Siding Contractor in Conway Springs, KS
Your local siding contractor for Conway Springs and Sumner County — siding installation, replacement, and repair, with particular experience on the pre-war homes here still wearing brittle asbestos-cement shingle siding over unwrapped original wood.
Siding Installation & Repair in Conway Springs, KS
Conway Springs sits in northwestern Sumner County, a town of 1,086 at the 2020 census, founded in 1884 and named for Conway Township and the mineral spring that first drew people to the site. Captain Hiram Cranmer built the first house here. That founding date is the important number for anyone thinking about siding, because it means a meaningful share of the housing stock in this town went up before 1920 — well before housewrap, before modern flashing practice, and before anybody framed a wall with the assumption that it would need to dry.
Siding Pros KS works small Kansas towns constantly, and Conway Springs has a signature. Walk the older blocks and you will see house after house clad in flat, hard, rectangular shingles with a wavy bottom edge and two or three nail heads showing along each course. That is asbestos-cement shingle siding, and it is the defining siding question in this town.
It went on between roughly 1940 and the early 1970s, and at the time it was a genuinely good product: cheap, fireproof, rot-proof, and it did not need painting the way the wood underneath did. Whole streets got re-sided in it. The problem is not that it was bad — it is that it is now fifty to eighty years old and doing three things at once. It has gone brittle, so it cracks at the nail heads and along the bottom edge where anything touches it. It has chalked, so the color washes down the wall in streaks. And it is dead flat and non-breathing over a wall that was never designed to shed water on its own.
The first thing we tell a Conway Springs homeowner is what not to do: do not pressure wash it, and do not let anyone talk you into it. Intact, painted, undisturbed asbestos-cement is generally treated as low risk precisely because the fibers are locked into cement. Blasting it with 3,000 psi is the definition of disturbing it, and it drives water up behind the courses at the same time. If your only complaint is that it looks dirty and chalky, gentle cleaning and a quality repaint is a legitimate, honest answer, and we will say so rather than sell you a wall you do not need.
When replacement is the right call, the material has to be handled correctly and the pricing has to be honest about that. Asbestos-cement removal is regulated work: it comes off wetted and intact rather than broken up, it is bagged, it goes to a facility that accepts it, and there is documentation at the end. Siding Pros KS is licensed and insured and carries that paperwork. If you are collecting bids in Conway Springs and one comes back dramatically under the others, the single most useful question you can ask is how that contractor intends to dispose of the material — because the disposal is a real line item and it does not disappear because someone left it off the estimate.
There is also a legitimate alternative worth putting on the table. Sometimes the best answer is to leave it in place, furr out over it, install a proper weather-resistive barrier, and side over the top — no disturbance, no disposal, and a genuinely better wall than the one you had. That works when the existing shingles are reasonably flat and sound. It does not work when they are broken and cupped, or when we have reason to think the sheathing behind them is compromised, because then you are building a new wall on a bad base.
Which brings up what we actually find when a wall in this town gets opened. Under the shingles there is almost always original wood lap siding, and almost never any building paper. In the era these shingles were installed, a drainage plane simply was not part of the thinking — the new cladding was the waterproofing, and the assumption was that if the outside was solid, the inside stayed dry. Add board sheathing with gaps between the boards, window openings that were never flashed, and eighty years of layered repairs, and you get walls that have been quietly wetting at the head of every window and along the base for decades.
That is why our inspection on an older Conway Springs home always includes opening a discreet test area rather than guessing from the curb. We pull a small section, look at the sheathing, take moisture readings, photograph it, and put the wall repair in the estimate as its own line separate from the siding. Frequently the news is better than people expect. Occasionally it is worse. Either way you get to see it before you commit, which is the whole point.
Done properly, a re-side on a house this old is the one real opportunity to fix the underlying building. We add a continuous, correctly lapped drainage plane, flash every window and door head with a real head flashing and drip, pan the sills, install kick-outs where roofs meet walls, and hold the bottom course up off grade so the wall can drain and dry. On top of that, modern vinyl siding gives you thirty-plus low-maintenance years, while James Hardie fiber cement suits the older architecture here better and takes paint beautifully — see our siding materials comparison if you are weighing the two.
