It’s been a big week – the plumbers turned up and started cladding on Wednesday! Fantastic – we should absolutely be at lockup by Xmas! And we installed the slab for the backup generator and the poles for the automatic gate system.
I can’t believe I’m excited by that. At the beginning of the year, we thought we’d be getting the keys….
Did the scatch test with the plumber on the Nexteel and its arguable whether its any better than colorbond – didn’t do so well on the real sheets rather than the sample, easy to scratch. Oh well, it certainly isn’t worse.
Most of the sheeting is still covered in plastic, so looks a lot like nightsky, but the few sheets where the plastic is peeling off or been mostly removed, the Nexteel looks great – its soft, with very potentially a hint of grey when up against the colorbond. By itself it looks black. (The cladding in the garage photo is covered in plastic – very reflective).
The satin/matt finish is excellent. Long flat lengths of steel can be subject to “oil canning” or distortions/waviness in the sheets. We had one panel where there appeared to be a real ripple around one of the windows at the front of the house – it looked terrible with the sunlight reflecting off the shiny plastic coating. A huge defect. We stripped off the plastic, and it just disappeared.
A key learning – if using flat ribbed steel sheeting for cladding, definitely select matt or satin finish. It’s much more forgiving. So glad we did.
Still worried about the mix of the nexteel with colorbond flashings and garage door, time will tell….
Off Grid Living - Building the Dream 