Panel And Channel Cladding Layout and Installation (Building Resilience 2026)
In this episode, host Michael Anschel travels to a Big Dog Construction jobsite on Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick, Canada, for a winter installation of Hardie architectural panels in a panel-and-channel layout. The walkthrough covers setting a level reference line, integrating Z flashing with H, J, and outside corner metal trims, scribing tight corners, choosing 16-gauge stainless steel finish nails, planning panel layout for visual weight and contrast, and the cold-weather techniques that keep metal trims sliding cleanly onto fiber cement panels in subzero conditions.
TRANSCRIPT
Here we go again, coldest time of the year in one of the coldest parts of North America.
Here at Building Resilience, we will go to the edge of the earth for you. Uh, we are here in New Brunswick, Canada, on beautiful Grand Manan Island. Uh, in the summer, this place is full of tourists, it's quite gorgeous, and in the winter, it turns into a frigid, icy, windy hell hole.
Hardie's panel-and-channel system
And what better place than here to look at Hardie's architectural panel, which we're gonna be installing with the help of Big Dog Construction on one of their projects. Um, it's a fiber cement panel, uh, with a, a really cool linear nature inspired t- texture on the top of the panel, and we're gonna be installing it in what's called a panel-and-channel format.
You've seen us do panel-and-channel on the show before, but never quite like this. Today, we're using Hardie architectural panels in concert with Hardie architectural metal trims. We have an outside corner, an H, a J, even the, uh, legendary Z trim. Many, many products, including fiber cement, when you have a cut edge, you have to seal it, and when it's cold like this, that can be problematic.
Why the channel hides the cut edge
One of the benefits of a panel-and-channel is that that cut edge, as long as it's within a channel, does not need to be sealed. One more thing, the factory edge is already pre-primed, so when we have our Z flashing condition and we're setting this a quarter inch from the bottom, we don't have to come back and seal that edge.
Also, it's not an excuse for poor craftsmanship, but let's say that cut wasn't perfect or you've got a little bit of a ragged edge, again, same thing, that channel hides that cut and makes it look really, really nice.
Setting the level reference line
The installation process begins with establishing a level reference line, which will establish the bottom of the panels, but not all lasers are that easy to see in bright sunlight.
Can you see it there?
Not really, but I'm also half blind now too, so...
Aron eventually finds the beam, and he measures down from the soffit to gauge how consistent the space is. It turns out the bottom of the wall sheathing is pretty level, so that helps get that first piece of Z flashing properly set at the base.
Installing the first Z flashing
Kelsey: You want to let me right off that bottom?
Aron: I'm gonna get this online first. To you a little bit. A little more. Whoa. Just a hair more to you. Right there is...
Aligning the end with the upper zed.
Aron: We're there.
Kelsey: And how are you holding this? 'Cause it doesn't-
Aron: I am just flush right now with the bottom
He grabs his trusty finish nailer and nails it to the wall.
At the opposite corner, the end needs to integrate with a corner trim, so he runs the zed long and uses a scrap corner to scribe the length.
Well, I'm gonna remove the back and I'm gonna square that down to the front. Cool.
And he removes that and squares the other end down to the front. The trimmed zed goes back into place and Kelsey nails it off.
Catching a dip in the line
Yeah, right there. See it? Seems like there's a bit of a dip.
Kelsey: Where it drops down right there?
Yeah. All right. Well, you keep doing your thing. I'm gonna get a couple screws and we're just gonna fix this now.
So he switches to a prehistoric technology that's easier to see, a string line over two blocks.
Right here. Weird. Not much, but just a little bit.
Looks pretty good to me, buddy. But I'm half blind, too.
Cutting and fitting the trims
And they're either H, J, or corner trims. This will be a short section of J below a taller section of H above.
Kelsey makes sure it's plum, and she nails it. This layout calls for beginning with a full sheet horizontally. So they pick one up, carry it over, and set it in place, spacing it a quarter inch off the zed trim. Another zed goes on top of the first sheet. It's notched around the H trim, so the flange thickness won't build up.
