from logging to siding

[Roger Rettenmeier]

Started a project on my old house, insulating and residing.

I started with logs and a sawmill to make the sidingP1000485.jpgP1000488.jpgP1000490.jpgP1010509.jpg .

That is my friend and his sawmill. After several rounds of hauling logs and milling, I had a good stack of wood.
P1010511.jpg. I then stripped one layer of old sidingP1020178.jpg. After that I bored holes in the top of the wall between the studs and blew in cellulose insulation. I replaced windows and resided.P1010750.jpgP1010767.jpg. That is one wall done.

[Mark Bolton]

How do you deal with the issues of when the battens and the siding shrink. And then when through the seasons the battens and siding expand / contract and cup? I have never seen a good system with regards to board and batten in the modern age. And it's not cheap.

[Roger Rettenmeier]

First, about the expense part. I did not buy my board and batten, I sawed it from raw materials, so for me it was less expensive than buying other material for siding. My primary goal was to have insulation in the 100 year old house, and the 4x 8 siding had seen better days. I was able to get the wood for nothing, and have my time, gas and saw blades invested in the project.

As far as the wood "working", I expect it will happen. The wood was custom milled using a technique called "ring centered sawing". There is a discussion about that on the Norwood saw mill site. It comes up near the top of a google search. The boards were dry, flat and quite stable after I stickered and dried them for a season here in Thompson Falls. They were liberally coated with shake oil befor I put them up. The west wall has been up over a year with no ill effects, and my shop gables, which are also board and bat have been on for 10 years now, and are quite stable. Might be a lack of humidity in this area, but the board and batten is working out well for me.

[ernest dubois]

As I can make it out there are basically two main "issues" with the siding shrinking up, (in fact it goes both ways, right, it shrinks then it expands, wood). Gaps could open up beyond the battens or lines of untreated sections could get exposed. If gaps do appear it seems to me that the battens were simply not put on there right, with enough overhang or they were to narrow, maybe neither the planks or battens were well seasoned or inappropriate wood had been chosen, for example Southern Yellow Pine is an unstable wood as I know it. To avoid the other one the planks should be given their finish prior to battening. In the case of tung and groove these should be pre-finished
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like the section of siding in the background there. Well that other siding, the wide planks of poplar are just butted and that's it but these are my example of "doing it myself" which is the way I have been doing it more and more.
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The wood gets dropped off early that morning.
P1020049.jpg
Then we saw it up in good thick planks, what do we care, this is not expensive material.
P1020060.jpg
and stack it there ready for the next step.
P1020107.jpg
A true sealing at the end grain to slow down the evaporation there.
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I really do prefer standing the wood vertically if I can afford it to dry out, at least initially.

[Todd Burch]

I just bought a house and barn, built in '86 with board and batten siding. Western Red Cedar (WRC). I have to replace a lot of siding. Many of the boards are split, and some have rot at the bottom where they were too long and actually touched the step flashing.

Above, I see the nailing pattern in that one close up picture - the one with the nail gun and (I suppose) Roger. My boards are nailed like the ones on the left - pairs of nail, up the board, along the outer edges. I notice, however, that the nails get closer together as you move to the right in that picture. Why the change in pattern? Moisture content?

My understanding of why vertical wood siding, or any similarly nailed wood, splits is this. When wood gets wet, is expands, and when it dries out, it shrinks. (No arguments so far, I suppose. ). When wood is nailed, like on the left side of the picture, along the outer edges, and it gets wet, the wood tries to expand, but the nails keep the wood from expanding. Subsequently, since it can't expand as far as it would like, the fibers compress on each other, making them (for lack of a more technical reason or description…), and the board overall, narrower. When the wood dries out, and attempts to reach EMC (equilibrium moisture content), since it is not as wide as before, and the nails do not allow the outside edges of the move, the only solution the board has is to split at its weakest point, which is usually at the middle.

If this is indeed correct, and I think it is (I believe I learned this when I took a wood drying course at the Univ. of Tennessee with (the late) Gene Wengert), I think an acceptable solution to keep boards from splitting, would be to slot the nail holes. It wouldn't take much of a slot, maybe 1/4 wide, at most, along the outer edge, and could be 100% covered by the battens. I suspect doing this would yield a VERY forgiving siding job and years of allowable movement, painted or not, no splitting, and less maintenance overall.

Also, hand nailing, I presume, would also yield tighter results, than a nail gun.

Then, the battens could be hand nailed in the middle, and down tight, to ward off moisture infiltration. I probably would not caulk this either, even if painting.

Thoughts?

[Mark Bolton]

The late gene wengert? You mean he was late for your course?

[Joe Bradshaw]

Roger, good job. I guess that I focused on the finished product, instead of the (maybe) problems.

