Metal Cladding and Metal Siding Installers in Vancouver

Metal cladding is not one product. Longboard is an extruded aluminum plank with a woodgrain or solid finish, installed as siding on homes and as soffit on almost every new build in the region. Aluminum composite panel is the flat, dead-straight sheet with crisp reveals you see on commercial and mixed-use facades. Formed steel and aluminum panels cover flush, ribbed and standing seam wall profiles. Corrugated is the industrial option that modern residential architects keep coming back to.

Each one belongs somewhere. Longboard gives a house the warmth of wood at the soffit, the gable and the entry without a maintenance schedule. Composite panel earns its cost on a retail or office elevation where flatness is the whole point. Formed panel is the value option for large plain elevations on industrial and multi-family buildings. Corrugated works where the budget is tight and the look is deliberately honest.

We install all of them, and we install them beside James Hardie fiber cement, brick and stucco on the same building. That matters more than it sounds. Most metal cladding problems live at the transition to another material, and a single crew responsible for both sides of that line is how the flashing gets done once and done right.

The climate is the first reason. Metal does not rot, does not absorb water and does not need repainting. On the wet North Shore and along the Fraser, a woodgrain aluminum soffit looks like cedar in year fifteen the way cedar looks in year two. The finish is a factory-applied coating that holds its colour for decades and rinses clean.

Fire is the second. Metal is non-combustible, which simplifies spatial separation on tight lots and answers the FireSmart concerns that owners in Maple Ridge, Mission and the Fraser Valley interface are increasingly bringing to us. The third is design. Developers, architects and custom home owners want the clean lines that only a flat panel with a consistent reveal can give, and a metal accent band is the fastest way to make a wood-frame building look considered.

The trade-off is cost and craft. Metal panel is more expensive than vinyl or fiber cement per square foot of wall, and it is far less forgiving of a wavy substrate or a rushed layout. The wall has to be planned before it is built, which is why our process starts with drawings rather than a tape measure.

Behind a metal panel sits the assembly that actually manages water: the weather-resistive barrier, the sub-girts or clips that hold the panel off the wall, and the drainage cavity between them. On open-joint rainscreen designs, where the panel gaps are left deliberately open, the membrane behind the cavity has to be UV-stable and every fastener through it has to be sealed, because that membrane is the wall for as long as the building stands.

Exterior insulation changes the game again. Under the BC Step Code more walls carry continuous insulation outboard of the sheathing, and metal panel then hangs on thermally broken clips or girts that reach through the insulation to the framing. Get the clip spacing or the girt alignment wrong and the panel telegraphs every one of them. Get it right and the wall is straight, warm and dry.

Then the details that separate a good metal job from a bad one: panel widths and stiffeners chosen to stop oil-canning on flat sheet, expansion allowed for at long runs, dissimilar metals isolated so they do not corrode each other, closures at parapets and window heads shop-formed from the same coil so the colour matches, and every termination sealed against wind-driven rain. We fabricate custom flashings for exactly this reason.

For general contractors and developers, metal cladding is a coordinated scope, not a finish trade that shows up at the end. We review the architectural set with you, produce shop drawings for the panel layout, reveals and closures, and sequence procurement against the site schedule so a twelve-week panel lead time does not stall the envelope.

On site our foreman inspects the barrier, the sub-girts and the cavity before the first panel goes up, because the panel hides everything behind it and nobody wants to take it down. Installation runs to the layout drawings, with reveals checked course by course and terminations at openings, corners and parapets photographed before the closures go on.

Closeout is a joint walkthrough, touch-up, and the warranty and maintenance documentation the owner or strata will need. On mixed-use buildings in Burnaby, Coquitlam and Surrey we are often installing metal at grade, fiber cement above and Longboard soffit at the canopy, and one crew carries all three.

Most residential metal work is Longboard: soffits, gable ends, entry features and increasingly whole elevations on modern homes in Port Moody, Coquitlam and Mission. The planks arrive pre-finished, install over strapping like any lap siding, and are cut and closed with matching trims and closures. Paired with Hardie on the body of the house, it is the combination behind a large share of the new builds you see on Lower Mainland streets.

Cost is driven by the panel system, the amount of custom flashing, and access. A single gable is a small job. A full wrap of a three-storey modern home with open-joint detailing is a significant one. We quote line by line so you can see where the money sits and choose where metal earns its place and where fiber cement does the same work for less.

Maintenance is a rinse. The finish does not need paint, the panel does not rot, and a dent from a ladder is the only realistic damage, which is one reason metal is the answer for owners who never want to think about the wall again.