Siding Contractor Software in Vermont

Vermont's houses are old, and that is the siding market. The median house was built in 1974, and more than a quarter of the state's homes date from before 1939. The farmhouses and village Capes have cedar clapboard under whatever went over them, often aluminum from the 1960s and hardboard from the 1970s. A full tear-off is the normal job, and a partial job lives or dies on matching what is already there. Vinyl owns the market on price and on the freeze and thaw. Clapboard still sells in the villages because it is what the houses wore, and fiber cement is gaining in the Chittenden County subdivisions in Williston, Essex, and Colchester.

Water puts siding on claims. The floods of July 2023 put the Winooski through Montpelier at 21.35 feet and did more than $600 million in damage, the remnants of Beryl flooded the state again in July 2024, and Irene in August 2011 damaged 3,500 homes. Anything below the flood line comes off and goes back on. Vermont has no deductible statute and no roofing-specific claim law, so siding on a claim runs on the general rules. The one that always applies is the home solicitation law's three business days to cancel a sale made in the home.

Vermont registers residential contractors at $10,000. A siding job at that or above takes a registration with the Office of Professional Regulation, $1 million per occurrence in liability coverage, and a written contract signed before any deposit or any work, with the price stated as a maximum or as time and materials, the estimated dates, the scope and materials, and a change order provision. Below $10,000 the state asks nothing.

Vermont has no statewide residential building code for a single-family house, only the energy standards, so a re-side is inspected in Burlington and Montpelier and nowhere much else. The season runs from May into October. Vinyl gets brittle below freezing, and the Vermont winter stops a crew for months.