Red Cedar Cladding

missile

teneighty wrote: »

As you suspect the junction between the sloping soffit and vertical cladding is wrong.

It looks like they boarded the soffit first taking the boards right back to the wall and then fixed the vertical cladding with the soffit running across the top. This creates a route for the water tracking back along the sloping soffit to bypass the vertical cladding and penetrate the building.

All that cladding will probably have to be taken off and redone with a new joint detail, expensive job. It looks like a newish building so it's possibly a claim against the freeholder/builder/designer as a latent defect.

That is exactly what I fear. To rectify the issue properly would be a very expensive job.

To cut a long story short:
We asked builder to repair, he declined
We asked the independent architect to comment, he declined
We paid a surveyor to report on the defects
Builder did not accept surveyor's report, claimed it was lack of maintenance
We contacted NHBC and eventually with bad grace the builder carried out repairs
++++++++++
We are now beyond 10 year NHBC warranty
Our solicitor advised us that it would be a long, difficult and expensive to prove in court. With little guarantee of success I really don't want to go through that.

Jackmydad

I think I'd feel inclined to explore the possibility of doing what the others have suggested, and somehow "breaking" the route the water is taking across the soffit with some sort of "drip bar". Could possibly be done using a cherry picker for access?

At least see what the price would be for that compared to a complete "proper" strip off and redesign. Taking into account the possibility that even after adding a drip bar the whole job may still be needed.

System

wow, so the soffit is actually running over the wall head too?! that's a very poor detail for the location imo...
Since the water is tracking through the joints in the board, the only real way to solve your issue is to put a break in the boards, since you have reasonable access to the area it might not be as difficult to achieve as it could have been...
get a profile similar to the top one on here http://www.goodingalum.com/p10/c89/Aluminium-Profiles-Extrusions/Aluminium-Channel-Misc
(powder coated to match either your doors or the facia) - use it upside down!
then cut a channel in the cladding and use the flange to go over the end of your cladding, so that the water can only go down the way. From the underside all you will see is a u shaped channel.
Looks like the existing timbers could be used for fixings but it might be worth to run some noggins between to fix the channel to.
There's a clear route for water to get inside the building, over the wall head, silicone anywhere isn't going to help, you need to physically break the route.
There is slightly different issue too, having timber with water sitting in it will eventually rot the timber and I don't think you are going to be able to solve that issue given the form of the roof.

missile

I have consulted with supplier who has suggested using Elastofill. This is an acrylic based sealant rather than silicon based.

The soffit is just beyond the reach for a cherry picker. I was told the builder paid £5+K to hire scaffolding during previous repair.

missile

the_r_sole wrote: »

There is slightly different issue too, having timber with water sitting in it will eventually rot the timber and I don't think you are going to be able to solve that issue given the form of the roof.

That is my fear. It really is no big deal having some occasional water ingress, but as you point out it is the potential for damage which I cannot see that concerns me most.

I have even considered drilling a hole to facilitate drainage from the void space behind the vertical boards.

Jackmydad

I'm not any sort of expert on cherry pickers, and I know it can be down to access to site them, but you can get cherry pickers that will work up to around 50m.
I'd want to talk to a firm who were experts with access gear myself. Obviously the guys using it need the right tickets as well.
Scaffolding would be a major cost as you say.

System

The vertical cladding isn't an issue, although the silicone seal along the top should be moved to allow air flow around the cladding, it's not doing a useful job for anything
The issue is the soffit boards, they are over the top of the wall head, so anything tracking over them is coming directly into the internal wall, not through the cladding into the wall.
There is no magical sealant that will solve this problem, you need to not have a physical route for water to track onto the wall head... Is yours a window or a door, it's hard to see from the photos?

missile

As you say, the problem is caused by poor design / installation, but it would be horrendously expensive to remove and reinstate the cladding.

I was hoping to find an alternative solution. I thought a clear wood finish may repel!surface water and hence reduce the tendency for it to track down to the joint. Combine that!with an acrylic based sealer beading which could help dispel the water before it reaches the joint.

Furts

missile wrote: »

That is exactly what I fear. To rectify the issue properly would be a very expensive job.

To cut a long story short:
We asked builder to repair, he declined
We asked the independent architect to comment, he declined
We paid a surveyor to report on the defects
Builder did not accept surveyor's report, claimed it was lack of maintenance
We contacted NHBC and eventually with bad grace the builder carried out repairs
++++++++++
We are now beyond 10 year NHBC warranty
Our solicitor advised us that it would be a long, difficult and expensive to prove in court. With little guarantee of success I really don't want to go through that.

All may not be lost with NHBC. You need to establish exactly what happened here. Two year defect period? Resolution? Technical report from NHBC? What instructions issued to the builder? Who inspected the finished work?

In a nutshell NHBC involvement was meant to rectify issues and this has failed. There may be negligence/incompetence/ongoing liability here. I have successfully challenged over this - not easy but that is a deliberate ploy on the part of NHBC.

I too can see the soffit detail is wrong and likewise the vertical timber above your window is against any good practice in building. Both these items should be in your surveyors report.

System

missile wrote: »

As you say, the problem is caused by poor design / installation, but it would be horrendously expensive to remove and reinstate the cladding.

I was hoping to find an alternative solution. I thought a clear wood finish may repel!surface water and hence reduce the tendency for it to track down to the joint. Combine that!with an acrylic based sealer beading which could help dispel the water before it reaches the joint.

Sorry, my proposed fix would be done with the cladding in place, there's no need to remove and reinstate anything, it would simply be to cut through the cladding in place and slip the profile over the top of the cladding... removing the cladding and having it all redone, and redesigned with a solid detail would be the least appealing route, I was trying to take it from a practical route of doing something fairly simple to get a decent result rather than the "best" way!

If you go down the route of sealing the timber in completely, this will need painted every couple of years and any maintenance issues would put you back at square one - presumably painting it would also require a scaffold, so you have that cost every couple of years rather than once - I'm struggling to see whether there is a way to do it with no scaffold (or certainly none from the ground!) have you got any more photos of that area?

If the repairs have already been instructed by NHBC, and they haven't worked I'm not sure why it is now outside of their scope (although I find NHBC absolutely useless anyway) - I would also hazard a guess that the way this has been constructed isn't an NHBC detail or best practice...