Perhaps I would never have faced a clapboard "uprising" if not by chance. It all started with the fact that, through my oversight, water got into the stove from the chimney. This led to a sharp jump in humidity in the steam room. I wiped off the water immediately and lit the stove to restore the previous microclimate.
I got away with the first two or three heating. But after a couple of weeks I began to notice that in some parts of the walls the lining was swollen.
How I was looking for a common language with clapboard
The first proven method of dealing with contingencies is to do nothing. So I did. Comrades in misfortune wrote on the bath forum that often the lining returns to its old place without outside participation. The stake is placed on the fact that after drying the tree will decrease in size and return to its previous position. To make the process go faster, I specially arranged drafts.
Unfortunately, this method did not help me. The reason is simple - drying works only when there is free space for air circulation from the inside and outside. Out of inexperience, I laid the walls in the steam room without taking this feature into account, for which I paid in the future.
Due to the fact that the wood does not dry out in the steam room, the risk of not only swelling, but also rotting of the material finally increases. The lack of space on the inside prevents moisture from leaving the lining and accelerates its destruction. Things were going to the worst - I was already thinking about starting a complete re-sheathing of the steam room. But it didn't come to that.
A neighbor with a homemade bath, who had already faced the consequences of his engineering decisions, threw me a real bath life hack. If the water does not evaporate by itself, it needs help in this matter. To do this, I removed one plank in an inconspicuous place to help air circulation.
The result was not long in coming - the excess moisture evaporated in a couple of hours. Of course, this secret method has one drawback. It needs to be repeated on an ongoing basis.
How to be smarter than me
For those who are planning to build a bath, based on my experience, I have put together a collection of my own "rake". Knowing the enemy by sight will help to avoid those hurtful mistakes that I made. The errors are:
- no ventilation gaps. Between the lining and the base (wall, ceiling, etc.), you need to leave gaps 1-2 cm. The gaps are not covered with thermal insulation. Otherwise, the material will become damp over time and overgrow with cracks;
- no "expansion gaps". Microscopic gaps remain around the entire perimeter of the cladding in 5-6 mm. These small gaps allow the lining to expand when heated without visible consequences;
- incorrect fasteners. I performed many operations during construction with clamps (special brackets). But as it turned out, when finishing wet rooms, self-tapping screws or nails are best suited. Claymers are unstable to deformation of the cladding and sudden temperature changes.