CLADDING: IT’S ALL IN THE DETAIL

At the design phase, one of the Build It team visited Russwood’s showroom, where they have an extensive range of options on display in sample panels and on buildings. It became clear they have huge depth of knowledge and there are far more decisions needed than we realised... so if you want a wow-factor look then making the journey is well worthwhile. Here are some of the elements we’ve decided on: Precision alignment We’ve probably not made things easy on our carpenter – our design choices really do require attention to detail. On the rear elevation, where the boards won’t be long enough to span the full width, we’re not taking the conventional approach of staggering joints. Instead we’ve opted to square them up beneath the edges of the windows. A competent DIYER could probably do it themselves to save money and free up labour elsewhere on the project, but you need to get things bang on to achieve a good finish.

Mitred corners At corners you’d normally have a stop bead, but it turns out that’s not so easy to do if you haven’t planned it into an ICF build from the start. We can’t really fit these securely into the polystyrene as there isn’t an embedded fixing strip here, so for a while we were a bit stumped about what to do. The solution – to mitre the one external corner we’re cladding – looks fantastic, but needs a lot of care to get right. On John’s recommendation, we’ve left a gap of 10mm between the mitred cuts on each elevation to get the best result.

Window reveals How to finish the cladding here took considerable brainpower from everyone involved: our architect, the chippy, Kloeber as the window supplier, Russwood and the Build It team. There doesn’t appear to be a universal solution for this kind of detail; certainly not for rainscreen cladding. We knew we wanted to use a perforated closer that would let water escape, but couldn’t find anything of the right size. Our solution that combines a thin strip of larch with a black metal grill above the windows; the side reveals are finished in larch.