board and batton siding??

blaze83 · November 21, 2008, 08:01:06 AM

hi all,

thought i'd post a question to see what every one thought....so here we go.

was weighing options for the shop siding....originally was going with metal but my financial situation has changed so i'm considering sawing board and batton siding over the winter and installing it this spring.

my question is what species would work best....i have no cedar :( so that is out.
i think white oak would work, but don't really want to use the limited supply of white oak for siding. have a lot of tulip poplar, was wondering if any one has used it for siding or had any thoughts on it. i know it takes paint well for interior purposes, and it would be painted.

just was looking for input and info.....i'll need about 3500 sq ft i think to do the shop and drying barn.

thanks in advance....lot of good people here

god bless,

Steve

jdtuttle · November 21, 2008, 08:47:53 AM

Steve,
I was in the same boat a couple years ago. I installed metal on the first 3' of the wall & installed board & batten above. The bottom is always the first part to rot. I used white pine. There are still old barns 100 yrs + standing that used pine boards. If you keep as much water off as possible they will last along time.
Jim

DanG · November 21, 2008, 09:51:31 AM

I wouldn't be afraid of the Poplar, especially if you're gonna paint it. We had a member a long time ago who had built his house and barns all out of Poplar, and it seemed to be doing well. Since you're painting anyway, I'd consider doing a prime coat on both sides before putting it up, so you don't seal any moisture inside if it rains while you're putting it up. That might be overkill, but I tend to overdo things, as long as I'm just typing and someone else is actually doing the work. ;D :D :D

HOOF-ER · November 21, 2008, 10:02:59 AM

Poplar is good. IMO

zopi · November 21, 2008, 10:47:10 AM

I just did one in cypress and pine....I like the idea of doing the lower bit in metal..

the pine siding I took off the little bugger was a 100 years old or so..lapsiding, I went back up with
4/4 boards and 1/2" x 3" batten..little bugger is tight as a drum and will be there another 100 years from now.

do yourself a favor and use an airless spray rig when you paint...bloody roller was driving me nuts,
so I broke out the spray gun....and was done in an hour or so....

I'd recommend gutters as well...biggest problem with rot in the lower part of the siding is water
dripping off the roof and splashing dirt, which holds moisture and bacteria up on to the siding..gutters will keep it off.

Don K · November 21, 2008, 11:31:48 AM

Poplar would be fine as some have said. Onewithwood built a sawshed and sided it with Poplar. He has a nice long thread on here about it.

Don

Ron Wenrich · November 21, 2008, 11:36:02 AM

I redid my house with board and batten white pine. That's what was on there originally. Keep water off the bottom and you won't have any rot problems. The original stuff was to the point it wouldn't hold paint very well, and was split in places. It was 150 years old at the replacement.

The problems you will find with the poplar would involve nailing. If you're putting it up dry, you'll have problems with splitting and nailing. Real wide boards will be prone to splits. If you put it up green, you may have problems with some deep surface checking.

OneWithWood · November 21, 2008, 11:42:19 AM

Tulip Poplar or Yellow Poplar makes great siding. What Ron said about the nailing is correct. Don't nail it close to the end or it is likely to crack. Keeping the rain off will lengthen the operational life of the siding. I have 18" overhangs and the bottoms of the boards are about 12" from the ground.

blaze83 · November 21, 2008, 01:04:14 PM

thanks a lot for the info every one

looks like i'm heading to the woods to cut some poplar i was thinking about random widths on the boards from 6" to 12" and 1 1/2" or 2" battons.....need to utilize the differents size logs i'll be getting.

i'll try to remember to take some pics :D

thanks again all

Steve

scsmith42 · November 21, 2008, 01:12:58 PM

Steve, lots of good advice on this string. I have quite a few farm buildings that I've sided with B&B pine, installed green.

One comment that I'd make to your last post is to consider 3" wide battens instead of the narrower ones that you referenced. The reason why is that when you install the siding green it will shrink, and I've seen some instances where it could pop out from behind a 2" batten (wide boards).

