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Silly me...


Crofter

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Today was one of those 'b*gger b*gger b*gger' days.

Offered up the various bits of wood, sill, etc, to the window to work out how I was going to do the reveal detailing, and it turns out my sills are not deep enough. Nobody's fault but mine- at some point in the build I had switched from using 25mm cladding battens to 50mm, and this has eaten up the overhang. If I press ahead, the sills will just, barely, clear the edge of the cladding, with around 10mm overhang.

 

I think I have three options:

1- Buy new, deeper, sills- obviously the most expensive option. They are Aluron profiles, roughly how much would these be per metre?

2- Re-install the windows (must be a computer joke in there somewhere). I am quite reluctant to do that knowing how long it took me to put them first time around. I could probably do the job in two or three days but it's a psychology thing- would feel like I was taking backwards steps. Moving them 25mm towards the outside of the wall would be enough to restore the overhang and would make the faces match the counterbattens, which could simplify some of the detailing.

3- Alter my cladding design. I have vertical board-on-board 20mm larch planks, nailed to horizontal 50x50 battens which in turn are screwed to vertical 25x50 counter battens. If I change the horizontal battens to 25x50 that solves the problem (it was the original design) but will it make the cladding too prone to flexing? I don't really want the wall to bend when you lean on it! How much would it help if I doubled the number of battens (easy) or halved the centres by installing more counterbattens (less easy, and these would not be nailed onto studs, just the 11mm sheathing).

 

Any other options?

I'll just have to console myself that this is probably the silliest mistake I have made so far, which is not bad going given I have designed, drawn, and built this house completely singlehanded so far...

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I have the 25mm cross battens behind my cladding and there is no flex at all. They are solid!

In fact I remember someone querying your 50mm battens so put a good shoulder against mine at the weekend.

Chose a bit where I knew I was between horizontal battens and it's rock solid.

As the Welsh wizard says...worry ye not 

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Brilliant, thanks. Is your cladding 19mm sarking boards? I've got 20mm larch, it seems fairly stiff. I was advised to go for 50mm by a joiner mate who said he had done lots of cladding and always used that. TRADA say a minimum of 38x38 (been googling since I started this thread).

 

I'm leaning towards 25mm battens and perhaps beefing them up with some intermediate verticals, which would have to be fixed by screwing through the sheathing from the inside. That'll mean pulling out some of the rockwool insulation but I've only done about a quarter of the area in question (I knew there was a reason I never finished that job!)

 

Edit: @Tennentslager have you got everything on 600 centres?

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2 hours ago, Tennentslager said:

I have the 25mm cross battens behind my cladding and there is no flex at all. They are solid!

In fact I remember someone querying your 50mm battens so put a good shoulder against mine at the weekend.

Chose a bit where I knew I was between horizontal battens and it's rock solid.

As the Welsh wizard says...worry ye not 

I would agree with this - it would be my preference if faced with similar. We held back on the measurements for the sills until everything was fitted (the different wall thicknesses of the tank mean most sills are different depths)., but I don't think that's normal!

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I am planning just 25mm battens and counter battens.  My thinking being I don't want the wood clad portion to be any thicker than the wood fibre and render portion. So 25mm batten, plus 25mm batten plus 20mm board plus 20mm board = 90mm overall thickness.  Using 50mm for one of the battens would make the overall build up to 115mm which I don't want.
 

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There's a few good pics on my blog

'£9k later' one.

Mainly my vertical studs were 400 centres but this did vary below windows etc.

If you make the horizontals 400 it will be solid. After all it will be these that would flex.

Also , once you have your overlaps and it's all screwed/nailed tight, believe me it's all going to hold together.

Why not try a metre and test it out???

Edited by Tennentslager
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