Top coat: spray-on siding is an alternative to vinyl and fiber cement, but will the idea stick with consumers?

Building Products, Sept-Oct, 2004 by John Caulfield

When remodeler Les Stone began promoting spray-on siding on talk radio, his company sold six jobs in the next 60 days.

"The product has explosive possibilities," says Stone, president of Remodel America in Memphis, Tenn. This spring, his company began offering an acrylic-based spray-on siding product made by Textured Coatings of America, a Panama City, Fla.-based supplier with more than 50 dealers nationwide.

Given the option, enthusiasts say some homeowners will choose an attractive liquid coating that they contend provides the same longevity and durability as vinyl or fiber-cement siding. Contractors say spray-on siding costs about the same as high-quality vinyl siding, installed.

But the category's strongest selling feature is the promise that homeowners will never have to paint again, with warranties that back up those claims.

"Permanent coatings," which have been around since the 1960s, are used primarily in commercial applications. But that's changing as suppliers expand their residential contractor networks.

Charlotte, N.C-based Alvis is the largest of these organizations, with 78 dealers and 90 branches nationwide. Andy Lewis, Alvis' national marketing manager, says his company plans to have a dealer "in every major market."

But Alvis and its competitors have their work cut out for them. "If you asked 1,000 people about spray-on siding, 950 wouldn't know about it," says David Anton, who owns Alvis-affiliated Spray-On Siding in West Chicago, Ill.

Contractors are targeting homeowners who want an attractive, yet equally protective, alternative to conventional siding. "Except for the low maintenance, most homeowners would prefer paint to vinyl," says remodeler Norm Blair, owner of Permcoat of New England, which applies the CHIC Liquid Vinyl System.

Richard Houar, president of AmVi-Co, a Las Vegas-based supplier, suggests that as environmental regulations force paint manufacturers to water down their products, homeowners must paint their houses every few years. That, says Houar, makes the economics of permanent coating more palatable.

Despite the coating's advantages, contractors still encounter skepticism because of product failures, unscrupulous installers, and dubious sales pitches that gave permanent coatings a black eye in the past.

Texured Coatings is the only supplier that says its product can help lower a home's energy bills. Claims about energy savings got another supplier, the Procraft division of Tennessee-based Kryton, into hot water.

Procraft claimed Multi-Guard R-20 was essentially the same substance used to cover NASA's space shuttle. The Federal Trade Commission found Kryton's marketing deceptive, and in 2002, ordered the company to submit all marketing materials, test results, and surveys to the commission for five years. During the next two decades, Kryton also must send a copy of the order to any resellers it used since Jan. 1, 1999.

To separate themselves from Procraft, other suppliers assert superiority by emphasizing differences in their chemical compositions and drying thicknesses (which range from 10 to 16 mm).

Anton believes there's room for several spray-on sidings in a market that's just taking off. But he thinks some dealers and suppliers are squandering the opportunity to inform the public.

This story first appeared in REPLACEMENT CONTRACTOR magazine.