Sector Focus: Cladding & Shingles | 37
SAFE, GREEN AND UNIFORMLY GREY
PiveteauBois says its pre-greyed Douglas fir cladding offers environmental, aesthetic and performance benefits. Mike Jeffree reports
Key focuses for its cladding offer at leading French timber and wood products supplier PiveteauBois have been specifier and client concerns about the greying of products, use of stains and fire safety. The company is among France’s foremost specialists in Douglas fir products, with the species becoming the principal substitute in cladding for embargoed Siberian larch. “In fact, Douglas fir now accounts for 60% of technical solutions for cladding in the country,” said PiveteauBois UK and Ireland sales director Elisabeth Piveteau. “It has inherent advantages in terms of environmental credentials and technical performance. It is a very common species in the French forest, extensively planted after WWII, and stands are now mature at 60-70 years old, so it’s the ideal time to harvest. French Douglas is naturally durable and use class 3.2, with the heartwood comprising 90% of the timber the sapwood, treated for warranty purposes, only 10%.” In the past the market preference was mainly for cladding finished with opaque stains to ensure a uniform long-term appearance. But changing tastes and environmental concerns about certain finishes have seen the situation change, and today stained cladding comprises just 5% to 10% of the French market. Left in its natural form in exterior applications, the timber silvers and this of course can vary around a building exterior according to aspect, creating an uneven and many consider an unsightly appearance. The most popular and, says Piveteaubois, effective solution has been pressure- treatment using grey and brown colour impregnation.
“Our pre-greyed Douglas cladding overcomes the issue of aesthetic inconsistencies from the outset and also avoids the problem of changes in colour between installation and building handover. Over time it also develops a uniform patina. Consequently, we’re seeing its popularity growing among both architects and project owners,” said Ms Piveteau. “Additionally, it’s backed by a 10-year guarantee and requires zero maintenance.”
The pre-greyed product, she added, is also Above: Major use of Piveteaubois cladding by architects Atelier Metis. Photo: Camille Gharbi
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suited to the range of climatic conditions. That includes warm areas, where dark stains on cladding should be avoided due to the sun potentially altering the stability of the wood and stain durability. According to Gwénolé Lees, Piveteaubois’ Director of Specifications and Head of Timber Market in Construction, the company has also been working for some time on fire safety in timber facades. The outcome is technical solutions that meet Euroclass C requirements, notably for French larch.
“These are two profiles that were tested
in 2019 using Single Burning Item (SBI) tests in a laboratory certified by the FCBA French forest, wood and furniture technical institute: Mezzo cladding in 22 mm thickness and Vibrato in 45 mm thickness. Along with several other manufacturers and the IBC engineered wood construction body, we also participated in a laboratory assessment (APL) with a fire propagation LEPIR test in 2020.” “The resulting façade design features cladding with a minimum thickness of 26mm and a crossover between two levels by two deflectors of reduced thickness, only 50 mm
from the face of the façades, spaced 450 mm apart and without an air gap shutter which would increase the cost.”
In June 2025, Piveteaubois conducted further SBI tests on 10 Douglas fir cladding profiles with thicknesses from 28 to 45mm which allows them to be fire-rated Ds1-d0 in the Euroclass building materials system when mounted on a wood substrate/support. “With these profiles, the surface area
exceeded the threshold set by the EN14915 cladding standard, so it was necessary to demonstrate that they also offered better fire performance than the conventional classification for standard cladding,” said Mr Lees. “Tests were conducted to measure and characterise the fire behaviour of the products in various scenarios, both vertical and horizontal. In addition to the profile geometry, the density of the Douglas fir – higher than that of spruce – is a key factor in improving fire resistance. Now, thanks to SBI testing, we can substantiate this performance with a classification report for design offices and inspection bodies. This is also the case for our new Arioso profile.”
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