Best wood for porch ceiling cladding

[AliG]

Hi,

 

We need to pick a wood to clad the underside of our porch area and the underside of a balcony.

 

As it is undercover it should never get wet.

 

My wife asked for something with more of a brown colour, I am leaning to brown/grey, we don't want anything too yellow.

 

I am leaning to cedar, one thing I am not sure of is how will it weather if it never gets wet and is not exposed to direct sunlight, will it still weather but just more slowly?

 

Thanks

[Trw144]

Have you looked at the pre treated new age Gris cedar from Vincent timber. It has a pre weathered grey finish, which given yours won't get much sunlight or rain, should stay the grey colour. It's what I ve used in mine if you check out my postings.

Edited November 21, 2017 by Trw144

[lizzie]

I’m using pre treated Gris larch from Vincent Timber for my cladding to avoid the colour change. If you dont want a lot you could keep an eye on the clearance section on their website they often have some real bargains.

[AliG]

Thanks, might be a bit too grey for the wife but I sent her a picture.

 

I hadn't seen your pics, very nice. I almost bought a table from Daniel Polished Concrete also.

Edited November 21, 2017 by AliG

[Russdl]

Have you considered wood plastic composite (WPC) cladding? It comes in many different styles and colours. I don't know what the forum view is on this particular product (thread creep welcome - from my perspective!) but we are considering it for parts of our (hopefully - one day) self build as it seems that the better stuff is pretty much 'fit and forget'.

[AliG]

I did consider composite cladding, but then decided as it would never get wet I probably didn't need the extra durability.

 

So I thought I would stick to wood as it would be cheaper.

 

But now that I am looking at it, I like cedar as it looks more modern, but it seems to be at least as expensive as the composite cladding, if not more expensive.

 

It's one of the first things visitors see though, so worth spending a bit on.

[Russdl]

We were looking at this at the NEC recently and some of the cladding (as opposed to decking) looked really good, lightweight, easy to fit etc etc, so it moved towards the top of our list, but I haven't done a proper price comparison yet.

 

A bit of Googling highlighted there could be problems, but as I recall that was more to do with using WPC as decking. I'm definetely getting sucked in to the 'virtually maintenance free' bit, plus it's nice to know that all my recycled plastic bottles end up in WPC instead of landfill or the 'Big Blue'...

 

Or...

[IanR]

We were after a consistent redish-brown to part of our cladding (incl. porch ceiling) and initially thought we'd be going with cedar but were disappointed with the inconsistency of samples where pinks and yellows would be mixed in with the brown we'd expected.

 

In the end we went with Sapele (PAR) and three coats of clear UV resistant Osmo. It's a lovely deep brown, looks like a piece of fine furniture. If there's enough light in the morning when I leave I'll try to get a picture of the porch to post.

 

In the mean time, not the best picture to show the colour, but to give a flavour. Sapele is obviously the lower half, and only one coat of Osmo at this point:

 

[AliG]

Thanks for the picture, I think a bit darker than I am looking for but I wouldn't even have thought about sapele.

[Ferdinand]

 

@AliG @Russdl

 

Sapele is nice - love it for windowsills or impressive shelves. I just bought  a hunk of that for a threshold for a patio door. But personally I'm a sucker for Western Red Cedar.

 

For the "under the overhang" area, you may be surprised what is suitable if it gets relatively little weather; softwood may be fine.

 

I think you should go and look at a few under-balconies that are 20-50 years old, and see what wood they are made from. It was a popular thing to do amongst some 'modernist but human' architects from the 1950s to 1970s so there are plenty of old examples around.

 

It is quite common to just have joists continued straight through the wall to form an overhang, and that approach may be used there.

 

The Vincent Timber call looks good - currently they have Western Red Cedar and something called Red Louro on clearance.

 

Ferdinand

 

 

 

Edited November 22, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Gone West]

We have Western Red Cedar cladding and it extends up under overhangs. Although it appears it would be protected from the rain it's not the case. When it's windy the rain gets blown up much higher than expected and it's the rain that washes the colour out of the cedar more than the UV affecting it. It causes a large variation in colour.

[lizzie]

14 hours ago, AliG said:

Thanks for the picture, I think a bit darker than I am looking for but I wouldn't even have thought about sapele.

Have a look at Vastern Timber website. Lovely company, they sent me no end of samples too.

 

They do all sorts,  such as ash, oak, poplar as well as the usual cedar and larch. They do a few in thermowood too which is expensive but if its just a small area may be worth a splurge.

 

I had samples from so many including Russwood and Silva as well as Vastern and Vincent.  I was set on cedar but having had lots of different wood samples outside weathering for 6 months or more I decided against the cedar as too much colour variation for me. I ended up with Siberian Larch with Gris treatment because for me it looked so much better than the others after weathering. Personal choice as always though.

 

Liz

[IanR]

I appreciate Sapele is too dark for what you are after, but I did say I'd get a picture of the porch ceiling. This is also a better representation of the actual colour.

 

The ceiling is done with alternate narrow (94mm) and wide (144mm) boards, bevel edged and butt-jointed. The wall cladding is the same boards but board-on-board.

 

 

It was the spark's idea to recess the spots into the board, which isn't really noticeable in the pic but is a really nice effect.