Has the time come for vinyl siding?

I'm no fan of vinyl, but someone (actually a lot of someones) keep buying lots of it, year after year. Why? A recent article, "Vinyl makers push for New Urbanism market," in New Urban News looks at the benefits. Since vinyl is pretty much Evil (I picture it as the smoldering stuff in the toaster oven in "Time Bandits") in the environmental world, I thought this article was pretty fun. Apparently there is a campaign afoot to get some respect for vinyl siding, and it's winning over people in the New Urbanist community. A big part of that is aesthetic improvements:

Probably the most notable advance made by vinyl manufacturers is the expanding range of colors. Vinyl siding used to come in pastels and neutral tones -- what some called "twenty shades of beige." Now it is also produced, at a higher price, in deeper and darker colors, such as hunter green, deep blue, and barn red. Torti Gallas and Partners, a new urbanist architecture and planning firm in Silver Spring, Maryland, has had extensive experience with vinyl siding, employing it in developments where budgets are tight -- particularly military housing and HOPE VI projects. Bombaugh, a design principal at Torti Gallas, welcomes the darker or deeper hues, referring to them as "colors you would get in a painted neighborhood."

Don't you love that term, by the way--painted neighborhood? I used to think that "gated community" was synonymous with the upper class... but now, maybe if the houses around you are coated with latex, that's a clue that you're part of the upper crust. But seriously... vinyl has even added some modest energy benefits:

...For many people, a siding that gives when you press your hand against it will always feel insubstantial, reminiscent of the flimsy house that was blown down in the story of the Three Little Pigs. Manufacturers have ameliorated its unsatisfying touch -- and increased the product's energy-efficiency -- by introducing vinyl siding with a hard insulated backing. The rigid insulation backing "gives the vinyl siding more strength and stability," Bombaugh notes. The backing delivers an extra 2 to 4 R value, says Matt Dobson of VSI. Torti Gallas designed a concept house with insulation-backed vinyl siding last year in Omaha as part of the Partnership for Advancement of Technology in Housing (PATH), a collaborative effort of HUD and the building industry intended to jump-start new technologies.

But what really drives customers to vinyl has been and remains the low cost:

The chief advantage of vinyl siding is its cost. R.S. Means estimated the installed cost of vinyl siding in 2007 as $166 per 100 square feet. By comparison, fiber-cement siding cost $225, wood $255, stucco $320, brick $1,000, and stone $2,700.

Is it all good news? Even the New Urbanist folks, who seem to be remarkably open to vinyl, have their reservations.

Wood's idiosyncrasies enrich its character. It's difficult or impossible to give vinyl clapboards the same character -- and some attempts at doing so just make matters worse. Christine Franck, a New York architect involved in an Institute for Classical Architecture & Classical America program to upgrade the quality of house design, does not use vinyl, but says, "If I did use it, I would absolutely steer clear of any of the wood grain looks. Always remember that if a real piece of wood siding turned up with a highly visible wood grain pattern, you'd send it back."

The article also addresses "cues to care." I first learned about this concept from an EBN article about natural landscaping. The idea is that humans are drawn to environments that demonstrate care and attention to a space. Think about how a decrepit house can be creepy, as opposed to a newly painted fence or freshly mowed lawn. Of course, today's market for supposedly maintenance-free building products has created a perversion. We have been sold a fiction, that buildings need no maintenance. So apparently we are training ourselves to not even see it when this stuff falls apart. Back to the article:

..."I have a friend who lives in what he, with deprecating humor, refers to as his 'plastic palace,' in King Farm, a well-known TND in the DC area," says Milton Grenfell, a Washington architect. "When I pointed out that a four-foot piece of vinyl siding was missing up in a gable end, he shrugged and responded that a windstorm had ripped it off a year or so ago, and he hadn't gotten around to fixing it ... When your house resembles your daughter's Barbie Dreamhouse, it's hard to take it seriously enough to care for it."

The article also looks at the significant environmental and health drawbacks to vinyl, which we have also done in EBN on more than one occasion. Again, the full article is in New Urban News.