Siding repair
The damage you can see is the reason to look at the wall you cannot
A siding repair is usually quick. The useful part of the visit is establishing whether water has been getting into the wall since the damage happened, because that is what turns a panel repair into a sheathing repair.
What damage looks like on each material
| What you see | On vinyl | On fiber cement |
|---|---|---|
| Wind | Missing panels, unlocked courses, torn nail hems, usually on one elevation | Rare panel loss; look instead at fasteners, trim and joints that have opened |
| Impact and hail | Clean cracks and punctures, worse in cold weather; chalky white stress marks | Chips at edges and surface craters rather than through-cracks |
| Water | Staining behind J-channel, soft sheathing at roof-to-wall junctions | Swelling and crumbling at bottom edges and at unflashed butt joints |
| Age | Fading, chalking, brittleness across a whole elevation | Paint failure, open caulk joints, and cut edges that were never sealed |
The check that matters after a storm
Walk the windward elevation
Push up on the butt edge of courses along the whole wall. Unlocked panels are the damage nobody sees from the street, and they are the reason the next storm takes a section off.
Look at the roof-to-wall junctions
Where a roof edge meets a wall, check for a kick-out at the bottom and for staining on the siding below it. Missing kick-outs put a whole roof plane of water behind the siding every time it rains.
Look inside
Staining on an interior wall, particularly below a window or at a corner where a roof meets the wall, points at a flashing problem rather than a siding problem.
Establish the date
Storm Check lists what NOAA recorded near your ZIP code with dates. That is the date the documentation is written against, and it is also what tells you whether the event is still inside the window most policies allow.
The matching problem, stated plainly
Vinyl fades. Profiles get discontinued. A panel that matches by name is often visibly different on the wall, and the difference is most obvious on the elevation that gets the most sun, which is usually the one that got damaged. There are three honest options, and which one is right depends on the house.
- Repair with the closest available match, accepting a visible difference, which is reasonable on a rear or side elevation.
- Rob panels from a hidden elevation — behind a garage, a low rear wall — and put the new material there instead, so the visible wall stays consistent. This is the trick most worth knowing.
- Replace the whole elevation where the difference would be unacceptable and the damage is extensive.
If a contractor promises an invisible match on a fifteen-year-old wall without seeing a sample against it, that promise is being made to win the job rather than to be kept.
When the wall behind has to be opened
- Sheathing that sounds hollow or feels soft when pressed through the opening left by a missing panel.
- Staining on the water barrier, especially running downward from a window corner or a roof junction.
- A junction that has no kick-out flashing, because the water has had somewhere to go for as long as that has been true.
- Any interior symptom — soft drywall, staining, a musty smell in a closet on an outside wall.
Storm took panels off one wall?
Request a free inspectionCan you match my siding?
Sometimes closely, rarely exactly, and never by taking someone's word for it. We look at the profile and the color against a sample on the wall, and if it will not match on a visible elevation we say so and talk about the alternatives.
Is siding damage covered by insurance?
Wind damage to siding is ordinarily part of the same loss as wind damage to the roof, and it is documented the same way. Whether a particular claim is paid is the carrier's decision under your policy, and nothing on this site predicts that.
Should the siding be repaired before or after the roof?
If both are being done, the roof usually goes first, because step flashing and kick-outs are installed with the roof and they sit behind the siding. Doing the siding first means opening it again.
Do you repair siding you did not install?
Yes, and most siding repair is on someone else's work. What matters is whether the wall behind it is dry, which is a question about the house rather than about the contractor.
All work is performed by licensed and insured local roofing professionals.