Signs Your Cedar Needs Restoring, and When It Is Too Late

Cedar gives plenty of warning before it fails, but the warnings are easy to read as normal weathering. This is how to tell the difference between cladding that needs a maintenance coat, cladding that needs restoring, and boards that are past saving.

Start by checking the right places

Cedar does not weather evenly, so an overall impression from the driveway is not much use. Look at:

• The north and west elevations, which take the most sun.
• The top of the wall and any gable, which get the most UV and the least shelter.
• The bottom two or three boards, where splashback keeps the timber wet.
• Under window sills and around joinery, where water runs and sits.
• Any face shaded by trees or in permanent shadow, where mould and lichen take hold.

The worst area sets the scope of the work, not the average.

Signs it needs a maintenance coat

These mean the coating is due but the timber is fine:

• The colour has faded, particularly on the sunny walls, but the surface is still smooth.
• Water soaks in rather than beading.
• The finish looks dry or slightly patchy.

Caught here, the job is a wash and a recoat. This is the cheapest point in the whole cycle and the reason an annual look around the house is worth the twenty minutes.

Signs it needs restoration

These mean the timber itself has begun to suffer and a recoat alone will not fix it:

• Silver-grey surface. The greying is UV degradation of the surface fibres. It is usually thin, and sound timber underneath can be brought back, but a stain applied over it will not adhere properly or look right.
• A furry or fibrous surface texture. Run a hand over it. Smooth means surface weathering. Fibrous means the surface layer has broken down.
• Black spotting or green film. Mould and lichen, common on shaded Wellington elevations. These need treating, not coating over.
• Flaking or peeling of an old film-forming coating. The existing system has failed and needs removing rather than topping up.
• Raised grain and small surface splits. Repeated wetting and drying with no protection.

Restoration typically means cleaning, treating, sanding back to sound timber, replacing the worst individual boards, then rebuilding the coating system. It is a bigger job than a recoat but it is far cheaper than recladding, and it is the point at which most cedar we see could still have been saved.

Signs a board is past saving

Individual boards, rather than the whole wall, usually reach this point first:

• Soft timber. Press firmly with a screwdriver at the bottom of the board and around fixings. If it sinks in, the timber has gone.
• Deep splits and cupping that will not close, particularly where the board has lifted at the fixings.
• Rot at the ends or where boards meet trim, which is where water sits longest.
• Visible fungal growth in the timber rather than on the surface.

These boards get replaced. Replacing a handful during a restoration is routine. If most of a wall is in that condition, the conversation becomes recladding rather than restoration, and an honest contractor will say so.

Two things that make it worse faster

Plants and garden beds against the cladding hold moisture and stop the timber drying. Cut them back and keep a clear gap.

Blocked or leaking spouting runs water down the same section of wall every time it rains, which is why rot so often appears in a vertical line. Check the spouting before blaming the timber.

When you are not sure

The distinction between weathered and failed is genuinely hard to call from the ground, and the cost difference between a recoat and a restoration is large enough to be worth getting right. We will come and look, tell you which of the three categories your cladding is in, and be straight with you if the answer is that it needs less work than you feared.

Get in touch, or read more about our cedar restoration work in Wellington.