Customer is talking about building a screen porch on an existing patio slab. Patio is 25 ft dia circle, one row of soldier course brick perimeter with 12″ saltillo tile field. House is two story, mostly brick, some wood siding in the rear, so they are thinkig about siding for the enclosure half walls, with screens above, and shingle roof with skylights. two options at this point: segmented straight walls, or curved walls. Leaning toward curved. Question: can I install hardie lap siding on a 25 ft dia curve? Considereing how much the dam stuff droops if you pick it up flat, I suspect it’s possible. I would build the walls thick enough with a wide sill/cap such that the windows (future) and screens could be about 3 ft wide.
Replies
Can't help you with the radius. If it is possible to bend it that much, I think getting the butt joints to lie down in a fair curve will be pretty exciting. If I've understood your description correctly, the edge of that patio sounds like a pretty casual foundation for an occupied structure.
Can you leave the inside unfinished until you side it so that you can put solid blocking at the butt joints ? Have you considered Hardieshingles ?
carpenter in transition
>can I install hardie lap siding on a 25 ft dia curve?
No. At least not their smooth lap siding. I'd have to see a side image of Colonial lap siding to know about that. The answer is a mathematical one rather than a product one. With smooth lap siding, the product does not sit flush against the sheathing, but rather contacts it at the top and then rests at it's bottom against the piece installed below it. So it's at a slight angle relative to the wall. As you curve this, it won't stay horizontal. If you start a piece in the middle, it will dip towards each side. Only your starter piece will hold a horizontal line.
If the colonial provides a true half-lap, rather than being held away from the sheathing by the piece below, then at least in theory it would hold the horizontal line. You'd need that wall to be really, really plumb though.
Can't tell you if it'd take the bend or not, but I'd be most concerned about the ends where two boards butt. It might be hard to hold them to the curve.
Good point. I forgot about that.
That reminds me of the story I read once about the dome builders who hauled a truckload of t-lock shingles up the mountain, discovered that t-lock shingles will make cylinders but not spheres, and hauled them back down the mountain.
Folks, if you want to know how to build a curved house, ask a guy who builds curved houses.
Great answer...not what I wanted to hear, but the truth. I had planned on having some type of vertical element every 12 ft so that the ends of the siding would have something to die into and be fastened down, but I guess that's not an issue now. Looks like I'll have to recommend a segmented circle. Could use stucco, but there's no other stucco on the property...it's a brick & siding exterior.
But there's no other round structure on the property either..
Excellence is its own reward!
Personally, I like the shingle idea. They go up well on radiused walls and can break the monotony of horizontal siding. Of course, without seeing the place, maybe I'm off base. But I'm biased toward curves and shingles when appropriate.Jules Quaver for President 2004
elcid.. yes you could use hardie plank .. if you wanted say a 5" exposure , you'd have to use an 8" plank and rip the curve into each piece so when it applied as a tilted cylinder it will have a level bottom... lot's of work.
red cedar shingles love curves...here's a 25' radius ...
You must think I'm as dumb as I look...ripping EACH piece of siding...that would cost a fortune in saw blades and time...thnaks anyway. :)
Piff...the existing slab is round.
I think yoiu missed my point. You had said you thought that since no other siding this type was already on the house, it might not be right.
I;m suggesting that since the rest of the house is square and straight but the round addition is different, the siding on it SHOULD be different too, to set it off more..
Excellence is its own reward!
Nope, didn't miss that point, just didn't respond properly. The front and sides of the house are brick, most of the back is wood lap siding.
I'm sorry Piff, I sort of snapped back with an incomplete answer. Or whatever. I've got about a dozen irons in the fire, andit feels like my wheels are spinning. Customer asked for a proposal, and they had little to offer as far as details...that's both good and bad. I'm trying to come up with something that I think will look appropriate and at the same time be relatively easy (or at least practical) to build. I think now that I'll propose a segmented circle with hardie lap siding. At least that's a starting point, and I'll see how many changes they want to make.
dumb, no.... there are lot's of houses with round wall sections that have horizontal siding.. all of the clapboards are ripped to the correct curve..
if i had a customer who wanted that effect in FC, that's exactly what i'd do.. and it wouldn't be a big deal.. i'd set up a jig, hook up my makita fiber cement saw to my fein auto-vac.. and have at it..
i'd get well paid for it too..
naturally i'd point out tho the customer that a more traditional system would be red cedar shingles..
the example i showed was a 50' diameter in red cedar..
i've done some 14' diameter in red cedar also.. they were more formal that the example
Shingle siding is rare in south Texas, except at lake houses, and lakes are rare here also. Since I don't have the makita saw or the Fein vac, and I'm not sure the customer would want to pay the premium that is certainly deserved, I'll look at another solution.