I personally prefer 1" thick, random width siding, and 3/4" x 3" battens. I'm sure that you know to only nail one side of the board, and allow the other side to "float" under the batten. This will keep the siding from cracking as it dries.

Good luck with your project!

Scott

StorminN · November 21, 2008, 01:36:27 PM

Quote from: blaze83 on November 21, 2008, 01:04:14 PMlooks like i'm heading to the woods to cut some poplar i was thinking about random widths on the boards from 6" to 12" and 1 1/2" or 2" battons.....need to utilize the differents size logs i'll be getting.

Steve,

I recently sided a 16x24 building in random width Western red cedar boards (because it's what I had on the property) from 6" to 10" wide... and if I were to do it again, I would try to avoid 6" or 7" boards for siding, and instead use them for other work, and concentrate on wider boards for the siding... it just ends up being a lot of nailing, and IMHO it looks a little weird with a 2" batten, you only have 4" exposed between battens. I milled my boards 3/4" thick by random widths up to 10" (because I was afraid of cupping in wider widths at 3/4" thick), and played around with different sized battens, but settled on 3/4" thick by 2" wide.

One day this summer, I had a party and a bunch of folks came up and helped nail boards on, and even though I told everyone I was going to use 2" battens and therefore the boards needed to be nailed right near their edges, some of the nails are still visible because they're more than an inch from the edge... oh well. I would have liked to go with 3" wide battens, but I don't think they look right on the narrower boards... if all my boards were 8" or wider, I think I would have gone with 3" battens. This was my first b&b building and obviously a learning process for me...

-N.

beenthere · November 21, 2008, 02:16:20 PM

For B&B I prefer using screws over nails. Screws stay put, better than nails, when the shrinkage and swelling takes place in the wood. Also, screw the center of the boards (I space two about 2" apart) and let the edges be held by the battens.

Stainless or coated deck screws, if staining from the fastener is a concern.

ohsoloco · November 21, 2008, 02:47:04 PM

White pine w/ homemade stain on the house. I did random width from a little over 7" wide to 14" wide. My battens are either 2-1/2 or 2-3/4. I just got a couple scrap boards the width of my siding, and tried different width scrap battens to decide what width to mill them.

Ron Wenrich · November 21, 2008, 04:59:19 PM

When I did my house, I used 10" and wider. There just isn't enough reveal when you use a narrower board. A 6" board with a 3" batten only leaves a 3" reveal.

Larry · November 21, 2008, 05:01:46 PM

I like your house ohsoloco.

thecfarm · November 21, 2008, 05:47:50 PM

I used 10" boards and 4" batten on a horse run in.I saw it done on a building and I had to stop to ask what the sizes were.I used a few 9" boards.Can only tell from the inside.

Rancher · November 21, 2008, 08:40:25 PM

As a little change of pace here. I cut about 1,700 ft of Ponderosa beetle kill for a friends house. Almost all of the ceilings in his house were vaulted and had interesting angles. I cut it at 8" wide and just over 1/2" that he planed down to 1/2. Then ripped the boards in half for the 4" bats. Labor intensive but it sure turned out nice.

Firebass · November 21, 2008, 09:35:06 PM

I used Douglas Fir 8" Boards with 2" Baton on our cabin and I think I looks great.

I also ran some 1x8s threw the shaper and made some ship lap for a add on to my shop. I wanted to try to match the t-1-11 siding that was already there. It actually looks pretty good.

Firebass

ohsoloco · November 21, 2008, 09:37:44 PM

Thanks Larry. Best part is it was all tree service wood

That pine wouldn't have even made it into someones fireplace or stove....would've been rotting away somewhere. One of my friends was over at the house one time and I told him where I got the trees (just a couple hundred yards from his parents' house) and he said "I used to climb those trees when I was little."

Ron, you're right about the narrower boards not leaving a whole lot of reveal, but it's a nice contrast to the wide ones. Plus it's what the logs gave me, and I needed to make sure I'd have enough.