Siding Pros KS provides siding installation, siding replacement, and siding repair across Conway Springs and Sumner County, with free written estimates and a workmanship guarantee. We work Wellington, Kingman, and Anthony regularly, so we are through here often. Start with the signs you need new siding, or call and we will come take a proper look.
Popular siding services in Conway Springs
Why Conway Springs, KS Homeowners Choose a Local Siding Crew
Local, not storm-chasers
We are a Kansas crew, not an out-of-state caravan. When your Conway Springs siding needs service down the road, we are still here to back it up.
Fast storm response
After hail or high winds hit Sumner County, exposed walls can't wait. We prioritize Conway Springs storm damage to keep water out of your home.
Insurance claim help
We document Conway Springs storm damage with photos and detailed estimates and meet your adjuster on site so nothing gets missed.
Good to know before you call.
How do I know if my siding is asbestos-cement shingle?
Look at the size, the edges, and the nails. Asbestos-cement shingles are typically flat rectangles roughly 12 by 24 inches, hung in courses with two or three exposed nail heads along the bottom of each one, and the bottom edge is often wavy, scalloped, or striated to imitate wood grain. They are hard, brittle, and cool to the touch — nothing like wood or vinyl — and they usually sit dead flat against the wall. If your Conway Springs home was re-sided between about 1940 and the early 1970s, there is a good chance that is what you have. The only way to be certain is a lab test on a sample, which is inexpensive.
Is asbestos siding dangerous if I just leave it alone?
Intact, painted, undisturbed asbestos-cement siding is generally considered low risk, because the fibers are bound in cement and are not being released. The risk comes from disturbing it — sanding it, cutting it with a saw, breaking it, or blasting it with a pressure washer. That is the single most important thing we tell Conway Springs homeowners: do not power wash it and do not let anyone else power wash it. If it is sound and you like it, painting it with a quality masonry-compatible product is a legitimate way to get another decade out of it, and Siding Pros KS will tell you honestly when that is the better spend.
Can you side over the top of it instead of tearing it off?
Sometimes, and sometimes that is genuinely the right call, because leaving it in place avoids disturbing it. But it is not automatic. Going over the top adds thickness that has to be accounted for at every window, door, and corner, it hides whatever condition the original sheathing is in, and if the shingles are already broken and cupped you are building a new wall on an uneven base. We look at the flatness, the condition, and what is behind it before we recommend either way. When we do go over, we furr it out and install a proper drainage plane rather than nailing new siding tight to old brittle material.
What is actually underneath asbestos shingles on a house this old?
Usually original wood lap siding, and usually no housewrap or building paper of any kind — because when these were installed, a drainage plane was not part of the thinking. That is the real discovery on most Conway Springs tear-offs. The shingles themselves are often fine; the wall behind them has been getting wet at the window heads and the base for eighty years with nothing to carry that water back out. We open a test area, check the sheathing with a moisture meter, photograph what we find, and price the repair separately so you can see it.
My house is older than the siding on it. Does that change the job?
It changes it quite a bit, and in a good way if you plan for it. Conway Springs was founded in 1884 and a lot of the housing stock predates anything modern about wall construction — true dimensional framing, board sheathing with gaps, deep original trim, and window openings that were never flashed. New siding on a house like that is not just a surface swap. It is the one chance you get to add flashing at every opening, establish a real drainage plane, and correct eighty years of layered repairs. Done right it is the difference between siding that lasts thirty years and siding that traps water.
Do you handle the disposal side of it?
Yes, and we do it by the book. Asbestos-cement siding removal is regulated, it is handled wetted and intact rather than broken up, it is bagged and disposed of at a facility that accepts it, and it is documented. We are licensed and insured and we carry the paperwork. What we will not do is quote you a suspiciously cheap tear-off by pretending the material is ordinary construction debris — if a bid on your Conway Springs home is far below the others, ask that contractor specifically how they are disposing of it.
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