Hardiplank Installation Instructions

[Lewis Capaul]

Here's a link to the Installation Instructions for HardiPlank

http://fstservicesatlanta.com/hardiplan ... nstall.pdf

I inspected a two year old two story home today, who ever built it should have read these instruction or the ones from CertainTeed, almost every plank is loose, no caulking, many planks where the bottom edges were not stained, 1/8" and bigger gaps at butt jonts, corner trim and windows, it must really rattle when the wind blows, just tapping my finger along the edges of the planks makes a pretty loud clicking noise.

The siding was blind nailed, now someone will have to hire a competent sider to probably face nail and caulk the whole house.

The house is in Bonner County Idaho, a no Code Zone, it's always an adventure and educational experience to work there.

[Les]

I don't have it in writing from HardiPlank, but was told by them that only a limited amount of face nailing would be allowed without voiding warranty. Made the call when a judge proposed face nailing as a solution to a crappy installation.

[Bob White]

http://www.jameshardie.com/homeowner/pd ... nstall.pdf

I couldn't get the link in the original post to work, so I added this one to the jameshardie site.

Les, according to the instructions, face nailing is OK with the Hardie folks. While my own is blind nailed ('cause I did it), I see all face nailed on new and recent construction around here. The nails are always (always) overdriven, in which case the instructions say to caulk over the original nail head and nail again.

[Chris Bernhardt]

Lately around here a lot of the installers have gone to installing metal flashing behind the butt joints. I like the method. It looks better long term. Dam caulking almost always splits at the butt joints then Johnny home owner comes along and smears some more on and makes your nice little $500k house look like crap.

Chris, Oregon

[Les]

Bob, I think you are right for the initial installation. My situation was an installation a couple years old that was loose from blind nailing, open raw butt joints and nailed to close to the trailing corners at butt joints. Proposal was go around and face nail and mfg said they would void. I never could get it in writing from mfg, but their field person (2) actually called mfg while on-site. This file was in the six figure range for exterior cladding on entire house. 60% was HardiPlank.

[Bob White]

Yeah, after I posted I thought (ain't that the case - for me anyway) about it, and figured you were talking about face nailing AFTER blind nailing....

Doesn't sound like a good idea to me either.