Another sheet goes on after that. The ends are capped with a vertical H trim, and a vertical panel comes in next. A zed caps that and a smaller piece is fit above the vertical.
What's the number, Kels?
Eh, I don't know. About six, seven.
Working bottom to top
J trim is slipped on that top piece before slipping it into the other trims. She keeps a spacer handy to hold the cladding off the horizontal surface. And to me. Ah. It's, it's in there Aron taps the H trim onto the end. Nails are spaced four inches apart every 16 inches into the wall sheathing. So you're gonna need a lot of short nails, and we'll get into that later.
The rest of the process is pretty similar to the start of it. You work from one side to the other, bottom to top. Keep the bottom factory-primed edge above the Z, slip it into the H trim, nail it off, and repeat.
Why panel-and-channel layout matters
Not all claddings are the same. When we do lap siding or shake, we're really picking, uh, material and then we're just laying it off.
We pick like a four-inch lap or a seven-inch lap, and that's what it is for the rest of the thing. But with panel and channel, l- layout is really important for a variety of reasons. It actually can change your nailing patterns if you're on or off studs. In our case, we're on a rain screen, so we're just figuring we're off stud the whole time.
But the definition of the building is what you're creating with the panel and channel layout. So how you want to weight one side of the building versus another, you can put it in skinny panels, you can have some horizontal, some vertical. All of that is part of the pre-planning that goes in to creating a good panel and channel layout.
Choosing color and contrast
In addition to the layout, there's the opportunity for color, the color of the panels, the color of the trims. In this case, this is all pre-primed. You could paint it all one color. That would be boring in my opinion. Um, and you could paint the trims a contrasting color, and you could have all the panels be one or offset some of the panel colors as well.
Picking nails for a clean finish
I also wanna talk about nails and nailing patterns because it's super important. These are all installed using a 16-gauge stainless steel finish nail. We don't wanna see all those nail holes, so we want something small that can be filled in and becomes virtually invisible. The nailing pattern, if you're on a stud or off stud, changes.
In this case, because we're not sure if we're on or off stud because of the rain screen that we've put up already, we're using a four-inch nail pattern at the panel edges and in the field space 16 on center. When we come to our trims, we can put those finish nails right through the finish trim. So our Z trim, we've got nails through those.
Nailing patterns for trims and corners
Our H trims, we've got nails through those. But corners are different. Here we have our rain screen. Here we have our H trim. You can see the nail going through the panel and through the metal trim. Above it, we see our Z trim, and there again, that 16-gauge stainless steel finish nail is going through the panel and through the metal trim.
Our corners are gonna be nailed through the metal onto the wall through one side of the corner only Our panels, when we go to nail those on, we hold our na- our fasteners away from the metal so that we are not putting the nail through the panel and the metal, just through the panel only. This is super important.
When we nail on our metal corners, we nail them through one side only so that we don't run the risk of potentially deforming them by nailing on both sides. Our panels, we hold the fasteners away from the metal for a similar reason, so that as that big piece of metal expands and contracts and moves, it can float a little bit, and we don't run the risk of damaging either the panel or the corner.
Finishing the corner in subzero cold
That sh- is that flush, uh, vertically on your edge, or does that need a little tap?
And there's your answer. Floating trims with clearance at each end allow wiggle room, but corners demand a little more precision. After tapping the panel to align with the corner, they install the corner trim. You can see that it's tight, and I'm just gonna throw this out there because none of us thought about it in the moment.
If you're gonna be working in subzero weather, it might be a good idea to keep those metal trims in a warm place. That way, they'll expand and slip onto the panels a little easier. Just a little. Tap?
Yep, just give it a little tap. Little tap. Straight up. Beauty.
So the one side of the trim is floating around the panel, and the other side will be fastened.
That eliminates the potential for kinks or inconsistent movement when the metal warms up. Aron positions the corner trim plum and/or flush, hopefully both, and he nails the corner trim off as we're headed inside for supper.