Category: Build Progress

At last, we can actually see the Larch cladding timber going up on our walls this week! But first, we made a couple of templates; a lap joint cutting guide to produce a 50mm wide half lap joint for two pieces running on the same row, so we could screw both “ends” of the two planks into the single upright batten.

It uses our two battery powered circular saws; one to rip across the end at 50mm deep cut and just shy of half way through the thickness (10mm out of the overall 20mm thickness) and the other saw to cut across the face at 10mm deep to complete the removal of the piece. Then we flip around the second plank (end over end; rather than edge over edge) and repeat the process using the same template. This produced two mirror image cut away ends that merges together almost seamlessly.


The second template tool were three metal plates with guidance holes drilled into them. There are three versions; one for each plank width. These helpful guides will keep our placements for the mushroom headed stainless steel screws at a regular and consistent location when fixing all the cladding planks up on the walls and their battens.

Skipping pass some external interruptions we had this week, we went to the far back left corner of the house, to the Great Room wall section, P1, to start there. The wall is 4800mm long with a large window in it so we can learn how to proceed, setup working platforms (two trestle tables joined together using two CLS 63mm planks and covered in plywood left-over pieces) and carefully see how we put up each plank in turn. The spacing between each row of cladding is achieved using a 9mm thick plywood for the bottom row against the slate ribbon and a 6mm piece of MDF to separate each row going up the wall.

We decided to start at the bottom of each wall, with the widest Larch timber (burnt to a level 3) and then followed by the 2nd row of a medium plank (with a burn level of 4 – darker) and then finally the darkest (burn level 5) plank using a narrowest plank to meet up with the window sill. We arranged it so that the joint between this row and the fourth row is just hidden by the Oak sill itself so we had to remove s small area (the upward slope) of the Larch timber and it all fitted very well.

Then we got our spreadsheet and randomised the order of the 12 planks that go between the bottom and top of the windows, to mix up the three different widths, to make it more interesting and more variations around the house. We decided that we would mark on the batten on either side of the window, the exact placement of each row so we can be reasonably assured that our last plank will align to the top of the window in a consistent manner. This in fact exactly what happened and we now have both sides of the window populated with planks spaced apart by an average of 11.5mm over 15 planks.
As we got higher and higher, we realised that we needed a better means of working and reaching up that high so we took one of our three large platforms and chopped the legs down so it provided enough height to enable us to reach up inside the eves.

We finished off the main area above the window and stopped just short of the rafters. We left the gap between each rafter exposed to see if it really needed filling or not.
Also we noticed that we could see the “pink” battens plus also the gap between the Larch planks were much more obvious higher up because we are looking upwards and able to “see” up the slope between the rows of Larch.


So we spend a couple of hours painting the top 500mm of the pink batten along the front of the house, including all under the front door porch area with black paint we had left-over and we will also close up the gap of the upper rows to reduce the impact of the joints.
The final day Saturday, was a rain washed out day so we got on with another job, fitting the filter modules and sterilising unit together, along with a submerged pump to our rain water underground tank. See Rain Water Underground Tank Brought Into Operation.
Next week, weather permitting, we will resume putting up more cladding on the walls but if disrupted by bad weather, then we will do some preparation work to produce more Oak decorative coverings for the corners of the building.

This week, we finished waterproofing our dunking trough, with two layers of thin plastic sheeting we found in the shed and then covered over with a left-over length of our roofing membrane material to provide a scratch resistant surface as we dip each plank in and out.
Then we made five spikey drain support strips, spaced apart 1.2metres so we could do every length we had from 3mtres to 5.7metres. Each strip was 1.2metres long and we used forty 100mm standard nails, hammered through the batten via pre-drilled clearance holes, spaced apart by 25mm and this would allow us to handle 39 planks at a time.

The first job was to pour in our Flame Retardant treatment .. no actually, it was to pour in a large trug of water first, about 30 litres and leave it for an hour to make sure we don’t have a leak. We can afford to lose some tap water but not our Flame Retardant Liquid which costs £1000 for three 25litre bottles!! Link to the product
But we needn’t had feared .. we had No Leaks! Phew!
So we poured in two bottles of the fire stuff and started dipping. We measured the level in the trough at the beginning and it was 42mm high for 50 litres.
We began with the widest planks first, the 150mm width and all 4 metres long.
It was not too bad a process, dip one in, rotate in the liquid to ensure a full coating and then lift out to drain and repeat.

We had started in the afternoon as the morning was spent making the spikey draining prongs. But we wanted to get all 300 planks dipped so that they could and should dry overnight before they get their second and third dunk. It was a very, very long afternoon and we finished just gone 7pm ? Phew!

