Siding in Wallingford, CT

Siding in Wallingford

Wallingford's siding history follows the town's transformation from a colonial farming community along Main Street to a post-war suburban town where thousands of homes were built in a 25-year window. The colonial and Federal homes along North and South Main Street wear their original narrow clapboard or have been re-sided in period-appropriate fiber-cement — these are Wallingford's best-maintained exteriors, kept up by owners who understand the architectural significance of Main Street's streetscape. The challenge lies in the vast post-war development from Cook Hill Road east through the Route 5 corridor to Yalesville: homes clad originally in wood clapboard or asbestos-cement shingles, most of which received first-generation aluminum or vinyl overlays in the 1970s and 1980s.

Those overlays are now 40 to 50 years old and failing across Wallingford. Aluminum is chalking and denting from age and hail, vinyl is cracking at corners and around windows as the PVC becomes brittle from decades of UV exposure, and underneath it all, the original siding that was never properly removed or prepared is concealing moisture damage that has progressed unchecked for four decades. The Quinnipiac River corridor humidity makes this worse — homes in the valley floor neighborhoods show consistently more concealed rot than hilltop properties, because the ambient moisture keeps wall cavities damp and slows drying after rain events.