Haverhill Roofers fits and repairs exterior cladding on homes and outbuildings in Fulbourn, and this page takes you through exactly what the job looks like from the first visit to the final tidy-up.
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Exterior cladding can look fine for a year or two even when it has been fitted incorrectly. Problems with ventilation gaps, wrong fixings, missed back-priming or poor detailing at junctions tend to show up gradually, not immediately. Understanding what a proper installation involves helps you judge whether a contractor is actually doing the job right, not just whether it looks tidy on the day.
We work from Haverhill and cover Fulbourn and nearby villages. Here is what the job involves, in the order it happens.
Before any prices are discussed, the wall needs looking at properly. That means checking what the wall is built from (masonry, timber frame, or a mix), whether there is existing cladding to remove, what condition the substrate is in underneath, and what is happening at every junction - windows, doors, soffits, corners, and wherever the wall meets the roof.
On a dormer or a gable, we also look at the condition of any flashings at the top of the cladding zone, because failed lead or aluminium detail above clad panels is a direct route for water ingress behind the boards. Fixing cladding over a failed flashing just hides the problem.
A survey should also check access. Some walls need scaffold; others can be done safely from a ladder or a podium. Getting access right affects cost and programme, so it needs to be established at the start, not halfway through the job.
On a repair job, only the affected sections come off. On a full re-clad, all the existing boards and battens come away. The waste is removed from site before the next stage starts.
Once the old material is off, the wall underneath is inspected again. It is not unusual to find that damp has tracked further than the visible damage suggested. Any soft or damaged plaster, render or sheathing board needs to be dealt with at this point, not covered back up.
A breather membrane is fixed to the wall face before the battens go on. This is a vapour-permeable sheet that stops liquid water getting to the wall if any does get past the cladding, while still allowing the wall to breathe. On an older installation that had no membrane, fitting one during a re-clad is worthwhile.
Battens are then fixed through the membrane into the wall, creating the ventilated cavity between the wall and the back face of the cladding boards. This cavity is not optional. Without it, any moisture that gets behind the boards has nowhere to drain and cannot evaporate. Typical batten depth for a ventilated cavity is 25mm to 50mm, depending on the cladding material and the exposure of the wall.
Battens must be treated timber. Using untreated timber behind cladding is a false economy - it is the part of the installation that is hardest to replace if it fails.
For any painted timber cladding, every board should be primed on all four faces before it is fixed to the wall. Back-priming seals the rear face and both edges of the board against moisture absorption. Boards that are only painted on the front face absorb water from behind, cup and split within a few years.
This step is easy to skip and hard to verify once the boards are up. If you are managing a cladding job yourself, ask the contractor specifically whether boards will be back-primed and check a few boards at random before they go up.
Fibre cement and composite boards do not need back-priming in the same way, but cut ends still need sealing with an end-grain sealer before they are fixed, particularly at the base of the run where water can pool.
Boards are fixed from the bottom up, starting with a starter strip or a wider base board that sets the angle for everything above. Each board overlaps the one below it by the specified amount for that profile - typically 25mm for featheredge, more for shiplap.
Fixings must be stainless steel or hot-dipped galvanised. Bright zinc-plated screws or nails rust within a couple of years and leave orange streaks down the face of the boards before eventually failing and allowing boards to work loose. For composite cladding, most manufacturers specify hidden fixing clips rather than face fixings, which gives a cleaner finish and avoids drilling through the face of the board.
Expansion gaps must be maintained at the ends of each board run, particularly for composite and fibre cement materials. Boards fitted tight against a window reveal or corner trim with no room for movement will buckle when temperatures rise.
This is where a good installation earns its money. Every junction - window surrounds, door frames, internal and external corners, the top edge where cladding meets the soffit, and any penetrations for pipes or cables - needs to be detailed so that water cannot track behind the boards.
Exterior-grade flexible sealant, purpose-made corner trims and stop beads, and correctly lapped flashings at roof abutments are all part of this. On a dormer, the lead work at the head of the cladding zone is particularly important and should be checked and renewed if it is in any doubt at all.
Poor junction detailing is the single most common cause of water ingress behind cladding, and it is often missed because it is less visible than the boards themselves.
Painted timber cladding typically goes up with a primer and one undercoat applied before fixing, and receives a finish coat once it is on the wall and all junctions are sealed. This lets the finish coat cover the sealant joints cleanly and ensures consistent coverage on the face of each board.
Stained timber can be finished before or after fixing, depending on the product. Composite and most fibre cement products come factory-finished and do not need on-site painting.
Once the cladding is finished, scaffold or access equipment comes down, offcuts and packaging are cleared from site, and the finished installation is checked against the original scope. Every junction should be sealant-finished, every board should be secure, and there should be no gaps at corners or reveals.
If you are in Fulbourn or a nearby village and you want to understand what a cladding job on your property would actually involve before you commit to anything, call us for a site visit and a clear walkthrough of the scope.
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Call any time. Calls are answered day and night and passed straight to our roofers.
