Thread: What causes weatherboard nails to pop out like this??

cheeky intelligent termites ? pushing them out of the way ?

If there was a pattern to location, I'd suggest a big magnet somewhere.

On my front veranda the floor boards have a similar problem. The house is something like a hundred years old, with the nails going into hardwood bearers. And they keep popping up. We all clip our toes on them.

Your problems interesting. Are studs in your house softwood ?

Nails can loose there grip sometimes timber know longer holds tight.
It maybe the boards are expanding contracting a little
And slow walking the nails out basically.
I've seen this a bit in my handy man business in Melbourne
It's all I can think of I could be wrong tho lol.

As said above it is simply the changes in weather and the contraction and expansion that comes with it, use one of the various "grip" type nails to
reduce this occuring

Originally Posted by Simplicity

It maybe the boards are expanding contracting a little
And slow walking the nails out basically.

At a guess I'd say that too.

so…something like
wet weather - > board grabs the nail…..then the warp of the timber pulls it out a touch. The fibres that were sprung in tension around the nail (from when it was being hammered in) release at the tip of the nail (in the stud) blocking the nail from going back in.
dry weather -> board releases the nail…warp goes out of board…but nail doesn't move because the fibres behind the nail in the stud have closed in the hole.

And just keeps going on and on like that for years. And when it finally gives you the , belting it back in, it only gets worse because the force damages the fibres further.

Can't believe I'm writing about a nail at this time.

All good suggestions - expansion/contraction of the wood seems like the most plausible cause, & moisture cycles the most likely culprit. Funny that the nail above the door, which is better protected than the walls facing the weather, had some of the most stuck-out nails. But I guess it isn't much protected from atmospheric moisture changes in a carport.

Jake, don't feel bad about writing about nails - maybe they aren't a major concern to furniture-makers, but they are pretty important items in the grand scheme of things (ask your toes! ). The frame of the house is softwood, which might have some bearing on it. Other weatherboarded houses I've lived in in various parts of the country were framed with hardwood, & none had this problem as far as I can recall.

China, the nails used are all galvanised, which are supposed to have good withdrawal resistance (they are certainly harder to extract than a regular smooth nail when you mis-hit or mis-place them!). But I don't think I'm going to extract all the nails on the house & replace them with the glue-coated type. I'm just banging the ones that are sticking out back in an extra 6 or so mm, and filling the hole with putty, & ignoring the ones that haven't moved. The next time the house needs painting, it won't be me wielding the brush!

Cheers,

That will happen sometimes if the frame is hardwood and still a bit green when it was first nailed.

Good Morning Ian

We had the same problem with nails popping out on a weatherboard extension, perhaps 50 years old, with both weatherboards and wall studs of Tas Oak. My four solutions were:

PUNCH them back in. Nails popped back out quite quickly.

GLUE them in. Removed nails, dipped them in Tightbond and hammered them back. Lasted a little longer, then popped back out.

SCREWS - replaced two nails with screws. Dismally failed compatibility test with SWMBO.

FINAL SOLUTION. Remove nails and replace with galvanised nails about three gauges thicker. This has worked so far.

My guess as to the cause was a ratcheting effect from weatherboards expanding and contracting with moisture .... or it might just be contrary and hornery nails!



Fair Winds

Graeme

Remember in the past most houses where framed in green timber......well at least timber we would not call dry.

Plain steel nails where used......a very short time after the boards where nailed up, corrosion did its job and the nails rusted in place.....some of these nails can be very hard to remove I can tell you..particularly if they where driven into green hardwood that has subsiquently dried.

The use of seasoned timber and plated nails may not be all that it is cracked up to be....AND some of the framing timber used these days is pretty damn soft, you could probably push the nails into it with ya thumb.

If the boards are harder timber than the frame..that would easily explain the boards jacking the nails out.

cheers

Meh. Personally I suspect it's mice. Mice with tiny little hammers. Letting you know that those nails are TOO LONG and protrude through into their halls - aka the wall cavity - where they constantly trip over them.

