The main reason the cladding hadn’t weathered too well was down to material choice. Joinery-standard untreated softwood hadn’t stood up to weather, despite its quality. We opted for Tricoya; an Accoya sheet material with similar rot-resistant properties, that makes it ideal for this type of application.

Another area we could improve on was the fixing method. Fixed using galvanised ring shank nails, the cladding was solid enough, but when being fired through a nailgun, the galvanising is often stripped off allowing rust to develop on the nail and eventually appearing on the outer surface , cracking the paintwork. We opted for specific stainless steel fixings to prevent this happening in future.

Lastly, any exposed end grain is vulnerable to weather. We built the replacement cladding like a cabinet, carefully mitering the corners and using floating tenons were necessary to ensure perfect alignment.

Most of this was done on the ground but to ensure a perfect fit, we wanted to make the final cuts for each dormer on the  access tower. Finding space for tools, materials and ourselves on a small mobile access tower was going to be a challenge. We also wanted to achieve good accuracy in the final fit. We turned to a handy solution in the form of the Mafell KSS series of saws which proved more than capable of producing the cut quality and accuracy we needed whilst taking up minimal space on the tower.