Making your own cladding?

[Drellingore]

Has anyone here got experience of having timber cladding manufactured from felled trees? Failing that, does anyone have any insight into the stages of and costs of producing timber cladding?

 

We've got a multi-trunked ash tree (actually two, but one is quite small) that needs felling due to ash dieback and its proximity to a road. The main trunks are 6m and 8m tall, and 80cm/60cm diameter at breast height each. It'd be great if we can find a way to get the timber used in the building - local materials, historic connectivity, lower carbon emissions, and all that.

 

There are two options I'm looking into:

1. cladding
2. use in general joinery

 

Coming up with ideas for the latter is definitely the wife's department, so I'm looking into the cladding.

 

I'll need to get it felled in large chunks, get it transported somewhere, get it sawn, get it dried (maybe not in that order?) and then get it transported back. We're not likely to start soon, so the drying could happen in the barn we're trying to convert to reduce costs and the carbon emissions of a kiln.

 

Things it'd be great to know, if anyone is able to share:

• Is this a totally unrealistic plan?
• How much might each of these things cost?
• What loss of volume can we expect in the drying process?
• What losses can we expect in processing?
• How much should we be looking at for the felling and transport?

 

As always, thanks in advance. 

[ToughButterCup]

25 minutes ago, Drellingore said:

...,

does anyone have any insight into the stages of and costs of producing timber cladding?

...

 

The brief answer: don't. It's too much effort and time (three years minimum) and needs significant amounts of space - level hardstanding . Thinking through the stickering (level storage)  process is also important. Get that wrong and you build in warp.

 

Bought the chainsaw (DIYmax)  - about as powerful as a motorbike - and the chainsaw mill. Went to the local (50 miles) decent saw mill (T K Knipe in Cumbria) , bought a couple of oak trees : French oak. Why French oak? Because it's straight grained. I could have bought any amount of local English oak - but the local wind and turbulence round the local hills causes the oak to twist and adapt (to stay upright). That makes it completely unsuitable for cladding - OK for other stuff, but not cladding.

 

I also bought a Chestnut tree - high tannin content. (Ash is relatively low)

 

The issue is the milling to thickness, drying time, cut and trimmed straight run length. There is a huge amount of waste. (Which I used for shakes).

 

We finished up buying Siberian Larch (pre- Ukraine war) from ProWood in Bolton. Haulage cost £100. It took three days hard work to store it all perfectly level and covered properly (so air gets to it, but it stays reasonably dry) . I ducked the issue of chamfer by having an 8mm shadow gap between each plank - no additional processing. Board on board would solve that problem another way. 

 

This is the result.

 

 

The 8mm shadow gaps are now 12mm shadow gaps. 

 

Lots of little things in the house are made of off-cuts: window sill, stairs, kick-board, skirting, window reveal lining, toys for the grandchildren, birdboxes. I really really oathe throwing it away in the skip.

 

If you consider  getting it felled and sawn, get a survey done first - it might be rotten internally. Then work out how much straight run timber you might get out of it.

Balance my somewhat gloomy, Eeyor approach with a local chippy - a drinking mate. Cheerful, gentle man-mountain. He's building his own house ...

 

"Ya've jus' clad yer ouse mate" I grin.

"Yer, got meeself sum larch, an' did it lark" he says

"Ooo djer buy it off ? I ask

"Went down 't  estate, felled meself sum larch and jus' did it"

"Wot? His nibs (Duke of Westminster) trees?"

"Yer - looks awraght dunnit ".....

"Dja dry it then ?"

He splutters  into a pint of Wainwright's  ....

" Yew fookin' self-builders - cut, milled  an' purup in 't same week "

 

Yeah, right. 🤨 But I took the point. By the book needn't ...... 

 

[Russell griffiths]

Fell it, get it cut into planks, use it for very rustic garden furniture. 

It will end up being the most expensive timber you have on site by the time you have paid to get this done. 

 

[saveasteading]

Ive been studying the local timber industry in NE Scotland. Timber is felled, cut into standard trunk lengths (wasting a lot if the trunk size is long), and stacked locally for a year.

Mills buy it to suit their market and product.

At sawing, they lose a large proportion which goes for firewood or mulch.

For stud, they can't compete with imports.

 

Timber, when sliced up, bends all over the place, as stresses redistrubute. If you want it straight, then it has to go through a fancy grading machine, with more waste.

 

Sell it to a local firewood dealer.

[ProDave]

"" and of course as we all know, part 2 of that, is you go to a timber merchant, select the nice straight lengths from the various banana shaped pieces on their racks, buy it, take it home, leave it a few days and when you pick it up to use it, it has twisted or warped.

 

 

[markc]

If the tree is suffering from ash die back i believe it has to be left on site or burned on site or can be transported but only by authorised transport and disposal contractors. 

[ToughButterCup]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

"" 

buy it, take it home, leave it a few days and when you pick it up to use it, it has twisted or warped.

...

 

unless it's stickered properly, is heartwood, knot-free and has no shakes in it. As @Russell griffiths says , it will be the most expensive wood on site.

The cost is somewhat offset by the learning (by doing) though ...

[SteamyTea]

If the trees are badly affected by Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, the new name for Chalara fungus, then you need to get it disposed of correctly.

Hanging it on an outside wall will not be a responsible way of using it.

 

[Drellingore]

Ta for all the insights, folks.

 

Apparently ash needs to be thermally modified in order to be suitable for external use. I could only find one company in the UK that does this, and they don't deal with other people's timber. So that, combined with all the reasons you folks have provided, rules out using it for cladding.

 

Maybe it could be used for some internal joinery. I'll ask our ecologists (who did the tree survey and are hooking us up with a tree surgeon) about how trees with ADB need to be handled.

 

If we find a use for it, I'll update this 'ere thread!

Also, @ToughButterCup - that is a very pretty house.