You are standing in your yard and the grass is wet against your shoes and the coffee in your mug is getting cold. You have been looking at your phone for three weeks and you have read four hundred reviews of three different types of siding.

You have seen photos of houses in Vermont and photos of houses in Arizona and you have read the opinions of men you will never meet. You are looking for a truth that is currently forty feet away from you. You are looking for data on how materials survive the weather and you are ignoring the two-story laboratory you already own.

The South Elevation: A Problem of Physics

You walk to the south side and the sun is high and the heat comes off the boards in waves. The paint on this elevation is thin and it has turned to a fine white powder that comes off on your hand. There are two boards near the corner that have cupped and they pull away from the wall and the shadow they cast is long and sharp.

The sun has baked the moisture out of the wood and the wood has shrunk and the fasteners are starting to lose their grip. This is a physics problem. It is a problem of energy and radiation and the way a cellular structure breaks down when it is cooked for eight hours a day.

The North Elevation: A Problem of Biology

Then you walk around to the north side and the air is different and the light is flat. The boards here are the same age and they were installed by the same crew on the same Tuesday in October but they look like they belong to a different building.

The paint is still dark and the film is still thick but there is a green haze near the bottom of the wall. There is a damp patch behind the downspout and the wood there is soft and it gives slightly when you press it. The mold has found a place to live and the sun never comes here to kill it. This is a biology problem. It is a problem of spores and water and the way a material provides food for things that want to eat it.

I bit into a piece of bread this morning and it tasted like copper and old earth. I looked at the loaf and it looked fine from the top but I turned it over and the bottom was a forest of green fur. The mold was a secret and it had been growing while I wasn’t looking. This is what happens to a house.

The failure is usually a secret until it is a catastrophe. You research materials online because you want to prevent the secret from starting but you ignore the evidence of your own walls because the local evidence feels like an anecdote.

The south wall and the north wall have been running a controlled trial for a decade and a half. They have the same substrate and the same finish and the same exposure to the local wind. If you want to know what your next siding will do you do not need a brochure from a company in another state. You need to look at the boards that are already failing and you need to ask why they failed.

Your house is currently failing in at least two of these modes and it is doing it in real time while you drink your coffee. When you look at the south elevation you are seeing the failure of color and the failure of stability. The UV rays hit the pigments and they break the chemical bonds and the color goes away. The heat makes the wood expand and contract and the grain opens up and the water gets in.

When you look at the north elevation you are seeing the failure of breathability and the failure of resistance. The water stays on the surface and it seeps into the end-grain and the fungi begin to digest the cellulose.

I spent years balancing the difficulty of virtual worlds and I learned that players will always find the exploit. A house is a game played against the climate and the climate always finds the exploit. If your material is soft the insects will find it. If your material is porous the water will find it. If your material is flammable the heat will find it.

“You need a material that removes the exploits from the board. You need a material that does not provide food for the mold and does not provide a path for the water.”

This is why people move toward Composite Siding and they do it after they have lived through the failure of wood. A wood polymer composite is a different kind of math. It is engineered to be a neutral player in the game of the elevations.

The boards do not cup on the south wall because the wood fibers are encased in a high-impact polymer that does not care about the sun. The boards do not rot on the north wall because there is no food for the fungi and there is no way for the water to get inside the structure.

The Heart of the Machine: SlatSolution

The SlatSolution collection is built on this logic. The shiplap profile is clean and it overlaps so the water runs off and the lines stay straight. They have two different programs for the grain and they both use the same substrate.

The Enhanced Grain looks like real timber and it has the texture of something that grew in a forest but it has the heart of a machine. The All-Weather system is smoother and more contemporary and it fits a house that wants to look like it belongs in the current century. They offer ten finishes and they range from Weathered Teak to Arctic Oak and Graphite Charcoal Gray.

When you choose a color like American Walnut or Brazilian IPE you are choosing how the house will look in ten years. If you choose a natural wood you are choosing a color that will be gone in twenty-four months unless you spend a weekend every year on a ladder with a brush and a bucket of stain.

Most people do not want to spend their Saturdays on a ladder. They want to buy their Saturdays back. They want a material that stays the same color on the north wall and the south wall and they want the house to stop being a laboratory for decay.

I look at the bread on my counter and I think about the mold and I think about the hidden failures. You can paint over a problem and the house will look good for a season. You can put a new coat of stain on the cedar and the south wall will look rich and deep for a summer.

But the heat is still there and the UV is still there and the wood is still wood. The physics have not changed. The biology have not changed.

The shiplap boards come in colors like Ebony and Rose Walnut and Cedar and they do not change. The pigments are locked in. The material is rated for fire and it is rated for impact and it is rated for the salt-air of the coast and the freeze-thaw of the north. It is a way to stop the experiment. When you install a composite you are deciding that you are finished with the trial. You are deciding that the south wall and the north wall should finally agree on something.

You walk back to the porch and you look at the faded boards again. You see the way the grain has lifted and you see the way the grey wood looks like bone. You realize that the reviews on the internet are mostly written by people who have had their siding for six months.

They are happy because the house is a new color. They have not lived through the three thousand days of sun. They have not lived through the four hundred nights of rain. Their data is shallow and it is loud and it is mostly useless to you.

Your data is deep. It is written in the cupped corners and the chalky paint and the damp patches of your own home. You have been living in the result of a long-term study and you are finally reading the conclusion. The conclusion is that the material you have is not suited for the place where you live. It is a hard realization but it is a clean one. It allows you to stop guessing and start specifying.

You can choose the Graphite Charcoal Gray or the Peruvian Teak and you can know that the north side will not grow a forest and the south side will not turn to dust. You can install the boards with the clean shiplap overlap and you can watch the lines run continuous across the elevation. You can look at the house and see a single intentional object instead of two different problems.

I threw the bread away and I bought a new loaf and I put it in a place where I could see it. I stopped trusting the bag and I started trusting my eyes. You should do the same with your walls. Stop reading what a stranger in a different climate zone thinks about his new renovation.

Walk around your own perimeter and look at the corners. Look at the ground where the splash-back hits the siding. Look at the peak of the gable where the sun is the most cruel.

The house is telling you what it needs. It is tired of being a laboratory. It is tired of the experiment. It wants to be a shelter again and it wants to stay the same color for twenty years. You can give it that or you can buy another bucket of paint and wait for the sun to turn it into powder again.

The choice is yours but the evidence is already there and it is free and it is standing right in front of you. You just have to put down the phone and look at the wall.