The Flawed Search for Permanence

Some words in defense of wood

A particularly peculiar notion strikes me that we inhabit the dichotomy between our society’s push toward sustainability and a desire for permanence in our built environment. We install energy efficient LEDs and heating equipment while at the same time seem to have forgotten that not every piece of exterior trim needs to be formed from plastic. Clients, carpenters and builders have developed a phobia of using exterior wood products, specifically as trim. In coastal areas of New England, where weather is rough, we wrap houses from walls to roof in cedar shingles, yet shudder at the thought of putting in a fir gutter or mahogany fascia.

The words of English architectural critic and polymath John Ruskin from the Lamp of Memory are often quoted in support of this quest for permanence:

When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our fathers did for us.

Words like these have fueled many a young builder to raise resilient buildings that will outlast: cement-board sided structures their foundations sealed and waterproofed, encased in polyurethane foam insulation and plastic casing, and crowned with impenetrable rubber roofs with little pitch. But buildings need not be entombed in cellular PVC and aluminum to stand the test of time. We have forgotten how to build, depending instead on the materials to do the work. It’s very easy to do; laziness kills creativity while breeding innovation.

Have we forgotten about pitch and drainage? Back-priming? Overhangs? For years roofers have been snugging their drip edge far too tight to primed finger-jointed fascia that the painter has no opportunity to paint— he’s only called after the gutters have been installed. The resultant rot is cursed at as a product of the weakness of the material, and not the result of awful planning and execution. The solution? PLASTIC! We will shoot that onto the rafter tails with not even a lick of paint, fire up the gutters and make sure that drip edge is extra tight so it rolls right down the face of the PVC 1x8 (of course missing the gutter; the water droplets will bounce and now rot the siding above the foundation). This overuse of PVC also leads to most new and remodeled exteriors having the same unpainted, bright white plastic trim. So much for color variation and American individualism…

Can we rethink this? What’s wrong with priming (and back priming) some Douglas Fir or Spanish Cedar — material that naturally resists water rather than an interior grade pine? How about we get a coat of finish paint on it before we install? Pull the drip edge out from the fascia a finger width so the bead of water clears the face of the board and lands directly into the gutter (yes the gutter that we waited to install until after the painter had finished). I wonder what might happen then? Well it might last! that’s what would happen.

Drip edge should not touch the fascia board, PVC or not.

It’s prudent now to come back to Ruskin, because there’s another sentiment lurking there that’s too often missed:

Take proper care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them. A few sheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few dead leaves and sticks swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from ruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best you may, and at any cost from every influence of dilapidation. Count its stones as you would jewels of a crown; set watches about it as if at the gates of a besieged city; bind it together with iron where it loosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about the unsightliness of the aid; better a crutch than a lost limb; and do this tenderly, and reverently, and continually, and many a generation will still be born and pass away beneath its shadow. Its evil day must come at last; but let it come declaredly and openly, and let no dishonoring and false substitute deprive it of the funeral offices of memory.

For Ruskin, all buildings crumble into the dust eventually, but we can stay the execution with an ounce of prevention. Not only must we build forever, but we must keep watch over our structures and care for them. But the modern American homeowner doesn’t want maintenance. We want immortal homes. We build on the offensive.

The Azek company is targeting using one billion pounds of recycled material in 2026 to make their PVC trim and composite decking. While that sounds very impressive (and it probably is), think about what that means. They intend to have one billion pounds of PVC trim and decking shipped around the country and installed on homes in 2026. Some may see this next thought as a positive, but that’s a billion pounds of fascia that will never fall off, rot, and turn into dirt. The irony of Azek promoting itself as a sustainable company (“Sustainability is Core to Our Business”), is mind-blowing. The research does show that PVC is a “sustainable” product compared to other plastics, but compared to naturally harvested products it doesn’t stand a chance. It’s unhealthy for the planet and for people. Why do we need our trim to outlive us? (By us I mean humanity).

It would be dishonest for me to say I don’t see a value in these products of permanence, in fact I will often use PVC baseboard in our bathrooms, and it’s utility as a flexible moulding can’t be understated, but I’d like to suggest a more pragmatic approach and reintroduce a bit of lumber onto our exteriors.

We cannot expect our clients to do the kind of maintenance they should be doing, but we can show them a path in the right direction. We should not build a house that needs painting every five years, nor one that never needs to be repainted. That dream is a lie. I have see far too many late-stage Hardie-sided buildings looking haggard with age that need to be stripped and re-sided because the cement is dropping out of the boards. Meanwhile, the 150-year-old shingled house next door just needs a good scrape and paint. Let’s find a middle path between eternity and next year for our maintenance schedule.

Let’s use wood everywhere that we can get away with it. Fascia? This actually makes good sense as PVC, because removing the gutters to repaint, is definitely an enough of an obstacle to maintenance that we should avoid it all together. But the bed mould under the soffit protected by a 10 inch overhang, your porch ceiling, the soffit boards themselves, Window and door trim under deep overhangs? Wood (preferably Sapele, Cedar, or an exterior rated primed product like WindsorOne or Centurion). Not only are these materials more sustainable and safer to work with, but they finish superior. Vinyl mouldings do not take a nail well, and the patch job always bleeds through. This is especially painful with the endemic unpainted exterior trim.

PVC fascia and frieze with Sapele bed mould, miter clamped with exterior carpenter’s glue.

Decking is another tempting location to screw down plastic boards. From when I began in this field 12 years ago until today, we have made massive strides in color and depth of grain. But what happens when the new owner decides they don’t like the color? There’s no strip and refinish, just trash and move on. Meanwhile the wood framing below more often than not survives the facelift with a few new hangers and a fresh roll of G-Tape. Odd, we forget that we once used wood as the decking as well.

Wood is far more pleasurable to work with. Have you ever coped a vinyl crown? It’s pathetic. Brittle and prone to cracking. The expansion gaps required on cement-board siding and PVC trim are unsightly. PVC expands across it’s length, so in the winter a 40 foot run of fascia will have 2 or 3 large vertical gaps in it, staring at you like buckteeth. Wood — expanding across it’s width — will not open up in this way. PVC’s inherent flexibility, while useful for curved work, makes it floppy and unwieldy. The type of carpenter who doesn’t keep a stringline in their belt for some reason ends up installing most of the fascia boards in this country, and leaves them undulating and waving at you from the road.

Now we know that the wood of today doesn’t perform like the old growth wood of the past, but could we make it? with the technology that brought us PVC, I am certain we can bring more permanence to wood while avoiding the curse of immortality. We can make it resilient enough for a few generations requiring only a stroke of paint every decade or so (after all the maintenance-averse homeowner tends not to care about the next owner).

How many generations should our trim and siding last for? The PVC dust we are shooting into the dirt will still be here when the Earth is swallowed by the sun, and if that is the standard by which we measure the quality of a material, I think we’ve gone completely insane.