[Roger Rettenmeier]

I started on the right, and was "just nailing up boards". I looked at them and thought it would be better to nail near the outside of the board, so that the battens would cover up the nails. I think the nail pattern in Ennest top photo might be the way to go, with nail pairs slightly offset.

[Mark Bolton]

The problems I always see with board and batten siding a several fold but a very dry climate with little humidity is a major plus for sure. First, if of course the material isnt well dried it simply the siding shrinks from below the nails and the battens shrink as well creating gaps between the siding boards and battens as well as loose nails. In that same vein B&B siding is a technique of old which usually means it was generally installed on barns and old buildings that are just loose in their construction. This meant that the siding could lose any accumulated moisture on the backside much more readily. Moisture on the backside (which is inevitable) of course means cupping. The backside gets more wet, expands, the front side is exposed to more air and sun and is dry, and the siding board is continually trying to cup and loosen the battens. This, and just the normal cycles of wood expansion and contraction with the seasons and weather, is continually working to loosen the nails. This is a very common issue even with cedar shakes and claps. You can often see on cedar claps a wall with all the nails sticking out off the wall an inch or so. This is because the claps get wet on the face, they sit flat to the building, dry out, grip the nail, and then the outer face dries and the clap cups off the building slightly (pulling the nail). The process repeats and it slowly jacks all the nails right out of the wall. Same with shakes leading to costly and time consuming rain screen details behind the siding to keep it stable.

Then you add in the issues of installing B&B on a fairly modern building, with housewrap or some other building wrap behind it, and the vapor drive from the living space behind it and the issues often get even more complicated. The vapor drive from the building adds moisture behind the siding (through the wrap) and the tighter installation means the back side of the siding dissipates its moisture very very slowly.

In my area (wetter with times of high humidity) its a nightmare. In short order the siding becomes open and leaky. The worst part about this in my area is the house becomes a haven for bugs. Asian Beetles, Stink Bugs, Mud Daubers, Carpenter Bees, Wasps, and so on. Plus the maintenance, but anyone putting any type of wood siding its a given there will be maintenance.

With regards to the cost, of course there is really no commercially available comparable product other than T-111 or a similar product and the look is just not the same. That said, at $1 a square foot, and the speed of installation, and overall tightness, the comparison is simple, the T-111 is unbelievably cheaper. Even discounting labor (not that you can with regards to sawing, drying, handling, and installing) the B&B siding is far far greater than $1/square foot. But the look is of course much much nicer.

Ive just never seen a good approach in this climate that works well over the long haul. But its true that any commercial wood siding other than a sheet product is super expensive in comparison.

With regards to the nailing, the nails out under the battens in my part of the country would never work. The siding boards would split in short order right up the middle. Now this is with flat sawn material. The common practice is a nail in the center (visible) and the ends of the boards float under the batten for expansion.

Just my experience.

[ernest dubois]

The nailing pattern is important for that and other reasons, for example it becomes less important if you are nailing siding atop of sheathing like in the first example, more critical if siding is nailed right to the frame like in my picture, but in my opinion the technique touched on plays even a bigger role. A nail gun will weaken the wood near the ends particularly because it fires the nails in with such a velocity that they will follow the path of least resistance along the growth pattern of the wood and begin to open up a split. Hammering is better in that way and action can be taken to reduce the chance of a split. Even better is hammering in square or cut nails. Splits down the middle are more a result of cupping, ok related to how the plank is attached, than expansion and contraction across the grain which nails can accommodate. Something that will help, more or less, depending on the planks in question, is heartwood to the outside. The slot is the right way of thinking about the problem and can be easily done by first laying the head of the nail perpendicular to the grain at the mark where it will enter and tap it in to sever the unsupported cross grain at the surface.

[Roger Rettenmeier]

Thanks for the input, guys.
I still have the east and south walls left to do. The south wall is the one that gets the beating from sun, and therefor most drastic temperature change. i will make some changes in my installation process. I am thinking my generally dry climate is a pretty good bonus for this type of siding.

[ernest dubois]

I have to wonder if a lot of what's going on in what Mark has posted up is not some kind of example of false economy, (probably more key is how appropriate or compatible is the method i.e. should there be a solid wood board and batten siding attached directly to a continuous substrate?) But going with the former and questioning, is the under-dimensioning of the siding material to save on the initial cost the problem, which then has to be re-done unnecessarily soon as the result. Couldn't simply beefing up the thickness of the siding, providing more stability, be the solution to the perceived expense of the material?

[Mark Bolton]

Thanks for the input, guys.
I still have the east and south walls left to do. The south wall is the one that gets the beating from sun, and therefor most drastic temperature change. i will make some changes in my installation process. I am thinking my generally dry climate is a pretty good bonus for this type of siding.

Agree completely about the climate

[Todd Burch]

The late gene wengert? You mean he was late for your course?

No, he died a few years ago.

[Tony Joyce]

No, he died a few years ago.

Strange his last post on Woodweb is dated June 13, 2014