Those creaks'n'groans you hear at night? The house settling? WRONG! It's the tink tink tink of those li'l mousie hammers...

Ian, this one rang a bell well back in the recesses of my fuddled mind. Then I remembered! Back when I was an apprentice , I can remember working on an extension to a weatherboard house. One of the tasks was to redrive nails that had come part way out in the original boards. The boss referred to it as "sighing," a term I had never heard of before or since. He explained that it usually occured on the weather side of the house and usually effected tongue and groove boards more than chamfer boards. But heavily painted chamfer boards could do it too. He reckoned air pressure through heating, or wind in the wall was the cause. Would that scenario fit your situation?

Originally Posted by rustynail

Ian, this one rang a bell well back in the recesses of my fuddled mind. Then I remembered! Back when I was an apprentice , I can remember working on an extension to a weatherboard house. One of the tasks was to redrive nails that had come part way out in the original boards. The boss referred to it as "sighing," a term I had never heard of before or since. He explained that it usually occured on the weather side of the house and usually effected tongue and groove boards more than chamfer boards. But heavily painted chamfer boards could do it too. He reckoned air pressure through heating, or wind in the wall was the cause. Would that scenario fit your situation?

Partly, Rn. As it happens, the weatherboarded area is mostly on the weather side (it's one of those split-personality houses with a front of brick veneer. The bricks cover most of the lee side. The walls seem to be well-wrapped between studs & WBs, which should minimise wind penetration.

I thought it must be connected with annual moisture/temperature changes in the wood, as others have suggested. It's easy enough to imagine the wood shrinking around a nail and squeezing it out a bit like squeezing a splinter out of your finger. I would have expected it to be more common on the weather side of the house, where the moisture cycle would be a bit more extreme, but seeing those nails sticking out so far on the lee side as well kind of weakened my hypothesis. I also wondered if it is something peculiar to pine studs & weatherboards, but you & others say it happens with all-hardwood walls, too. I can't remember what you call the type of WB on our house, they are the type that are not tapered, but scalloped on the top to fit under a rebate on the bottom of the board above. They've been around for many generations, so that didn't seem to be a factor. I was also surprised that it's happening with galv nails, which are supposed to hang in better than plain bullet-heads.

One other factor I forgot to mention is that this house moves quite a bit, too. It sits on a poured footing at the front (the bricked side) and 100 x 100 steel posts elsewhere, which get to be pretty tall due to the slope we're on. And although it stays pretty dry underneath, the soil here is very lively, so there is regular slight movement. This is evidenced by doors that decide to stick every few months. By the time the boss gets around to complaining, the season turns & they work freely again, so I decide I'll do it later. Of course, after 8 years, we still have sticking doors, don't we?

Cheers,

Originally Posted by Skew ChiDAMN!!

Meh. Personally I suspect it's mice. Mice with tiny little hammers....

Mice, eh Skew? One thought I had was that it might be super borers, head-butting the nails out of their way......

Ian, Thats interesting, being on piers. The house i was referring to was the same. Had a long steep slope. Therear of the house was on tall piers about 1.8m high. The "sighing" boards were on the opposite end. The walls were also sarked and the weatherboards started below bottom of bearer, as did the sarking. As I remember ,the bottom edge of the sarking was very frayed on the wall in question. The joists were end on under this wall. I guess that could allow the wind between sarking and boards. Just a thought.

Originally Posted by rustynail

... As I remember ,the bottom edge of the sarking was very frayed on the wall in question. The joists were end on under this wall. I guess that could allow the wind between sarking and boards. Just a thought.

Yep, the layout of our house is very similar to what you described, even to the joists pointing into the wind, excpt that the sarking doesn't look frayed in my case, it's neatly trimmed along the inside edge of the bottom board. There shouldn't be much wind penetration between WBs & sarking, but there are gaps between studs, where it can penetrate into the wall cavity itself, so that may be a factor, alright...

Cheers,