Installed by Side-Pro Exteriors across Seattle, Bellevue and Tacoma
Cut an EQUITONE panel and the edge is the same color as the face. That is the whole idea — and it is why the fixings are meant to show.
EQUITONE is high-density fiber cement in large-format facade panels, 5/16, 3/8 or 1/2 inch thick, in sheets up to 3100 by 1250 mm. The color runs through the material rather than sitting on the surface, so a cut edge, a drilled fixing and a weathered face all stay the same color. It is designed to be seen as a panel, with expressed joints and visible fasteners, rather than pretending to be a board.
That makes it an architectural cladding rather than a residential re-side product. On a designed Seattle or Bellevue facade it does something no lap siding can; on a conventional Tacoma house it is usually more panel than the building is asking for, and we will say so rather than sell it to you.
The fire performance is genuinely strong: flame spread of 0 under ASTM E84 and non-combustible under ASTM E136. Worth understanding, though, that a non-combustible panel is not the same as an NFPA 285 compliant wall — the assembly still has to be designed and tested for that, and the panel rating does not deliver it on its own.
We install EQUITONE rainscreen assemblies on residential and commercial projects across Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma and the wider Puget Sound region.
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Be careful with the warranty figure. EQUITONE’s marketing pages state a 20-year material warranty; their own US CSI specification states 10 years for the panels under standard terms, with 20 years available only when all specified EQUITONE systems are used through project completion, and 20 years on the thermally broken support system. We quote ten unless the full system is going on the building. On growth, EQUITONE claims resistance to dampness, bacteria and algae — not moss, and not mold, and we are not going to widen that for them. The ASTM figures above are the US ones; the EN 13501 classification quoted on some EQUITONE pages is a different test and does not translate into a US rating.