Thunderbugs

The western red cedar cladding has it's own natural oils that give it a 60 year lifespan, but the ultra voilet component of sunlight will degrade the colour of the wood. This is fine for the roof shingles, and it will turn a silvery colour which will help the structure settle in to it's surroundings. We don't want this to happen to the wall cladding though, especially as the north facing wall and those parts protected by overhangs will not discolour resulting in a mishmash of silver and red wood. So we've bought Osmo's natural UV protection oil to shield the cladding from the effects of ultra violet light and help maintain it's colour.

We decided to try out the UV protection oil at the weekend. Maybe it was the high humidity, or maybe it was the smell of a lovely natural oil, but very soon after starting to paint the oil onto the cladding we noticed little black flecks on the parts we'd just oiled. Weird, no sign of black flecks in the oil...and it was then we saw all the thunderbugs landing on the wet cladding, getting thoroughly stuck in the setting oil like a whole wall of prehistoric bugs in amber. There wasn't much we could do about it so we're resigned to having to sand that section of wall back and give it another coat.

We used the same oil on the front door so reckon it must've been the humid weather that brought the bugs out, so we'll just have to be careful of when we choose to oil the rest. With the final batch of cladding delivered to site today (we had a slight shortfall), we'll be leaving the oiling until it is all fixed inplace.