B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

[Bob Dylan]

How is this best done? We don't want to mess up the insulation cavities of the studwall by doing between-stud blocking, thus we need outside-the-sheathing horizontal furring.

How ya gonna get a drainage plane thing going with those furring strips providing dams at regular intervals?

Kerfing the furring strips sounds like a nutty and expensive thing to do.

Is there a solution? Do the gaps between the boards provide enough weep for everything?

[Lavrans]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

Cor-a-vent makes corrugated plastic furring strips- there's Cedar-vent and some others, and other brands make similar. I just can't pull up the name right now.

[S.Joisey]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

Cor-a-vent makes corrugated plastic furring strips- there's Cedar-vent and some others, and other brands make similar. I just can't pull up the name right now.

It's been posted before, I think by Bill R. If you do a search you might come up with it.

[Bill Robinson]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

Both of these:
http://www.eldoradobattens.com/

http://www.cor-a-vent.com/siding-vent-sv-3.cfm

Can be installed horizontally or vertically to allow the drainage you are looking for.

BR

[JohnCR]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

Don't you still need solid blocking in the wall between studs if you are just using some sort of plastic batten for a drain plane?

John

[David Meiland]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

John, I would think so. Using 1x furring across the wall you would get at least partially effective nailing. Without it you are going to need to screw the siding to the wall, or do what the unconcerned do and just nail all the siding to the sheathing. Sad to think about...

[JohnCR]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

I always thought the best way was to nail 2x3 horizontal to the studs at the proper spacing. Then sheath over that with ply. Faster than blocking, a bigger target to hit with no voids,a strong, straight wall and clear stud bays. Might be more complicated in seismic country.

John

[Lavrans]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

I sort of like john's idea. But- you can also set corrugated furring strips behind or in front of wood furring strips (with an angle on the top for even better drainage). Or block between studs before sheathing- although furring before sheathing would also reduce thermal bridging a little...

[Riversong]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

How is this best done?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's best done by not doing it.

Horizontal siding is far better as a primary drainage plane than any kind of vertical siding, short of wood or metal panels (which won't breathe), and its nailing requirements are consistent with vertical sidewall framing.

B&B is for a barn. Clapboards are for a house.

[Bill Robinson]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

Clapboards are for a house.

Then wouldn't you call them houseboadrs?

Bill Board R

[Riversong]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

Then wouldn't you call them houseboadrs?

Well, certainly not "houseboadrs".

From Wikipedia:

Clapboard siding got its name from the Dutch Klappen, meaning to split. It was originally split by hand from logs in a radial manner. Later, the boards were radially sawn in a mill.

In newer, cheaper [emphasis added] construction, clapboard is often imitated as "siding" made of vinyl, aluminum, or fiber cement.

This is my local clapboard mill - one of the last of the original radial saw mills.
Ward Radial-Sawn Clapboard Mill

[NW Architect]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

Just a historical note . . .
B&B DOES have a house application of yore, so the look is not just for barns. all along the Mississippi, and especially around new Orleans, at journey's end, wooden barges were taken apart and their thick boards stood up side by side to fashion a single-ply, load bearing wall. The butted edges between the boards were covered with battens.

This is the "barge board house" that evolved because is was too expensive to haul empty barges back upriver for a new load of cargo.

I've also seen the same wall construction on at least one house in Southern California.

[Riversong]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

wooden barges were taken apart and their thick boards stood up side by side to fashion a single-ply, load bearing wall. The butted edges between the boards were covered with battens.

Well, up here in the north country, farmers and framers did that one better. They took thick slabs of lumber, stood them vertically, and lapped them in two layers to make a more wind-proof and warm space. This was called plank-on-plank construction.

I had to replace some rotting sills in such a building that was originally a carriage barn attached to the main farmhouse. Unfortunately, when the farmhouse became a conference center, the carriage house became the kitchen and dining room. Later, when staffing increased, a second floor of bedrooms and baths was built atop the old carriage house and then a large PT deck added to one end of the second floor. To make the dining room more usable, two 3' x 5' picture windows were cut into the load-bearing plank-on-plank wall without headers or other structure.

When I jacked up the second floor to remove the plank wall to get at the rotted sills and joist ends, I found that the two thermopane fixed glazing units had embedded themselves 3/8" into their sills - they were load-bearing windows and their seals were still intact (in fact, I resused the windows and they remained functional for several more years). And, perhaps by the grace of God (the conference center was owned and operated by the Unitarian Universalist Society), the building stood for all those years with no structure of any kind in the load-bearing walls.

[tom struble]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

wow thats a sight Robert

can't you just shim the battens with a plywood pad at evey stud location?

[Riversong]

Re: B&B siding, fur strips, & the drainage plane

can't you just shim the battens with a plywood pad at evey stud location?

Not at all sure what you're asking. There are no battens, only planks, and there are no studs.

Or, I should say, "were", since this was a job I did in December of 1995 during a snowstorm.