Timber cladding for garden - recommended for Irish weather or not?

dpham178

Hi,

We have a small back garden with white stoney walls which looks quite dull. I am thinking about using timber cladding for certain parts of the walls to add abit of colours and texture to them.

However I am concerned about the durability of the timber cladding in Irish weather, is it high maintenance and how to maintain its nice look? Also, which type of timber is weather resistant but not too expensive? I was looking at the red cedar one but it's very expensive.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

The Continental Op

Its fine PROVIDED you do some minimal yearly maintenance. Trouble is thats easily forgotten and good quality wood treatments are expensive.

If you are prepared to fully clean it once a year and give it a top up wood treatment every year it should look fine for a good few years. I'd use Net-Trol for cleaning and Textrol as the finish (hard woods I'd use Deks Olji D1) https://www.owatrol.ie/woodcare/cladding/ neither are cheap but are good. You can leave the treatment and only do it every 3 or more years but done yearly its no more than a wipe down to wet the surface of the wood.

Reckless Abandonment

Another option is to burn it or as the Japanese call it Shou Sugi Ban. It involves burning the wood to show off its rich colour and texture. It takes a bit of work but it looks amazing when done. Used larch timber and burnt it with a roofing torch. Turned out super. Loads of videos online how to do it

ttnov77

Larch is your best bet, not expensive as its rated as softwood but high in natural oils and preservatives similar to teak so last as hardwood. You can do charring too as previously mentioned

RainInSummer

The big problem with shou sugi ban is that the wood needs to be freshly felled. The technique was developed to speed up rebuilding and do away with the need for having to season timber. Unsurprisingly after fires had destroyed large swathes of buildings and there wasn't enough seasoned timber to be had.

Dried timber from a yard or builders providers isn't suitable. You don't have shou sugi ban at that stage, you have lightly charred timber.

There's loads of videos, but almost all miss the point entirely.

Explosive_Cornflake

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120367198#Comment_120367198

I hung some larch doors/gates about 2 years ago. They're holding up really well. I wipe them down every few months and throw a bit of danish oil on them. It only takes 20 minutes.

The Continental Op

Traditionally (I used to read a lot of very old gardening and estate management books) the advice was to burn the underground parts of fencing stakes. I also used to harvest my own fence posts so tried it as a bit of an experiment and tbh couldn't tell the difference between the ones I'd burnt and the ones that weren't as they all failed about the same time.