Fiber cement planks or sheets for shed siding?

newbury · Jul 20, 2015

Which would you use and why?

I put up a shed about 30 years ago with T1-11. It lasted about 10 years with several repaintings before the T1-11 started to delaminate. I replaced the T1-11 with Hardiepanels that look like T1-11, painted it once, forgot about it. Still looks great.

Putting up more sheds and my son wanted to use planks. I put up the Hardiepanels with screws and a cordless drill w/ a circular saw for cutting. Real easy, real quick, just don't breath the dust.

It looks like $$/sq ft of the sheet/plank will cost about the same, but on one shed it looks like I'll need 15 sheets or about 70 planks. And I anticipate a lot more fasteners on the planks. So what's the TBN recommendation?

hcallaway · Jul 20, 2015

I have used both, but for a garage and shed the 4 x 8 panels went up fast and were very easy to paint. Hardi3 panels are the way to go.

PILOON · Jul 20, 2015

I'm lazy, installed Hardee with my nail gun.
Worked great, just shoot nails about 3/4" from edges. Closer can make chunks fly.
In our case we had unpainted but primed siding planks and installed them vertical sort of 'board and batten' style.
Once water based opaque stain was applied it looked great.
Was done some 10 years ago and looks as good as the day installed.
Good product.

dieselscout80 · Jul 22, 2015

Do you have sheeting (OSB or Plywood) on under the Hardee planks or sheets?

s219 · Jul 22, 2015

The lap-siding planks are easier to handle for one person, but that is a lot more nailing, and technically you should put a small piece of flashing at any butt joints (Hardie has an official flashing required to keep their warranty, but to be honest it can just be a little strip of felt paper). Unless you have a need to use the lap-siding for looks, I think it would make more sense to use the sheets. We have both on our house (sheets with fake battens to give board+batten look) and I can tell you the sheets went up a whole lot quicker except in areas where we had to cutout for windows or other openings.

I never did find out if it's OK to nail Hardie directly to studs with no sheathing below. Everywhere I have seen it, it gets stapled over the top of sheathing and house wrap. Seems like you'd at least want house wrap under the Hardie to give some level of barrier if nailing to open studs.