Cavity Battens

A few people were finishing off the soffit lining today, and the rest of us made a start on doing the cavity battens.  These will form the fixing point for the wall cladding (weatherboards) that we will be attaching at a later date.  

Before attaching, we had to double check that the building wrap covered all of the appropriate areas, as this had to reach further enough to be able to sit under the battens.  

Timber used was a 18mm thickness, and our first step today was to attach around the boundary of the house (under the soffit).  This had to go hard up against the soffit (as this allows to keep the roof cavity as air tight as possible & to combat against moisture getting up into this area).  These had to be nailed on at even intervals of approximately 500mm spacings with 75mm galvanised flat heads.

Found it particularly hard to nail in the battens under the shorter eaves, as it didn't allow much swing space for the hammer (as you could possibly hit the finished fascia work that has been attached).

It is important to keep all of this area flush & the same thickness as otherwise it creates an uneven surface for attaching the weather boards on.  In some areas we had to rout out sections of the batten so it sat flush on the wall.  This was because some of the roof trusses protruded out a bit.