Here are a couple of pics showing the progress on the installation of the fiber-cement panels for our rainscreen facade at the Carpenter Street Residence. We will have a post soon explaining exactly what a rainscreen is and all the benefits it provides…so stay tuned.
All in all it’s going pretty smooth but is taking longer than we thought. You have to be very patient when cutting and pre-drilling the panels, taking time to measure and re-measure, along with being careful not to damage the panels before they go up. They are very durable after they are installed but need to be handled with care prior. The panels are not cheap, running about $350 a panel (or $8/sf) and take a few weeks to get, so do not want to make any mistakes. As you can see the client chose an “Olive Green” color which is a nice accent against the slate-gray colored windows and the mill-finish metal panels. Regarding the fasteners, they are ‘star head’ Stainless Steel screws and you have a choice of either a clear Stainless Steel or a color-matched fastener. I ordered a few of either kind and put them both up for the mock-up. In the end we chose the stainless, which looks great with the metal panels.
The fiber cement panels come in 4′x8′ and 4′x10′ sheets. We actually had the factory rip the panels down to the size we needed, which is 3′x6′. The reason we went with this size is two-fold: one, the 3×6 proportion worked well with the overall scale of the facade. 4×8 seemed too big but 2×4 was too small (or ‘busy’). The other reason was maximizing the waste factor. By cutting the panels down to this size we are actually able to cover the facade using a fewer number of panels than if we went with 4×8. This is mostly due to how the 2-story bay affects the panel layout. As an aside…I recommend that, if you are looking to use these panels on a project, you do NOT have the factory cut the panels down. Ironically, the edges cut by the factory are actually not as clean as the edges we cut on-site with our circular saw (with a new diamond blade).
We are using a 1/2″ thick x 3″wide composite material for the trim around the entire perimeter of the window. This strip will be placed perpendicular to the facade and create a sharp ‘frame’ around the window, leaving a 1/4″ reveal but covering the cut edges of the fiber-cement panels.
We will also be installing an wood rainscreen section (using IPE, or Brazil Walnut) at the interior portion of the metal bay. This work will begin next week.