If you are planning exterior cladding work on your Holt home, knowing exactly what the job involves from start to finish helps you plan properly and know what to expect on the day.
Call any time. Calls are answered day and night and passed straight to our roofers.
Exterior cladding is not a quick job stuck onto the outside of a wall. Done properly, it is a layered installation that protects the structure of your home for many years. Corners cut at any stage - in the preparation, the membrane, the fixings or the finishing - show up later as water ingress, rot or premature failure of the boards. Understanding the stages helps you ask the right questions when getting work quoted and know whether the job on your home has been done correctly.
Before any materials are ordered or any work starts, the wall needs to be assessed properly. For a new installation, this means checking the condition of the substrate - the brickwork, render or timber frame behind where the cladding will go. Any loose render, crumbling mortar or damp patches need to be addressed before the cladding goes on, because cladding over a defective wall does not fix the underlying problem and makes future repairs harder.
For a replacement job - where old cladding is being stripped off and new fitted - the survey happens in two stages. The first is a visual inspection of the existing cladding to assess how widespread the damage or deterioration is. The second, more important stage happens once the old boards are off and the wall behind can be seen. It is only at that point that the true condition of the breather membrane (if one was fitted), the battens and the wall surface can be confirmed. Any installer who prices a full replacement without making clear that the final scope may change once boards are removed is giving you an incomplete picture.
Cladding work requires working safely at height across the full face of the building. For a single storey elevation, this typically means a combination of step ladders and working platforms. For two or more storeys, scaffolding is the appropriate solution - not because it is the easiest option, but because it is the safe one and because it allows the installer to work methodically across the whole elevation without constantly repositioning.
Before any boards come off or go on, access equipment needs to be properly set up and stable. Good access also makes a material difference to the quality of the finished job - an installer working from a solid platform can position and fix boards accurately in a way that is much harder from a repositioned ladder.
If the job is a replacement, the existing boards come off first. This is done carefully rather than quickly - boards ripped off without care can damage the wall surface, tear the membrane behind, or pull fixings out in a way that leaves the batten structure in poor condition. On older installations, there may be no membrane at all behind the cladding, or the membrane that is there may have failed. This is important information that shapes the rest of the job.
Old fixings are removed at this stage, and the batten structure is assessed. Battens that are sound can sometimes be reused if they are the right thickness for the new system. Battens that have absorbed moisture, or that are not at the correct centres for the new boards, come off too.
A breather membrane is fixed to the wall surface before any battens go up. The membrane allows water vapour to pass outward from the wall while preventing liquid water from getting in. It needs to be lapped correctly - upper sheets overlapping lower ones - and any penetrations for fixings, pipes or cables need to be made good so there is no path for water to bypass the membrane at those points.
Counter-battens are then fixed through the membrane and into the wall. These serve two purposes: they hold the membrane in place, and they create the ventilation cavity between the membrane and the back of the cladding boards. This cavity is not optional - it is what allows any moisture that does get behind the boards to dry out rather than sit against the timber or the wall. The battens need to be at the correct vertical and horizontal spacing for the type of cladding being used, and they need to be fixed securely into the masonry or structural frame, not just into the render skin.
The boards go on from the bottom up. The starter course at the bottom is one of the most important details in the whole job - it sets the angle and alignment for every course above it, and it needs to be truly level regardless of whether the top of the wall or the eaves line above it are perfectly level. A first course laid to a crooked line creates problems that get worse with every row above.
Each board needs to be fixed with the correct fixings - stainless steel for exterior work, at the right length to give adequate penetration into the batten without splitting the board. The overlap between adjacent boards in the same course, and between successive courses, needs to be consistent. Joints between board lengths in the same course should not all fall at the same vertical line - staggering them gives a better appearance and reduces the risk of water tracking in at a single point.
Around openings - windows, doors, any wall penetrations - the detailing is critical. Window heads need a drip flashing above them so that water running down the wall above the window is directed away from the joint between the frame and the cladding. Sills need to be capped or flashed correctly at the sides. Corners need purpose-made corner trims or mitre-cut returns depending on the system being used. These details are where poorly fitted cladding most often lets water in.
At the top of the elevation, where the cladding meets the soffit or the eaves, there needs to be a ventilated closer that allows air to enter the cavity at the bottom and exit at the top, while still keeping out birds and insects. Blocking this ventilation defeats the purpose of the cavity and leads to moisture build-up.
Once all the boards are on, any cut edges on timber boards need to be treated with end-grain sealer or preservative before the surface finish is applied. Exposed cut edges are the most vulnerable point on any timber cladding board - leaving them untreated undermines the whole job.
If the boards are to be painted or stained on site, the surface should be clean and dry before the first coat goes on. Some timber cladding products are factory-primed, which allows the top coat to be applied more quickly. On composite cladding, no painting is required, but any cut ends should still be checked and treated with the system's recommended end sealant.
A final check of all fixings, joints and flashings should be done before access equipment comes down. Once the scaffolding is struck, re-accessing a detail that has been missed becomes significantly more difficult and expensive.
All old boards, offcuts, fixings and packaging need to be cleared from the site. Old timber cladding boards are bulky - a full elevation of replaced boards can fill a skip - and the expectation of how waste is handled should be agreed before the job starts.
The ground around the base of the building also needs checking. Fixings and small offcuts left on a path or in a garden are a hazard and a sign of a job not finished properly.
We install and replace exterior cladding on homes across Holt, handling every stage from survey through to clean-up. If you want to talk through a cladding job on your property, call us to arrange a survey and we will give you a clear picture of what the work involves before any decisions are made.
No obligation · We'll call you to arrange a free visit
Call any time. Calls are answered day and night and passed straight to our roofers.
