Siding Calculator updated – prices udjusted to 2012 levels, redesigned look, fixed errors.

We are happy to announce that we just did a slew of improvements and fixes to our online free siding estimator. We have also updated siding prices calculation algorithm to better reflect current (May 2012) siding prices for both materials and installation labor.

House Siding Prices calculation:

Vinyl siding costs were adjusted to current (2012) levels for 3 vinyl siding materials. Since we originally designed the our calculator in 2010, the prices of vinyl siding (and to a much lesser degree, other siding materials) went up an average of 30-40% due to “oil price increase” … honestly this has nothing to do with price of oil, as vinyl siding does not use petroleum products – it is mostly suppliers / manufacturers of vinyl siding trying to make more money.


We also adjusted installation labor costs for all three types of vinyl siding, as our original prices were based more on “subcontractor” level of labor costs. However, many homeowners often hire a GC or a remodeling company to install their house siding, and pay higher per-square prices.

– We have added the setting of Roof Slope to the calculator. This setting will estimate amount of siding materials needed to be installed on angled gable sections of your house.

– We temporarily removed setting for house type (Gable / Hip / Colonial / Victorian), as it was overlapping with roof slope setting. We want to make this mechanism of calculations more intuitive – eg. if you choose roof type to be “Hip”, that will automatically disable roof slope setting, as it becomes unnecessary, since there are no angled wall sections on roof-type houses.

– Siding calculation results are now presented in single line, and you can choose individual siding material for which you want pricing. Old results were presented ad grid, with all materials listed, and corresponding prices besides the material. This however was pushing down the rest of the page and did not look “good”.


– As mentioned in previous point – there is now a new setting to choose a siding material for which you want to calculate price.

Design changes / minor bug fixes:

We’ve made the calculator look “cleaner”: the setting titles are now in a single line, spacing between the fields is increased slightly, and titles were fixed to be more intuitive.

We’ve also changed the width of the calculator, and as mentioned in a report on price calculations update, the results are now presented in a single line.

We’ve also noticed there were two settings there were not utilized, and affected how prices are calculated. We removed “Roof / House type” setting, and fixed roof pitch setting.

We plan to port this new design and improved functionality to our free siding estimator for contractors’ websites.

You don’t have to wait till we do it – go ahead and grab this free widget now, place it into a page on your website, and when we roll out the update, it will show up automatically.

Siding Calculator APP update:

Finally, we wanted to let you know that Siding Calculator app for Android platform is almost ready, while iPhone version of our Siding Calculator app is available in App Store already. Find it on your iPhone / iPad, using AppStore app by searching for “siding” or “siding calculator”, or get it it here.

The upcoming update to the app will include multiple house section (if you have several structures or a cut-up home), results saving and export fictions via email, and use of GPS location, to get address of the property you are estimating. Our development team is already hard at work on bringing these updates to you.

We will also publish a User video guide that will explain how to properly use siding calculator app (we’ve had many questions on how to calculate Hardie / Cedar siding, vs. vinyl siding, and it is easier to show this in a video, rather than using text guides.

Thank you and stay tuned – SidingCalculator.org


2 thoughts on “Siding Calculator updated – prices udjusted to 2012 levels, redesigned look, fixed errors.

  1. Add a dumpster fee to the app for on site dumpster fee over 5 sq. Please add more home styles like Cape Cod. It was off 4 sq when I figured it out manually with the few houses to choose from in the app. Other than that, still learning it.

  2. I bought the I-phone version of Siding Calculator from the apple app store on 1/10/13 but I wonder if this is the latest version.
    1) It only lists profiles for vinyl and cedar cladding and it will not let me add another profile. I thought you had this set up for James Hardie by now?
    2) I input the house values into the home screen and then click for results. But I cannot assign a client name to the information or save the values or results anywhere? and I cannot email them?
    A guy named Leo wrote on on this site on May 1, 2012 (8 months ago) that an upcoming update would include results saving, email export, address location by GPS and a User Video Guide to explain how to use the app in general and specifically how to calculate Hardie siding.
    The last comment I can find, dated 8/24/2012, from Chin asked if there was a fiber cement version- but no answering comment from you.
    I only install hardie cement. How do I use this $20 app I just paid for? Please respond to me!

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