Garden building maintenance – wood preservation tips

Maintaining wooden parts with paint and preserver

As soon as the cabin is installed, you should apply two layers of paint or oil-based preserver to the wooden components as quickly as possible. All of the wooden parts of the building, including inner and outer walls, floorboards, roof boards, door frames, window frames, and so on, should be treated with wood preservative. After the first treatment has been completed, this process should be repeated regularly according to the guidance of the maintenance manual for your product – usually every five years. If you fail to follow these maintenance guidelines, your anti-rot warranty will become void.

Exterior treatment should be carried out only in dry conditions – never apply exterior paint or preservative in damp or wet weather.

Tightening the storm braces

Gardenhouse Ireland products are equipped with metal rods called storm braces, which are inserted through the entire wall after being erected. The rods should be affixed from above with a washer and nut and hand-tightened from the bottom. This should be done regularly – every two months in the first year and not less than once every four months afterwards.

Please only ever use a spanner if you cannot loosen the nut by hand due to rust. You can use a spanner to loosen the nut, but the tightening should ideally always be done by hand.

Allowing the wood to settle

The logs that form the walls should never be mechanically fixed together by screws or any other forms of fixing. Tongue-and-groove milled logs are designed to preserve the integrity of the structure. Suppose you are planning on installing insulation or drywalling. In that case, you should use floating lathes with a tolerance of at least 7cm to allow the wood to expand, contract, and settle.

Please note that wood is a natural construction material. Knots of minor cracks in wooden components are totally natural and are not a sign of poor product quality. They do not compromise the integrity or performance of your product and are not considered defects.

If you choose not to insulate the floor of your cabin and do not install a heating system, please note that your floorboards may develop gaps that may need adjusting in future.

Making sure doors and windows are watertight

Although most Gardenhouse Ireland products come with rubber door and window seals as standard, some products (mainly basic sheds) do not include door and window seals. This means that these doors and windows may potentially suffer some leakage during extreme weather conditions. This is not a sign of poor product quality.

Suppose you have doors and windows that have been provided without rubber sealing. In that case, we advise you to add silicone or rubber sealant behind the architraves. This is considered part of your basic maintenance regime. Gardenhouse Ireland will deliver your building without sealant unless you ask for it specifically.

If your product comes with door and window models with standard rubber sealant, extra sealing won’t be necessary.

Adjusting the doors and windows

Doors and windows with wooden frames may develop misalignment when opening and closing due to the natural settlement of the wooden frames. To ensure they function correctly, please take time to adjust them accordingly.

When installing your product you may notice that the openings for doors and windows are bigger than the items themselves. This, once again, is necessary for the initial settling process. If you’d like to fill the gaps left behind the door and window frame fixing boards with expanding foam or another insulating agent, please do not do this during the first two years after installation. If you still feel that it is necessary once the garden house building has settled, it may be carried out afterwards.