A local project is a good example of why a little extra cost today might save you thousands down the road. We live in a very exciting time for construction. There are new innovative products coming onto the market every single day.
As a contractor, I am always pushing clients to purchase products that do not require servicing. This is especially true of any products that are located outdoors. Either in the form of composite decking or in the case of a yacht club’s aluminum siding.
The new yacht club is less than ten years old; it was finished in 2014, at the time of the build the designers clad multiple sections of the building with cedar. Over the course of 7 years the cedar was not serviced and by the time they wanted to service it, it was too late. The cedar had warped, cracked, peeled, and in some places even begun to fall apart.
At an estimated cost of fifteen thousand dollars to install initially, they found themselves in a place of needing to completely replace it. Cedar needs to be serviced every two to three years. And on a building of that size the cost is roughly 7-8 thousand every time. We were tasked with removing the cedar from the building and replacing it. Thankfully the new service manager understood the value of going with a non servicing product. For roughly 30% more than the initial install we were able to remove the old, and replace it with a beautiful product that has a 50 year limited lifetime warranty.
The savings on this is incredible, on the outside, that decision saves the club members a seven thousand dollar bill every three years. That’s a total cost savings of roughly one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars in just servicing the product. Yes you read that right $115,000. Below you can see what happened to the cedar in just 7 years and see what we replaced it with that the manufacturer says they will cover for 50 years.
This Is why we push for zero maintenance products. As folks get older the last thing they want to do is spend their time and money on maintenance. There are so many amazing products that will out last many of us and while the upfront cost may be slightly higher, the long term savings can amount to well in this case over $100,000.00 dollars. what could you do with an extra 100k in your pocket?