But shock! Horror! We suddenly realised that our nails were corroding and leaving black lines on our nice Larch planks! Oh **** and double damn! The Fire Treatment liquid was water based and we found that the fire proofing chemical was speeding up the whole rusting process! So we needed to clean the nails, dry them off and spray them with black metal paint to protect them. That was done at 9pm! Oh Boy!
In the morning, Stephen found on the web a solution to remove rust marks from timber by using a solution of Oxalic acid to dissolve the iron oxide and he was all ready to order the necessary chemicals when mum said “look under on the shelf in the kitchen and you will find a fifty year old bottle” and apparently, it was a common laundry solution in getting rid of rust marks on clothing! So making up the required solution, we rubbed the rust marks on the timber .. and they disappeared .. to only leave a bright yellow smear over the spot!! Big Sigh!! What Now??! Roll eyes upwards!!


It must be the fire treatment chemicals doing it! Oh Boy! We took some scraps of Larch timber and dipped them into the treatment, wiped them with the rust remover to get the yellow smear and then left them outside in the sun to see if they will bleach away. We were also thinking about sanding the surface or wire brushing it or something to get rid of the rust marks etc. That would have to be done later on.

In the meantime, we resumed the dipping process, but in reverse, taking the planks from the drying pile (yes the planks were all dry!) and gave them their second dunk. By lunch time, we had done all the long narrow planks and to our frustrations, we saw that we were leaving black marks on the planks in addition to the rust marks and realised that the black paint we put on the previous night had not survived for some reason. We threw Our Hands Up In The Air!!! Arrgh! So after lunch, We replaced all the draining prongs with 90mm galvanised air-gun nails and made five replacement draining supports, but spaced apart by 30mm this time, affording us to handle 33 planks instead of the 39 before.
So, mid-afternoon, we resumed again, dipping all the remaining planks and finished nearly 7pm again!! Were We Whacked!!! Gee Wizz!

The third day of dipping, we had some good news to start off with, we saw that the yellow smear had disappeared completely! Hurray!! It seems that the yellow chemical was not very stable, at least, the test pieces we left outside in the sun had lost their yellow!! Yippee!
With a lighter heart, we got on with the final third dip, putting our third bottle of the treatment in the trough and got on with the dunking process.

We had been measuring the liquid level each day and we could see that we were using about 20mm of liquid for each dipping session and that was good. by the end of the third day, we had just a few millimetres of liquid left in the bottom of the trough, we had to wiggle the planks and flip them over several times to make sure they were fully coated.

We then vacuumed out the remaining liquid, using a fine cloth filter to remove as much of the brown particles that had come off the darker burnt timbers and we manage to rescue about 6 litres, still slightly brown colour but at least, we have some ready to coat on any timber piece we want to make sure it is fire treated.
That was the end of the third day on Thursday!

So on Friday, it was the turn of the second pile of Larch timber that is earmarked for the front of the building and didn’t require the fire treatment process and just the oil solution. We poured in two of our four bottles of decking oil into the trough and got on dipping another 300 planks (just shy of 300 actually). It was a bit more slippery! But all were dunked in oil and stacked up over near the front of the building, ready to go outside to be mounted up on the walls.

That was easy! Sigh!
The last day was spent doing a major tidy up job in the workshop, taking out the ill-fated nails, putting tools away and sweeping the whole place. We then install the Sun Shield on the corridor and lastly inspected our water tank we got on top of our garage roof. It hadn’t been inspected for several years so while we were up there, we took a look and it was all fine.
So that concludes our rather adventurous week!! Phew!

The last two weeks saw the completion of scorching all the Larch cladding timber. A total of 596 planks of varying lengths from 3metres, right up to 5.7metres and different widths of 75mm, 100mm and 125mm. They all had a position in a list that describes how much scorching each had, from level zero (not touched by any flames) to a deep burn at level 5. We eventually, after having to do running repairs and improvements to the Scorching Machine (a new Motor driver heatsink amd replacement snadpaper on the drive rollers), processed all 441 Planks that needed scorching. Our canister of Butane gas, had 19kg of gas at the start. This went down to just 2kg at the end so how about that then?!

The next task was to do a grand tidy up of the whole area, moving the scorching machine over to be stored away in a corner for emergencies, sweep up the brown “charcoal” dust that was produced by the scrubbing process, probably about good bucket load and a general sweep right across the middle of the building, another 2 buckets of mostly sand.

Then, we sorted out all the scorched planks into two main piles, one for fire treatment; these planks are destined for the back of the building nearest to the boundary and the side next to the garage too. The other main pile is earmarked for the front of the building and only going to have the single treatment of being oiled. The two piles are quite similar in size.

The last day on Saturday was spent building the basic structure of our dunking trough to apply the necessary treatments. It is a long trough nearly 6metres, 160mm wide at the bottom and the two sides gently fans outwards to a height of 100mm. Then a 4foot wide draining board was constructed all the way along one side so we can position the freshly dunked planks up on the slope and reclaim the dripping liquid and recycle it for the next planks.

Next week, we will seal the trough with plastic layers to retain the liquid and then start treating the Larch timber.