Siding Contractor in Richmond

Siding Installation and Replacement in Richmond

Everything about Richmond's geography pushes moisture at your walls. The city is an island in the Fraser delta, barely above sea level, with fog off the river, salt air off the Strait of Georgia and almost nothing to slow the wind between the water and your west elevation. Berkana Construction builds exteriors for exactly these conditions: drained and ventilated rainscreen assemblies, corrosion-conscious hardware and cladding that tolerates staying damp longer than inland walls ever do.

We have served the Lower Mainland since 2019 as a licensed, insured, WorkSafeBC compliant contractor, and every Richmond project starts with a free written quote based on an actual site visit, not a satellite photo.

Richmond's Problem Is Drying, Not Rainfall

Richmond receives less rain than the North Shore, and its walls still wear out on a similar schedule. The reason is worth understanding, because it changes what you should buy.

The city sits at sea level on a river delta. Humidity stays high, fog rolls off the Fraser through the cooler months, the water table sits close under every lot, and there is little slope anywhere to move water away. The consequence is that a Richmond wall that gets wet stays wet far longer than the same wall would in Coquitlam or Langley. Add the flat, largely treeless subdivisions east of No. 3 Road, where summer sun hits unshaded south and west walls all day, and you have a climate that cycles cladding between long damp and hard UV.

Cladding that traps moisture against the wall fails here on drying, not on rainfall volume. That is why the ventilated cavity behind the siding, the rainscreen, matters more on the delta than almost anywhere else: it is the wall's only reliable way to dry. And near Steveston and the south dyke, salt air adds a corrosion factor that decides fastener and flashing specifications.

The 1980s and 1990s Stock, and What Happened to Its Cedar

Richmond's defining housing wave came through the 1980s and 1990s: large family homes across Broadmoor, Garden City, East Cambie, Thompson and Seafair, commonly clad in cedar or stucco, and built face-sealed with no drainage cavity, because that was standard practice at the time.

Those cedar walls are now the single most common reason Richmond owners call us. The wood was nailed tight to the sheathing with no ventilation gap, so the back face of every board has spent three or four decades against damp building paper with no way to dry. Cut ends were rarely sealed. Fasteners were rarely stainless. In this humidity, that combination has an expiry date, and much of it is expiring now.

The honest news is that not all of it is done. Grey, weathered cedar is often structurally sound, because silvering is a surface effect that says little about the board underneath. We probe rather than assume: board butts, the bottom courses, around windows and doors, and anywhere staining suggests water has been tracking. Where the boards are sound, selective replacement, cleaning and refinishing bring the wall back for a fraction of recladding cost. Where rot is widespread, we say so with photographs and price the rebuild. Our cedar siding in Richmond page covers that decision in depth.

The Rainscreen Question for Face-Sealed Walls

A large share of Richmond's detached homes and townhome complexes predate BC's rainscreen requirement. Face-sealed walls depend entirely on caulking and paint to keep water out, and in Richmond's climate that is a losing bet over time. We regularly open walls in Broadmoor, Garden City and East Cambie and find sheathing that has been wet for years, in houses with no visible symptoms at all.

A siding replacement is the opportunity to correct this permanently. We strip the wall to sheathing, dry and repair the structure, then rebuild with new weather-resistive barrier, flashing at every opening and penetration, a strapped rainscreen cavity and the new cladding. You get photographs of what was behind your walls before it is covered again.

For stratas, we provide the assessment reports and phased pricing councils need to plan the work across budget years, and we coordinate with property managers on scheduling and owner communication. Richmond's pre-rainscreen townhome inventory is exactly the building population that era exposed, and recladding it is as much assembly correction as appearance.

Materials Suited to Delta Air and Open Wind

Our most-installed product in Richmond is James Hardie fiber cement, and the fit is genuinely climatic: it is dimensionally stable in constant humidity, immune to the rot that ended the original cedar, and its baked-on ColorPlus colours stand up to the unshaded sun of Richmond's flat subdivisions. Paired with a ventilated rainscreen it gives a delta wall the drying capacity it never had.

Near the water in Steveston and Seafair we also install cedar for character homes, detailed the way this climate demands: rainscreen behind, six-side sealing, stainless fasteners. Aluminum systems suit owners who want a modern face; AL13 panels and Longboard woodgrain aluminum are both non-combustible and indifferent to salt air when detailed correctly. Premium vinyl serves budget projects in Hamilton and East Cambie, and the EasyTrim Quick Panel system gives newer builds crisp panel reveals.

We quote two or three materials side by side on your measured wall area, and on Richmond's large homes that comparison moves real money.

Repair and Restoration on the Island City

Richmond's wind exposure produces classic storm damage: laps peeled off west-facing walls in Terra Nova, cracked panels in Ironwood, gates and debris thrown into ground-floor cladding. Our siding repair in Richmond service handles these quickly, matching existing profiles and colours where stock allows so the repaired section blends in rather than advertising itself.

Water losses are the other Richmond staple. When a face-sealed wall finally lets go, or a plumbing failure soaks an exterior assembly from inside, our restoration crews take the wall apart, dry it, rebuild it and hand your insurer a documented package: photos, moisture readings, scope and pricing. Wind, water and fire restoration all come with that same paperwork support.

Soffit, Fascia and Ventilation at Sea Level

Flat lots and a high water table mean Richmond homes depend heavily on above-grade drying, and that makes the roofline and attic more important here, not less.

Attic ventilation is the mechanism. Soffit vents bring dry air in at the eaves, roof vents exhaust moist air at the top, and in a city where ambient humidity stays high, an attic without working intake holds moisture through the winter. We find condensation and mould on sheathing in Richmond houses that have never leaked. Blocked or painted-shut soffit vents and insulation pushed over the eaves are the usual causes.

We replace with vented panels sized for the attic they serve, renew fascia behind gutters that carry serious winter volume, and make sure roof edge details move water away from the new siding rather than behind it. See soffit and fascia in Richmond. This work stands alone when the walls have life left, and folds into most of our recladding scopes by default when they do not.

Steveston and the Older Streets

Steveston's older homes deserve their own note. The village's heritage streets carry pre-war and early post-war houses whose character is worth protecting, and the marine exposure at the mouth of the river is the strongest in the city.

On those projects we reproduce traditional lap profiles and trim proportions, in cedar where owners want the authentic material or in fiber cement where they want the look with less upkeep, and we specify corrosion-resistant hardware throughout. A Steveston wall detailed like an inland wall shows it within a few years, so we do not detail them that way.

Book a Free Assessment in Richmond

Whether it is one soft wall on a Thompson rancher, weathered cedar in Broadmoor or a full strata recladding in Brighouse, Berkana Construction will give you a straight answer and a written number. Call (672) 771-6868 or email info@berkanaconstruction.com to arrange a visit. Our crews cover Richmond year-round from our Maple Ridge base.