How do you determine the amount of material to remove from the siding?
I would tack it up and squirt a little laser line on it.
I went out today to measure a window replacement job. It turned out to have interesting siding that I've never seen before. It made me think oif this situation.
It is clear vertical fir 1x4 T&G on a house built in about '72 and has held up well..
Excellence is its own reward!
That looks cold! We had a light dusting of snow here last night...lasted about an hour or so, although a little more up in the hill country they had an inch or so.
Vertical siding might be an option.
It had warmed up to about 20°F when I shot the picture. Supposed to be below zero again tonight.
When I went inside to check things from in there, it was colder in the house than out(vacant for the winter) and I had taken my boots off to protect the floor so my feet were glaad to be leaving by time I was done..
Excellence is its own reward!
like piffen said.. trial & error.. you can figure it mathematically.. but really, you either tack the piece up and scribe a level line on it with a laser, or you cut a pattern out of luan ...once you have the curve you can transfer it..
here's a twin round front victorian we built in '85.. the flanking round rooms are 14' in diameter.. there are also some curves in the 2d floor balconey... and the soffits are all beadboard
Great shots, Mike. Did you post them before or have they been published somewhere? Face looks familiar.
BTW, did I say trial and error? I figured a laser line would give a pretty good pattern on the first shot..
Excellence is its own reward!
yes , it would... ... but, that would give you the bottom cut.. i'd bet you have to make the top to the same curve to get it to lie right.. which will just slightly alter the pattern.. so maybe one more set up to get the right pattern..
as to the face .. hell, you know me.. i just keep recycling the same olde pics..
they're always new to someone, hah, hah, hah
OK, I hadn't thunk this all thru.
to be accurate, would the top cut be parrallel in pattern to the bottom or slightly different radius?
I'm supposing that it's different in theory but not for practical purposes on this large a curved wall. Maybe more critical on a wall with a six to eight foot radius?.
Excellence is its own reward!
well , suppose we wanted a 5" exposure.. so, we'd need a 6" to 6.5" finished clap.. well we'd have to cut it out of an 8" at least..
when you bend it the top won't lay in.. so you tack it up.. shoot the top cut and the bottom cut with the laser.. take it down .. cut it.. then tack it up .. now it 'll lay down close enough so you can get the final marks with the laser..
take it down, and cut your pattern.. should be good to go.. unless of course it takes three shots
You realize my "No" meant "No, not without a big pain in the butt process whereby you determine the curve to be applied to each board and then cut it, and then, since it's fiber-cement, re-prime each edge, and use up a buncha blades, and ..." :) On second thought, maybe I did mean "No." Ha ha ha.
Nice stuff, Mike! What is the shingle detail called at the roof edge?Jake Gulick
[email protected]
CarriageHouse Design
Black Rock, CT
jake... i don't know what it's called... that one was a red cedar roof edge board, and the gable end was red cedar rake shingles 5" wide at 5" exposureMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Here's a picture of the back of the house. hard to tell, but there are two round slabs in place...one is 25 ft dia, the other is 9 ft dia. The existing trellis is flat and of course very porous. Idea is to remove the exising trellis and build a screened & shingled room. Reason is that they have a new baby and two dogs...the dogs make the patio unusable, and they want a little non-dog space for the baby to play. one dog is an adult golden retriever, other is a Weimaraner (sp) puppy...they're chewing everything in sight...look at the paw prints half way up the wall by the light fixture.
Do it right, or do it twice.
Edited 10/16/2003 8:21:14 PM ET by ELCID72
Why don't you use the brick for the round part? There is already brick on the house, and I think that would look better on that shape than horizontal siding.
Budget.Do it right, or do it twice.
Bricks are cheap.
It's not that hard to scribe the siding around the curve.( As a boatbuilder would do for every plank, and on a continuous taper too!) There are lots of homes done this way from the 1850's. Certainly we are every bit as good as those old timers were!