How Do I know I’m Hiring The Right Siding Contractor?

Thomas Williams, All American Renovations – Elite member of James Hardie™ ALLIANCE · Metro Atlanta and Middle Georgia

How do I know I’m hiring the right siding contractor?

Go to JamesHardie.com, click Find a Pro, and type in your zip code. If the company bidding your job is in the program, they’re on that list. If they’re not on the list, they’re not in the program — whatever is printed on the front of the proposal.

Thirty seconds. No phone call, nobody to ask permission from, and you can run it on every company that walks your house. Including me.

I know the real question underneath this one, because homeowners ask me a version of it on nearly every first call. It isn’t what do the badges mean. It’s “there’s a logo on this proposal and I have no idea whether it means anything, and I don’t know enough to tell if I’m being told the truth.”

So here’s the check, and then here’s the much more useful part — everything the check can’t tell you.

Why The Badge On The Website Isn’t The Evidence

A badge is an image file.

Anybody with a mouse can save one off the internet and put it on a web page, a truck, a yard sign, a business card or the bottom of an email. I’m not telling you your contractor is lying. Most aren’t. I’m telling you the badge is a claim, not proof — and you’d verify a claim about your roof, so verify this one.

The contractor locator is different for one reason: the manufacturer maintains it, and the contractor can’t. That’s the whole value of it.

The Check, Step By Step

1. JamesHardie.com. Not a third-party directory, not a review site, not a page the contractor sends you a link to.

2. Find a Pro.

3. Type in your zip code.

4. Look for the company’s legal name. This one trips people up — plenty of good companies trade under a name that isn’t the one they’re registered under. If you don’t see them, that’s a question to ask before it’s a conclusion: “What name are you listed under?”

5. Still can’t find them? Ask for the name of their James Hardie rep. A company that’s in the program has one and will say the name without hesitating. A company that isn’t, can’t.

That last one is the check I’d actually lean on, because it takes the artwork out of it entirely. That’s how you know you’re finding the right siding contractors to hire.

What The List Does Not Tell You — And This Is The Bigger Half

Being on it means they’re in the program. It does not mean anybody inspected their work this year.

It won’t rank the companies for you based on installation skills. It won’t tell you which crews flash a butt joint and which ones caulk it. It won’t tell you whether the company that shows up to your house is the company that showed up to the sales appointment. The list answers one question — are they in it — and it answers that question well. It answers nothing else, and I’d rather say so than let you read more into it than it holds.

And being off the list doesn’t make somebody a bad installer. There are good siding contractors in Georgia who never joined anything. Plenty of them. What it means is narrower and more useful than that: if a company told you they were in the program and they aren’t on the list, you’ve learned something — and it isn’t about siding.

We’re on that list, and I’d still rather you ask me the four questions further down than take the listing as an answer.

Why I Still Think The Program Means Something

Because getting in was hard, and I was there for it.

Our portal says we’ve been a member since 2007. It took us until January of 2013 to sign as a Preferred installer. Five to six years. For a long stretch of that we were required to submit every single job we did to the local tech rep to go out and audit — not a sample, every job — to prove we were following the manufacturer’s methods.

Reps turned over in those years and every time it felt like starting from zero. The last one hired before we finally made it 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 again. He came out, sat down with us, we built a plan together, we followed his plan, and in January 2013 we signed. He’s a good friend today.

What I can’t tell you is what that looks like for a company joining in 2026. I’d be making it up. Programs change — I’ve been through three or four versions of this one and the names changed every time. What I can tell you is that when we got in, it was not a form.

Two Bits Of Wording Worth A Second Look

“Certified.” The program’s own language is membership — I’m an Elite member of James Hardie™ ALLIANCE, and that’s the phrasing the manufacturer uses. If a company is advertising a word the program doesn’t use, that’s not automatically dishonest, but it’s worth asking what they mean by it. Then go check the locator anyway, because the locator doesn’t care what adjective anybody chose.

An out-of-date title. The old tier names were retired. If a website still carries one, that’s usually not a lie — it’s a page nobody has touched in a while. Which tells you something about the company, and it isn’t about siding either.

★ The Four Questions No Badge Can Answer

Print these. Ask them of every company that walks your house, in the program or not, me included.

1. “Will my 30-year non-prorated product warranty still be intact when you’re done?” The product warranty from James Hardie is one of the best in the business — but it’s a product warranty. Install it wrong and you have a problem the manufacturer never agreed to cover. Any contractor should be able to answer this without flinching.

2. “What’s your siding workmanship warranty, and how long is it?” This is the one that actually protects you, because installation is where jobs fail. Ask for the number of years, and ask to see it in writing before you sign. Ours is 30 years on installation labor.

3. “Do you flash the butt joints, or do you caulk them?” The single best quality tell in siding, and you can verify the answer with your own eyes a few years later. We flash butt joints 100% of the time, on every product. Check back for another post coming with more on this.

4. “Has a James Hardie tech rep ever audited one of your jobs?” Not a trick question and there’s no wrong answer. It tells you whether anybody with a spec book has ever walked this company’s work.

None of those four is about a badge. That’s on purpose.

One Piece of Math, And It Takes Ten Seconds

Two questions, then divide: how many Hardie® siding jobs do you do in a year, and how big is a typical one?

Here’s ours. 18 jobs this year, averaging about 5,300 square feet. Since 2013 — our rep went back and pulled 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 average isn’t an accident. When we take a siding job it’s almost always the whole house: all the siding, all the trim, and most of the time the soffit and fascia too.

Now picture a company that installs the same amount of siding I do across 75-100 jobs instead of 18. Their average job is about 900-1,200 square feet. That’s a gable end, a garage, an addition, a repair section.

Neither one of those is wrong, and this is the part I want you to hear. If you’ve got one bad wall, the company doing 75-100 small jobs a year has done your job four hundred times and is better at it than I am. Call them. If you’re replacing the whole house, you want somebody whose ordinary Tuesday is a whole house.

Same program. Completely different company. No badge will tell you which one is standing in your driveway. The division will.

What I’d Tell You If You Called Me

— Run the locator before your first appointment. Thirty seconds, and it’s the only check in this whole post that nobody can dress up for you.

— Treat the badge as a claim and the list as the verification. Artwork is artwork.

— Ask for the rep’s name. Faster than the website and harder to fake.

— Don’t read the listing as a grade. It says they’re in. It doesn’t say they’re good, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling.

— Get the workmanship warranty in writing with a number of years on it before you sign anything.

— Ask about butt joints. Cheapest question you’ll ever ask, and you can check the answer yourself later.

— Match the company to the job. Whole house, hire somebody who does whole houses. One wall, hire somebody who does walls.

That’s how you know you’re hiring the right siding contractor!