How Do Climate-Shield Rain Screen Corners Perform?

Written by Chris Nolan on Tue, Feb 13, 2018 @ 06:02 AM

When architects discuss their preferences for outside corners, we often hear, “We like the clean look of a mitered wood outside corner”. Builders and construction professionals are often more concerned with installation and performance. The concern with a mitered wood rain screen outside corner is that wood moves…and the end grain is the most vulnerable area of a wood siding board. Getting the end of the siding board to perform well over time is a challenge. Here are your best wood rain screen corner options.

Field mitered outside corners are very labor intensive and may not perform well over time. It’s also difficult to make a field mitered outside corner using a hidden fastener. Even when using the best design and building techniques, these joints receive a lot of abuse from nature over extended periods of time and are likely to require repair and maintenance after prolonged exposure to the elements.

Climate-Shield® has developed a long-term solution for horizontal outside corners with their rain screen system. Simply put, the pre-fabricated Climate-Shield outside corners are the best rain screen corners for horizontal siding. We tested several corner assembly joints for over 3 years with great results.

To make the ‘torture test’ even tougher, we took unfinished hardwood corners with no UV protection and subjected them to full day, unshaded sun exposure. (That's like going to the beach for the first time of the year without suntan lotion.) Because this testing was done in New England, you can be certain these joints also received plenty of other punishing weather. Lots of rain and wet-dry-wet exposure cycles. Plenty of snow and ice for freeze to thaw to freeze conditions. After all this cruel and unusual punishment, here's what happened:

What We Learned About the Climate-Shield Horizontal Outside Corner:

As expected, the hardwood siding aged to a silvery gray patina
A small amount of surface checking has developed through the seasoning process
The corner joints have held together tightly throughout the entire seasoning process over a 8+ year time frame
The end grains of the wood are still protected
The mitered end grains show a bare minimum amount of cupping and movement
The corner joint is still tight and strong and expected to remain strong and tight for many years

The Climate-Shield pre-fabricated corner system not only looks beautiful, it performs exceptionally well- even in tough climates. It assembles in under in a minute on site, saving construction time and labor costs.