Weatherproofing and cladding the house

by Nick Mann
10th December 2012

By way of variation on the extreme weather theme, the house of mud became the white house for a brief spell, before reverting to type again.

At -4°C, the weather has provided us with a picturesque back-drop, but it’s far less attractive to be working in it. Looking on the bright side, I could actually walk around the garden without risking the loss of another pair of wellies. The builders battled on, and we managed to get the house weatherproof.

In the short term the major excitement has been the cladding, which looks gorgeous. We’re using imported European Scots pine boards, treated with copper in a process called ‘micronized pressure treatment’ by a local supplier to extend its life (don’t ask me – all I know is that it smells nice).

It’s a shame we can’t use timber from the woods we can see from our front windows, but it’s just too expensive. It’s obviously much cheaper to import it from somewhere like Estonia – and add yet another size to our carbon footprint.

Although the architects have specified tongue and groove for most of the house they’ve gone for a different look in a couple of areas on the top box. I’m not sure how to describe it. I hadn’t imagined you could use cladding like this, and I think it will look great.

We also waterproofed the last few elements that needed doing – the pitched garage, boot room roof and east facing courtyard, over the large basement.

The boot room will be finished with tiles from the current Hookgate Cottage in due course, but in the meantime we have double felted it against the elements.

The garage is nearly finished, too, although this still awaits its concrete floor. In the course of weatherproofing the courtyard the scaffolding standing on it had to come down so, which meant we could admire the cladding on the top box, which it had previously obscured. We’ve got our fingers crossed that the weatherproof membrane, which to my untutored eye looks like pond liner, won’t get too trashed.

We had one dry day in two weeks to get the courtyard insulated and waterproofed, so it was a huge relief that we could do most of the work in a day – with some finishing off to do in the next few weeks. Rule one of building: nothing ever gets finished.

The picture (above right) shows the boards to go under the waterproofing and massive blocks of insulation fitted together underneath them, all with varying gentle gradients to encourage water to flow to the downpipe.

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