Why choose composite cladding?
The first and obvious reason is lack of maintenance. Composite garden buildings are effectively a “maintenance free” solution. The boards are available in various colours and just require a quick hose down or wiping down every now and then. There are few options of composite cladding available, but there is only one with a Class A2 fire rating, why is this important? Read on…..
Hardie Plank cladding looks just like wooden planks – it has a wood grain effect. But it isn’t wood at all – it is a cement fibre board. This is an inert material that doesn’t require maintenance. A bare cement board is not a nice finish for a garden room. So these Hardie Plank boards come in a wide variety of factory painted, water repellent colours. There are a total of 22 colours available, these are the most popular colours –
Hardie Plank walls – for a maintenance free garden building
Most garden rooms and garden buildings need constant maintenance over their lifetime. The most common gripe of owning an outbuilding is the painting or staining (even if they are pressure treated as this isn’t a water-proofer). But even with regular painting, the walls will look tired where exposed to the fading effect of the sun, the dirt brought down with the rain and the mud splashing back against the bottom of the building from the rain hitting the ground. Add to this the constant weather exposure through summer and winter will contribute to warping, bowing, expansion and contraction. None of this occurs with a composite garden building with Hardie Plank cladding with its 15 year guarantee against any of these common problems with timber cladding.
Relevant Building Regulations for garden rooms
There is another reason that timber cladding is not always the ideal solution. UK Building Regulations states that if the internal floor area of the building exceeds 15 sqm then it either needs to be at least one metre from any boundary, or the construction needs to be substantially of non-combustible materials. Obviously wood is definitely combustible, and therefore limits the useable area within a garden for larger outbuildings. It’s not ideal, or even possible, to install a garden room, garden cabin or even a large shed that far away from all boundaries.
Maintenance
Buildings with external wooden walls should be far enough away from a fence, hedge or wall to allow access all around the outside for future maintenance (usually around 0.5m). Whereas a compliant bvuilding can go right up to the boundary. Hardie Plank clad garden buildings do comply. there is no need for a maintenance gap because there is no maintenance to worry about.
The only true fire retardant cladding option
uPVC clad or composite garden buildings only achieve Class C or Class D (combustible) according to “EN 13501-1: Fire Classification of Construction Products and Building Elements”. Therefore these are not compliant options – only Hardie Plank is Class A2 is defined as being limited combustibility.
Hardie Plank cement fibre board cladding
This option is the only real option in a lot of cases (probably in most cases) as it is “maintenance-free”. AND it has a fire rating of A2-s1-d0. Which is the highest possible fire rating for a coloured facade/cladding product. This means it’s non-combustible AND won’t contribute to fire spread.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
- A2: Indicates the reaction to fire and behaviour of the material (as shown above).
- s1: Refers to the smoke production.
- d0: Classifies the material in relation to flaming droplets/particles.
What does the “S” relate to?
The “S” part of the classification refers to smoke emission (or release) during combustion. S1 is classified as the quantity/speed of emission as being weak. This is the highest classification available.
What does the “d” relate to?
The “D” part of the classification relates to the creation of flaming droplets when exposed to test conditions. Test data reported no flaming droplets within a 600 second test period.
Fully compliant maintenance-free garden buildings
Our range of Easibuild framed garden rooms clad with Hardie Plank achieve everything you want from a maintenance-free garden outbuilding. We offer an endless choice of design because they are all made to order. You choose the layout, specification and layout that you want! Plus, you can be build it anywhere in your garden. And in the full knowledge that it fully complies with the 2 very important regulations that you need to commonly comply with….
- No more than 2.5m high (planning permission – http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/permission/commonprojects/outbuildings/miniguide)
- If larger than 15sqm (internally) and closer than 1m to a boundary, a garden building needs to be made from substantially non-combustible materials.
- Any garden building exceeding 30sqm will need to fully comply with Building Regulations, including the base (building regulations – https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects/43/outbuildings/2)
See how we construct our maintenance-free Hardie Plank walls:
This is a step by step video of how we build our composite garden buildings with Hardie Plank –
Prices are shown in each product to upgrade to the Hardie Plank Composite cladding and Fireline plasterboard on our main garden buildings website –
