In British usage, weatherboarding is the cladding or ‘siding’ of a house consisting of long thin boards that overlap one another horizontally on the outside of the wall. They are of rectangular section with parallel sides, as distinct to North American riven clapboards of triangular or feather-edged section, where the upper edge is the thinner one. The term cladding has the following meanings: Regarding optical fiber in telecommunication, cladding is one or more layers of material of lower refractive index, in intimate contact with a core material of higher refractive index. ... In geometry, a rectangle is defined as a quadrilateral polygon in which all four angles are right angles. ... Section can be: A cross section (in the common sense or the physics sense) In mathematics: A conic section A section of a fiber bundle or sheaf A Caesarean section In UK law, Section 28 In the fictional Star Trek universe, Section 31 A military unit A section (land) is... Clapboard, also known as bevel siding or lap siding (with regional variants as to the exact definitions of these terms), is a board used typically for exterior horizontal siding that has one edge thicker than the other and where the board above laps over the one below. ... A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a two-dimensional figure with three vertices and three sides which are straight line segments. ...

It is requisite, however, that the lower part of a wall covered with weatherboard remain free of the cladding to avoid dampness caused by air not circulating the substructure near ground level. Especially watermills were made of brick up to the first floor, and in windmills upper storeys were often timber-framed and only the caps were weatherboarded. Watermill of Braine-le-Château, Belgium (XII th century. ... Pitstone Windmill, believed to be the oldest windmill in the British Isles A windmill is an engine powered by the energy of wind to mill grain, often contained in a large building as in traditional post mills, smock mills and tower mills. ... A cap is a form of headgear. ...

In modern practice, weatherboards may consist of PVC boards, or other man-made materials PVC may refer to the following: The chemical compound polyvinyl chloride Irregular heartbeat: premature ventricular contraction In frame relay, ATM and X.25 a permanent virtual circuit This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Weatherboards were often nailed on to existing timber framing but modern claddings are more often attached to load-bearing frames separate from the brick structure underneath. Timber framing is the modern term for the traditional half-timbered construction in which timber provides a visible skeletal frame that supports the whole building. ...

Weatherboarding used to be tarred or painted black, sometimes white, but even in modern weatherboarding black seems to be preferred.

Weatherboard houses may be found in most parts of the British Isles, and the style may be part of all types of traditional building, from cottages to windmills, shops to workshops, as well as many others. It seems, however, it is in caps of windmills that weatherboarding predominates.