Started External Wall Cladding

     Finally time permits me to be able to give you guys an update on the building.We have been working hard, sometimes on other things than the house, but progress has been made nevertheless. My employment has finished after a busy harvest season and suddenly things are happening at a much quicker rate. It has taken days to write down what we've done, so I will be posting the progress in installments.

     In May of last year we finished installing the windows and glass sliding door, so we moved on to putting up the external cladding. We started on the east wall as it seemed easiest. This was because it has no windows, and this means no cutting of sheets. The 6 metre width of the house matched exactly the 6 metre lengths of cladding we were provided with. It sounds very simple!

This involved first putting up a length of insulation, then screwing the bottom wall channel over the top of it. This bottom channel is what the bottom sheet of cladding sits in. The plans which the kit home gave us did not specify at exactly what height this is supposed to sit, so we just had to figure out what might be best using our own wits.

     Then we lifted the first row of cladding into the channel, and then screwed the cladding into the wall frame studs. We have been provided with tech-head screws which drill their way through the metal cladding, insulation and metal studs, so this means no predrilling holes. We did need to know where the studs were though, so we at first estimated this by looking upwards to where the studs were visible above the insulation. Sometimes this worked fine, sometimes we were a little off. The studs are around 5cm wide so there is a bit of wiggle room - as long as you don't miss the stud entirely the wall will stay on!

     We then came up with a couple of different systems to try and keep the screws lined up correctly to hit the studs, such as using the plumb bob on a string down from the drill to the screw below it, and creating our own plumb bobs from screws which have been tied to string and then wrapped in gaffa tape so they don't scratch the wall. These were attached to the top of the wall frames, and hung down to mark the studs. Halfway up this wall the studs all changed to different places, so we had to place our plumb bobs all over again. And then again for the triangle part at the very top of the wall. A lot of trouble to go to, but better than missing the studs.

     The next day of work we put up another row of insulation, and then another row of cladding. Once we put up the insulation, we had to work fairly fast to get the cladding on before it blew away in the wind. The cladding was lifted into place and then held there with clamps on the wall frames until we got the screws in. We discovered that the corrugated cladding was a lot more flexible than you might think, as it bowed in and out of the wall significantly, bent up and down the wall surprisingly, and also the corrugations changed the height of the sheet depending on how much each corrugation was pushed down. All of these factors meant that it was quite difficult to make each sheet screw on straight.

     Sometimes one screw would be slighly off and then this would completely change the tension of the sheet and put it askew. The only thing to fix that would be to try and toe it in the right direction, or just to start again with another screw hole, leaving a hole in the wall to be sealed with silicone. We discovered that it was not really feasible to quickly put a screw in the middle and each side and then come back and fill in the gaps once it was secure, as this led to too much bowing of the sheet. Instead the longer method of starting in the middle and taking turns left and right to work out to the sides stud by stud, gave much better end results. This meant moving the ladder back and forth for almost every screw, which was very tiring to move it and to climb back up and down it every time. I tried to count the rungs every time I went up and down but kept losing count when I got over 10!

     We took every due diligence for working safely with ladders, as we certainly could not afford the time or money which would be involved with an injury. The top of the ladder was chained to the wall, the ground was dug with the shovel every time we moved to a new spot to ensure it was level, and I always kept in mind a great piece of advice which I learned from one of my Rural Fire Service buddies. Ted told me whenever climbing in and out of the RFS truck 'always have three points of contact', which means that out of your two hands and two feet, only one of them isn't firmly planted at a time. It is something which I believe has saved me many times, and well worth passing on to others.

     The time taken to screw in each sheet stretched to an entire day of work, by the time we set everything up, made sure the sheet was straight, adjusted the clamps after each screw, and moved the ladder at least 10 times for each sheet. There were many times when we finished work at dusk and were unable to take a photo of our progress because it was too dark!