Covering Brickwall with wood - Horizontally

W

weegieavlover

Hi All,

I am considering covering a garden wall - 1.5m high by about 8-10m long - in wood. When we did our back garden up we pointed the wall and removed the green algie/fungus and then repainted it white. However that was about 2 or 3 years ago and each year the algie/fungus keeps coming back and just annoys us. I think the reason is our side of the wall is great, however my neighbour has not done anything with there side and have loads of ivy and other climbing type plants covering their side so you cannot get anywhere near it to inspect it never mind repoint it. On top of it would mean cutting back all of this and that is something they (wife in particular) would be against, so my next option was to clad the all in wood.

So my thought was to do it a bit like flooring or brick work, where the joints are all randomly staggered and the wood would run horizontally across the wall rather than more traditionally up and down.

My concern when doing this would be gaps developing either in the vertical or horizontal joins of the wood. I seen a video on a ways to prevent some issues arising with the wood.
To prevent cupping - run 2 circular saw cuts about 1/2 the depth the wood along the length of the wood.
To prevent the wood from parting (at least on the vertical joins - use biscuits to join the wood together.

Now these seem like legitimate ideas and solutions however they were for a wooden wall that was internal and in the US and therefore not subject to the same weather conditions you get in Scotland and obviously my wall would be outside and open to the elements.

Just curious if anyone has any advice on this and how stupid an idea it is to do instead of the more traditional options of running the wood across the wall vertically or using featherboard instead.

Thanks
Col
 
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imho it's a daft idea as the growth will just grow on the timber

but you could fix batons on the wall and add removable panels that you could pressure wash and treat
 
Ahh I had planned on putting battons on the wall at around 400mm spacings and then attaching the fence panels to that. I never mentioned it as I thought that was a given, apologies for that.

But you think the expansion and contraction would be too much?
 
I tend to think that any algae or moss will grow due to lack of sunlight.
I doubt it's anything to do with the other side of the wall being covered in plants.

My back garden is south facing but that means the front is north facing. My front lawn is mossy and snow takes ages to melt because of the shadow of the house

Can you pressure wash the wall? Use a detergent that kills lichen?

Covering it in wood will just end up with green wood.
You can make the panels removable so you can pressure wash and paint them but it's a lot of work?
 
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There is no way your expansion method will work its far too damp here. You will need to just joint them as close as you like but bare in mind they will shrink and swell with the weather.

Try and get timber that has dried out a little, freshly treated timber will be swollen and never get bigger but will get smaller. I have put up fences with 3mm gaps which have opened up to almost 10mm the following summer.

Hardwoods will be less prone to as much swelling and shrinking but if you dont want gaps you will need profiled cladding like shiplap which will accomodate movement but not show gaps.
 

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