Weathertex or PVC Cladding

The valuers thought Weathertex would be a better value. I asked my partner to ask the builder whether he would do weathertex, and what it’d come in at. His indication was ‘it would be cheaper’.

The builder operates rather differently to how I’d do it. I like a rough indication, I don’t want him to go away, research every minute detail of the pricing, and give us a full detailed tender, especially so if it’s only going to make a minimal difference in price, like I suspect it would. I do like a fixed price, but if the difference is miniscule, that’s all we really need to know at this stage so we can get back to determining what painting it would cost.

The PVC cladding wouldn’t require painting, but the valuers believe it cheapens the look of the house. We’ve seen a few of them around here, and I’m not seeing how it cheapens it – the ones I’ve seen are in the same street as ours, and they aren’t looking cheap, but you can see it for the PVC or plastic material when the sun shines on it.

It’s maintenance free though, and a 50 year guarantee too – not that it means anything, because it’ll probably be forgotten in 10 years – which is another argument, why offer exceedingly large guarantees.

Weathertex has an OK website but I’m unable to locate any per square meter pricing of it, except from this store here, which I can’t say for sure represents the true cost of the material the builders will pay.

We’ve also concluded there is no sense putting anything other than new fibro on the granny flat and garage – the granny flat is only approved as a workshop, so doing anything other than the basic to that would be wasteful in my opinion. The new fibro doesn’t have the bulky join strips that the older material has, so you can apply a texture paint to it, to give it a cheap render effect, or you can apply a standard paint, and end up with a near smooth wall effect.  Either way, it should represent good value for money.

The house, I’m not sure. I do know we need the windows sorted, they have the security bars on them preventing any entrance, but also, any exit, thus a fire risk. Either PVC or Weathertex would suffice, it’s really down to the specific advantages of each product.

Weathertex:
– Can be painted.
– Real timber, not PVC.
– Different styles/ timber textures.

PVC:
– Lasts up to 50 years.
– Maintenance free, won’t rot.
– 8m lengths, so minimal joins.

I don’t care for maintenance, I’d like to not have to maintain it- but that’s me, a future buyer might not like the coastal colour scheme we plan on doing (At the moment, it’s Deep Ocean Colorbond on the roof, and will be Sandy Beach PVC cladding).

I’m no sucker for exceedingly long guarantees, that could well surpass the manufacturer’s existence.

Joins that are very visible can make the job poor, but then, a professional builder should be able to do the job correctly and smooth those out.

Those would make weathertex the clear leader, except for the maintenance, but I wonder if we put a real good quality paint (not just the advertising selection, but a properly researched and evaluated exterior quality paint), if that would mitigate the maintenance?

Then, we’ll need to consider price too – if it’s going to come out – with painting, at higher costs than PVC for installation, then it might not be worth it.

We have about 2 weeks left to get it done before the solar power system is due to be installed! We aren’t going to make that time frame, so solar power is going to be rescheduled I think.

Another decision will be, what colour of the chosen paint do we paint it – since the PVC cladding is not available in any of the leading paint manufacturers colour catalogs – I checked at Bunnings some time ago.

And finally, we still have the interior work – which as I was suggesting above, the builder won’t give us a “err.. somewhere in the 20k area” figure, he’ll want to come out, measure it up, get up in the roof space, figure out what he needs to do, price the moving of walls, etc., go away, quote it, come back in a week with a tender, which will either surprise or scare us.

Which, should then lead us to decide on the interior, wall colours, lighting, tapware, kitchen, bathroom accessories, tile styles. Right now, it seems like hard work, a lot of money, but a great wow effect at the end.

I do know we need a price.