Fibre Cement Cladding

[Triassic]

About half of the exterior of our Timber Frame house is covered with fibre cement cladding and as the house arrives next week I thought I’d better get on and order the cladding.. 

 

Has anyone got any experience of using fibre cement cladding, how easy is it to fit, cut, handle etc.

 

Can anyone recommend a particular manufacturer and supplier?

 

 

ps. Just had an email from a James Hardie Building Products, apparent their local stockists are B&Q and Topps Tiles. I find  it strange they don’t distribute their product through builders merchants!

[Mr Punter]

You can get the Hardie stuff through merchants.  Beware of the thicker product Linea as it is not a stock item over here.  I had to wait 4 months!  All this type of cladding is surprisingly expensive.   A friend used Cembrit plank and it was good value.  I have a Hardie blade for the circular saw and a Bosch fibre and plaster one for the jigsaw.  Non-specialist blades die quickly as the stuff acts like an abrasive.

 

Wear a dust mask and fit the saw with a vacuum.

[NSS]

We used Madley Eternit to Cedral Click ordered via Jewsons. Great system which is easy to self install (I managed to so it must be!) But you need to use a specialist diamond-tipped chop saw blade to cut it. Also, be aware that it's generally only sold in full pallets so you need to work out how much you need (we actually slightly reduced the areas clad in it from original plan and increased that covered by the thermowood) as you don't want to have to buy an additional pallet if you only need a few planks from it.

[Triassic]

Just a quick update.

 

Following the advice about we ordered samples of each. We chose the colours off the brochure, wow it’s hard to visualise what a whole wall will look like in reality and how they will contrast with the dark grey aliclad windows! This self Build game isn’t easy!