Perhaps I got a little anal when I installed it as well. A lot of the knots have little cracks that run through them, so I made sure when I put up the boards that the knot was lower on the exterior side so when rain gets on the siding it can't find a way to the other side.

treebucker · November 22, 2008, 07:20:46 AM

We've cut B&B for several barns recently. Tulip poplar and white oak were traditionally the woods of choice around here for barn siding. Many of these barns are well over 100 years old. But, due to neglect, most are falling down. You could spot the ones that had poplar siding simply by the fact the bottoms of the boards and battons were rotted up from the ground. The suggestion about using metal siding for the first few feet is the same one I give customers wanting to put in B&B.

Most B&B barns around here weren't painted. Seems both white oak and tulip poplar do well raw. It allways amazed me that tulip poplar would rot so quickly when layed on the ground but magically hold up for decades when nailed to a wall.

Tulip poplar is a good choice. One word of advice is to save your clearest logs/lumber for making the battons. You'd be surprised how much they will misbehave when there is a knot in them.

You could also consider using board-on-board in lieu of B&B. The amount of material is the same but you don't have to worry about dealing with flimsy battons.

BTW- putting Tyvek under the boards is a good idea.

Norm · November 22, 2008, 08:34:21 AM

You know I never cared for b&b siding until folks like ohsoloco started showing pics of the random width variety. It's especially neat that it was from a tree a buddy climbed in as a kid.

Unfortunately we have no pine to speak of in our area and no poplar either. I do get white oak but tend to hog it for q-sawn and beams.

blaze83 · November 22, 2008, 11:19:05 AM

Hi every one,

thanks for all the good advice and ideas along with the pictures. we had a poplar blow down in our last wind storm a couple months ago so i went and grabbed the logs yesterday. might get to cutting them today, it os Ohio State VS Mich today so i might eat chilly and watch football since it's cold out. we had 11 degrees this morning...... the siding may have to wait haha.

i've included a picture of the shop so you all can see what the project is.... I'm needing to get siding on in one area so i can mount my meter and panel.....that way i can work on my wire runs and stuff inside when the weather gets to nasty.

any way here is a couple of pics.....the entire details are in the thread i started a few weeks ago titled "how i spent my summer...."

thanks again for all the input and pictures every one....this is a great site

God bless,

Steve

rebocardo · November 22, 2008, 12:21:07 PM

I like using screws instead of nails. Gets rather expensive though.

If the wood is dried, I suggest priming all sides too.

Might be overkill, but, between the boards I use a silicon caulk. If you use a horizontal board to rest them on, I run a very thick bead there too so water and bugs do not get behind the boards.

ohsoloco · November 24, 2008, 10:57:19 AM

I used those galvanized Maze nails on my siding, the kind that are "twisted". They kinda screw themselves in as you're hammering. If they hold as well as the ones I've encountered on pallets then they'll never come off :D Haven't noticed any board pulling out yet, but mine were nice and dry when I nailed them up, and like rebocardo suggested, I stained all sides, inclding all ends after I cut them to size.

Don P helped me with a lot of questions I had about my B&B siding, unfortunately I asked him about how to treat the bottoms after I already got a few walls done. He suggested resting them on a horizontal board like rebo. just mentioned, but cutting a 45 degree angle along the top of the horizontal board, and then trimming all of the vertical boards with a 45 degree angle on the bottom to match up with the horizontal board....this will shed water and keep bugs out. We ended up cutting a couple of the old aluminum window screens into little pieces and sticking them into the gaps between the boards on the bottom...I think a lot of them fell out :-\

okie · November 24, 2008, 03:54:03 PM

Quote from: ohsoloco on November 21, 2008, 02:47:04 PM
White pine w/ homemade stain on the house. I did random width from a little over 7" wide to 14" wide. My battens are either 2-1/2 or 2-3/4. I just got a couple scrap boards the width of my siding, and tried different width scrap battens to decide what width to mill them.

ohsoloco, Would you mind telling how you made your stain? I am assuming it was more cost effective and it looks great. 8)