VERSATEX Trimboard News
July 6, 2009 - Dealers reap the benefits when contractors and manufacturers innovate.
New technologies in PVC trimboards are inspiring unusual applications for this low maintenance wood alternative, and dealers are delivering just what contractors need.
For any new product to push past the “what if” stage and make it all the way to its first installation, an imposing number of variables need to be working perfectly in sync. Manufacturers strive to improve product performance, and PVC trim is no exception. But, there are those exciting times when those improvements really inspire a contractor. Or when the right people get together at the right times in the complex manufacturer-distributor-dealer-contractor-installer chain, and innovative products can actually come to market, or find an exciting new use. Sometimes this sort of pull-through situation even happens by accident.
Early adopters like Jim Montgomery from Lettieri Construction in Westhampton Beach, NY, got on the cellular PVC bandwagon years ago. He saw the true advantage of PVC over wood, and switched to PVC on windows, doors and corners, then graduated to soffits, fascias and more sophisticated uses where weather would just plain ruin wood.
That led Jim to another discovery: why not try PVC trim inside the home, especially in places where poplar and maple were suffering from exposure to moisture of all sorts. Because of the improvements in cell structure, PVC could look more like painted wood—even up close. Montgomery discovered more places to experiment with PVC trim—shoe moulding in bathrooms, in shower enclosures, laundry rooms, and other places where moisture ruins wood. He also used PVC inside for radius walls, enclosures, and inside window casings.
Now, Jim uses the low maintenance trim in virtually every portion of the house. Inside and outside. He has a couple of new home projects where anything on the house exterior that is painted (besides a set of mahogany exterior doors) is made of PVC product. All the obvious exterior features are made of the PVC trim—columns, window trim, corners, soffit and fascia, railing and balusters. But Montgomery also uses it for all sorts of new and unusual applications: window boxes, posts, outdoor cabinets – he even created new window and door jambs, replacing the ones supplied by the manufacturers.
Contractors aren’t always replacing wood with PVC. Sometimes it’s a PVC product to start with that needs some work. One of the largest James Hardie siding installers in central Virginia (BlueRidgeExteriors.com) was lamenting over lunch one day at the extra labor, extra materials, and oversized trim they needed to use to meet code requirements for roof clearance. “We needed a 2” trim to do the job, and nobody made a 2” trim,” said Matt Neely of Blue Ridge Exteriors.
Instead, Neely’s crew would start with a 1 x 4 trim board, install that, and then go over it with a vinyl drip edge. It was double labor with the addition of the drip edge, which was easily broken by workers’ boots; but this was still the best solution they had. Lucky for them that they were eating lunch with the regional sales manager from their trim manufacturer. They told him their story, but didn’t think much would come of it. About a week later, a prototype of a hybrid starter trim showed up—with built-in drip edge and just the right height and angles to meet code. It could cut their labor cost and product waste for trim installation in half.
At that point, they brought in their dealer, Bradco, out of Richmond Va, to see if they were interested in setting up the delivery process. Blue Ridge normally gave Bradco a week’s notice, and Bradco’s distributor only needed a day or two to have the products delivered to their door. “We didn’t mind being the guinea pig on this one,” says David Patrick, Bradco outside sales rep. “If it catches on nationwide, we know we helped get it started.”
Garage door manufacturer Cunningham Overhead Door of Louisville, KY, had been considering making the change from cedar and wood to cellular PVC for doors and their surrounding trims. It all started with an arched opening and the relative ease with which a 1 x 6 in PVC trim could be installed without milling or heating the curved edge. Wood had traditionally been used, even though it took greater time and expense to get the wood milled and shaped to the exact spec. “Even though the PVC looked great, and it took less time and money, people just hung on to wood. It was what we knew,” said Chris Cunningham, COD’s owner. “When we discovered we could flex the PVC trim on site, without any special tools, it took a lot of the variables out of our installations.”
Cunningham migrated this thinking to an experiment with attaching PVC planks to steel garage door panels with a mix of specialized glue and fasteners. “At this point, there’s a real art to building these doors,” he says. “Facing steel with PVC planks really holds up, but not everybody can do it.” The process mimics old carriage doors, with rails and stiles made out of low-maintenance materials instead of wood, which can even “fool” some customers with the classic look of wood doors, but almost none of the maintenance. Facing a continued need for PVC trim planks and mouldings, and with a strong belief in the market’s future needs for a high-performance, low maintenance material, Chris Cunningham worked with a local distributor and became a VERSATEX dealer as well.
Durabrac Architectural Components has been in business since the first PVC sheet was extruded—over 10 years—and has evolved the intricacies of their product lines as the PVC performances and tolerances have improved. Durabrac takes 4’ x 8’ sheets in widths up to 1”, and laminates them together to make architectural brackets, balusters, spandels and gingerbread trim up to 5” thick. Changes in cel structure, along with the consistency of the product from front to back and the evolution to a more satin finish have allowed them to take all their products to a higher level. “We’ve never used wood for anything, but we have watched PVC come a long, long way in quality and appearance,” says Mike Sheehan, Durabrac’s owner. They continue to experiment with new PVC sheet products, and rely on their local dealer to let them know when it’s time to adopt a higher tolerance product.
Manufacturers have to respect levels of contact in the distribution chain, and understand the installer is not their immediate customer. But by fostering an atmosphere of innovation with their distributor partners, this culture of cooperation is passed down through the chain, and serves to inspire the contractors and OEM’s to send their innovative ideas back through to the manufacturer. In the same way, dealers and their outside sales forces can become more of a conduit for new product ideas to flow in, and, more times than you might think, for new, improved products to flow back out.