The siding panels are 3ft wide and 12ft or 16ft long. I'm planning to have them installed horizontally starting from the bottom. Can this be done as a DIY and what are the gotchas of this operation? My first concern is the expansion /contraction aspect. Residential steel siding comes with special nail holes which allow for expansion but these corrugated panels have no pre-drilled holes. From what I could see by looking at buildings with corrugated siding they seem to have no elongated holes, just screwed in. How is that being dealt with for this type of siding? And second - do I need to install furring strips to allow for ventilation? If the panels would be installed vertically, the waving in the panel would take care of that by itself, but since they are placed horizontally the ventilation won't exist unless there is some kind of spacer between the foam and the panel.

This might be a bit late for any helpful comments, but yet it is still an architecturally/aesthetically interesting problem !

I would rip furring strips from 1/2 " " Hardibacker " . Then use some foam " sill seal ", or something similar, to further isolate the metal. I would think there will be some condensation that might telegraph to the surface, sometimes, if the metal wasn't isolated from the furring strips.

The washer head fasteners are pretty inexpensive so you could use lots. If you wanted to be really bold you could even use a different color for the fasteners than the color of the siding and install them randomly ! It could end up looking like a stippled architectural detail, if you stood back far enough, when looking at it !

J-channels installed back to back with a caulk joint between could be used as expansion joints to break up long spans vertically as well as to, hopefully, complement the overall flow of the rest of the openings.

I'm just guessing, but I would think that your spans would need to be more than 20 ft., before the installation started to wave at you as you went past on a hot day !

Please post a picture if you are/were successful !

To add, Ive done some corrugated commercially on a bank recently and although it was vertical, I worked with the manufacturer for a fastening schedule and it was quite specific. No different than a pole barn really but there are areas screws should not be applied. The crew installed some, thank god not alot, off the cuff and we had to tear it off and replace due to oil canning issues. It looked terrible but after some tech advice as to where and what spacing it turned out great.

Rainscreen if going horizontal is a great idea.

Yellowcat - thanks for the ideas. I will probably won't use panels longer that 16 ft. When you say to hardibacker - you mean cut strips from a panel like this ?http://www.huwsgray.co.uk/shop/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/h/a/hardibacker.jpg Why not using wood furring strips?

Greentree - can you elaborate on what are the areas where screws should not be applied?

Pacificstart, Yes that is the stuff. I believe it has a silicone based binder, so there is nothing there that moisture or insects would like. It is usually available in 4x8 sheets. I would guess that oil canning and the gauge of the metal used would be closely related. Most of the pole barn siding material is 24 gauge at the most. What if you were to use galvanized corrugated metal concrete decking ? That stuff comes in 22-20-18-even 16 gauge, and up to 24 ' long. It shouldn't take many fasteners to keep any of those panels flat !

greentree, Do you recall what the gauge of the metal was that you installed on the bank ? Was the fastener pattern aligned vertically, horizontally, or a stepped combination of the two ? It doesn't sound like the random "stippled" look would have went over very well for a bank ! It might have looked too much like a " shotgun " pattern !

I didn't think that moisture would be an issue. If properly designed and installed water should never make it behind the siding panels.
Where I am termites don't exist - at least for now but with the all the global warming we may end up having scorpions or god knows what else in a few decades.
So if I was to think forward then yes - Hardibacker sounds like a good idea.

However, if I use wood strips I can use them to attach the panels on to - besides the rain screen and venting functionality they are meant for. The Hardibacker will be more of a spacer as it won't be able hold any weight by itself but will have the advantage of being more timeless in terms of lifespan ....

My understanding is that a 20' length of steel will move by 1/8" over a 100F temp change. If nothing else allows movement, then using the right furring/purlins allows a little roll to absorb this.

It was fabrals 1/2" corrugated in 26 gauge. Fasteners were aligned in both directions. Our guys fastened in the flat immediately behind he seam (which made sense to me as well - trying to achieve a tight lap) and that was the problem because it distorted the edge of the panel. I dont remember how many flats back we had to do, might have been just the next one back, all I know is fabral did a great job getting me in touch immediately with their guru and he gave me a fastener schedule for our application over the phone and that was that, follow it and got a great result. This was a finished panel too, bare galvanized would have really stood out from the reflection.

Shimming out the horizontal panels may not be necessary if your particular brand of ICF blocks have vertical striations that would allow any condensation to wick out the bottom. Condensation behind the panels should also not be a concern, unless your climate is prone to high humidity or large swings in temperature. Like where I live. There are some name brand " house wraps " marketed specifically for stucco that have vertical striations for allowing moisture to wick downward and out. But, I don't understand how they could work after you fill them with stucco !

jonr and greentree, thanks for the good to know information ! I would have surely fastened the panels in the wrong place myself ! For what it might be worth, if you ever install corrugated panels on a roof, especially over skip sheathing, overlap the panels by two ridges. Wind driven rain can cause a negative pressure inside the building to suck moisture past only one ridge/valley lap, but not two. I learned this the hard way .

If you are worried about condensation getting trapped between the cladding (e.g., steel, wood, fiber cement or stucco exterior siding, etc.) and the structure/sheathing, the Benjamin Obdyke rainscreen products are hard to beat. Their Slicker Classic product is essentially a synthetic mesh that holds the cladding off the structure/sheathing the desired dimension so as to create a drying air gap. Their Slicker Max product adds a synthetic fabric layer that provides additional UV exposure protection, additional compression resistance and enables it to used for stucco applications.

Yellocat - what brand of ICF are you using?

sailaqwayrb, That " Obydyke Slicker " product, would sure look a lot more professional than my scabbed on " Hardibacker " idea ! It would make flashing around openings much easier too. I wonder if it could be easily glued on ? Thanks for a good design solution.

pacificstart, I used to use " Arxx " before they went away. I don't know if it is proper to mention or endorse currently produced brand names of ICF products on this site ( ? ) ( rhymes with " projix " ). They have distributors that are the most convenient for my geographic area.

Lol :-)

I don't believe there are any restrictions on mentioning specific brands here - people do it all the time.

BTW - I am planning to use the same brand as I'm located in Vancouver and they have a plant near by.
They do seem to have these vertical striations and just found this document on their website which specifically mentions the metal siding panels and the fact that for horizontal installation no furring is required - see section 2.18.4 – STEEL PANEL SIDING from
http://logixicf.com/media/TechnicaLibrary/Installation/Install%20Guide/Install%20Guide/Exterior%20&%20Interior%20Finishes.pdf

We use a pneumatic gun to temporarily staple it in place until we can fasten the exterior cladding which holds it permanenly. Don’t worry about even hitting the ICF webs, just the EPS will adequately hold it until you install the exterior cladding. We often use it for ICF and Hardie Board builds.