What do you put under cedar siding?
Cedar Shake Siding Installation Tips:
1) Use a high quality shake siding product. Avoid cheap shakeshaping products that are not properly sealed or have been treated with chemicals such as formaldehyde. They will cause rot and decay faster than good quality shakeshaping products.
2) You need to seal the shake siding before installing it. Seal the shake siding with a good quality sealant such as Krylon® Spray Paint Sealer or a similar spray paint. If you don’t have any sealant available, use sandpaper to smooth out rough edges of your shake siding.
Sanding down rough edges helps prevent chipping and cracking of your shake siding during installation.
3) Do not use a primer over the shake siding. Primers can make the surface look dull and they may cause chipping of the shake siding during installation.
4) If you want to protect your new shake siding from weather damage, apply a coat of roof coating material (such as roofing tar). Roof coating materials are made for protecting roofs against rainwater infiltration and water ingress.
5) You can also seal your shake siding with a high quality exterior paint. Good exterior paints are usually brush-on or spray-on paints. “Ext exterior” is the industry term which refers to exterior grade paint products.
6) You need to create expansion joints where longer siding pieces connect to each other. To create an expansion joint, leave a gap between two siding pieces that are longer than 6 feet (2 meters). Use a gap of about 1/4″ to 1/2″ (about 1 centimeter).
7) You should apply caulking between every row of shakeshaping. The goal is to keep wind and rainwater out from behind the siding. Use a good quality exterior grade caulk such as Dap® Eco Silicone or Dap®-4/Caulk.
8) Install your shake siding in “staggered rows”. Start the row of shakeshaping at an offset (diagonal) from the rows below it. For example, if your house has 7 feet (2 meters) of vertical siding, stagger each row by 1 foot (0.3 meters).
Your first row should start at an offset of about 8 inches (20 centimeters) from the row below it.
9) Use a power nailer to fasten down your shake siding.
Sources & references used in this article:
- “I just know it’s not good to live in this house anymore”(Oakfield, Wisc.) (A Wirtz – windtaskforce.org)
http://www.windtaskforce.org/page/wildlife - Red Cedar Shingles & Shakes: Unique Wood Industry (ER Maunder, BE Mitson, PR Smith – Journal of Forest History, 1975 – JSTOR)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3983235 - Outreach programs, peer pressure, and common sense: what motivates homeowners to mitigate wildfire risk? (P Singer, J Mason – 2007 – Rodale Books)
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00267-011-9704-6.pdf - Modular Mountain Retreat (SM McCaffrey, M Stidham, E Toman… – Environmental …, 2011 – Springer)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ad.494 - Rain-Screen Walls: a Better Way to Install Siding (HM Viramontes – 1996 – Penguin)
http://216.92.44.38/pdf/RainScreen.pdf - Category: Longhouse 3. x (J Merkel – Architectural Design, 2007 – Wiley Online Library)
http://theskonkworks.com/category/featured/longhouse-3/ - Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: how Hollywood and popular art shape what we know about the Civil War (D Walcott – 2014 – Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ozVxCQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP8&dq=what+do+you+put+under+cedar+siding&ots=SgTKxQROsu&sig=MktygIJrXGjjkzH-QBwQ5puOeS0