How to Determine the Amount of Hardy Planks to Side Your Home

Choose a wall of the home to start your measurements. Draw a rough outline of that wall on your pad of paper with the pencil to represent a diagram for easy reading later. You can repeat the process for each individual wall so that you have full diagrams of all walls and their square footage for use when ordering your plank material.

Measure the height of the wall against the length of the wall and multiply those numbers by each other. For example, a 20-foot high wall that is 17-feet long has a square foot area of 340 square feet. A x B = C, where A is the height, B is the length, and C is your square feet. Mark this square footage measurement next to the wall drawn in your diagram. Do this step for each wall.

Include any triangular areas in your diagram, but measure for them separately from any square sections of the wall. The equation for determining the square footage for a triangle is A x B divided by C. If your triangle is 20 feet high at its upper point and 17 feet wide along its base, you then divide by 2 to achieve your end result, which in this example would be 170 square feet.

Tack on an extra 15 or 20 percent to any end measurements you come up with. This allows you to account for waste material that is cut around areas such as windows, corners and edges. While you can reuse some of the waste material in other areas, extra is necessary to cover all your bases so you don’t run out of material. You can save the excess for repairs down the road.