, looking at a pallet. An eighth of an inch is invisible unless you’re expecting it. That part isn’t the relationship — that’s just knowing the product well enough to spot it before it goes on a wall.

THE DETAIL I THINK MATTERS MOST, AND NOBODY EVER MENTIONS IT

No warranty claim was filed on either job.

In eighteen years of installing Hardie® siding, I have never filed a manufacturer warranty claim on a finished job.

I want to be careful about what I’m claiming there, because that sentence can be read two ways and only one of them is true.

It does NOT mean nothing has ever gone wrong. You’ve just read two cases where it did. It means both of them got caught and resolved while the wall was still open and the boards were still on the ground — on the phone, with a rep in the driveway, inside a day or two.

And that’s not a coincidence, it’s the entire point. A defect caught at delivery is a logistics problem. The exact same defect discovered at year six is a warranty claim — a form, a file number, a wait, and a decision made by somebody who has never seen your house. Every claim horror story you’ve ever heard started as a conversation that didn’t get had.

So the number worth knowing about a contractor isn’t how many claims they’ve won. It’s how many problems they’ve solved without ever needing one.

WHAT IT TOOK TO BE ABLE TO MAKE THAT PHONE CALL

Nineteen years, and the first five and a half were the ones that mattered.

We started with James Hardie in 2007. Our portal still shows that date. We didn’t sign as an installer until January of 2013.

During that stretch we sat down with the local tech reps over and over. And for a long run of it, we submitted every single job we did to the tech rep so he could go out and audit it. Not a sample. Every one.

If you’ve never been through something like that: a man with a spec book walks your finished house and writes down what you got wrong. Nail placement. Clearances. Flashing. Joint treatment. Then he tells you about it, in order.

We did that voluntarily, for years, because we wanted in.

Why it took so long was mostly turnover — we’ve had somewhere between five and eight different James Hardie reps since 2007. Every time we got close, the rep changed and we started over.

The last rep hired before we finally made it is a good friend of mine today. He called to introduce himself and I said, great, when are we getting signed up?

He said: “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who are you again? I have to interview you. We have to go through this process.”

I was hot about it. Five years in and I’m getting interviewed like we just walked in off the street.

He came out anyway. He sat down with us, we built a plan together, we followed his plan, and in January 2013 we signed. That’s the relationship that got a rep to a house in one day. It wasn’t a phone number. It was five and a half years of being told what we got wrong.

Since 2013 — I asked our rep to pull it — more than 750,000 square feet of Hardie® siding and soffit across 243 houses, plus better than 200,000 feet of Hardie® trim.

That’s the number I’m proud of. Not a badge. The 243 houses.

★ THE QUESTION TO ASK, AND IT WORKS ON ME

Ask any contractor bidding your job:

“How many warranty claims have you filed with your manufacturer — and how many problems have you fixed without filing one?”

There’s no wrong answer, but there are revealing ones.

— A contractor who’s filed several has either been unlucky or has a relationship that doesn’t work on the phone. Ask what happened.

— A contractor who’s solved several without filing is telling you the thing you actually want to know.

— A contractor who says neither has ever happened has either had a very short career or isn’t telling you about it. Nobody installs siding for fifteen years without a bad pallet showing up.

Then ask the follow-up, which is the real one: “Who made that call, and how long did it take?”

Listen for whether a person with a name turns up in the answer.

WHERE THIS ARGUMENT RUNS OUT

A few things I’d rather say myself.

An eighteen-year relationship is not something you can buy, and it isn’t something a good newer contractor can offer you. Somebody three years in, doing excellent work, genuinely cannot produce this. So this is not a reason to hire me over somebody newer. It’s a reason to ask whoever you hire what their actual path is when the product fails — and to notice whether they have one.

My stake here is obvious and I’d rather name it. My agreement with James Hardie doesn’t permit me to install any other fiber cement, so of course I’ve got eighteen years of goodwill with one manufacturer. I couldn’t have spread it around if I’d wanted to. [What that agreement does and doesn’t restrict — link to post 45]

And two jobs is two jobs. I picked which stories to tell you, the same as every contractor who’s ever written a page like this. What I’d weigh more heavily than either story is whether the mechanism holds up — whether the contractor in front of you can name their rep, describe the last problem, and tell you who made the call.

WHAT IF YOUR CONTRACTOR ISN’T IN ANY MANUFACTURER’S PROGRAM?

Plenty of good installers aren’t, and it doesn’t make them bad at hanging siding.

But you should know what you’re taking on: if the product fails, the claim process is yours to run. You’ll be the one filling in the form, finding the paperwork, and waiting. That’s a real thing to be aware of before you sign, not a reason to walk away.

And if a contractor tells you they’re in a manufacturer’s program, that’s checkable in about thirty seconds. How to check

WHAT I’D TELL YOU IF YOU CALLED ME

— Ask about claims filed versus problems solved. Best question on this page and it costs you nothing.

— Ask for the rep’s name. A contractor with a real relationship says it without pausing.

— Ask who calls you when something’s wrong, by name. Not “the office.” The person.

— Ask what they check on delivery day. An eighth of an inch on a pallet is invisible unless somebody’s looking for it, and that’s the cheapest moment in the whole job to find a problem.

— Don’t hire anybody over a badge — mine included. What a badge does and doesn’t tell you

— Get the workmanship warranty in writing, with a number of years on it, before you sign. Ours is 30 years on installation labor.

— And ask about butt joints — flashed or caulked. You can check that answer yourself in a few years. [Why we flash every one — link to post 32]