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Vinyl soffit for ceiling? Tell me what I am doing wrong.

Vinyl soffit for ceiling? Tell me what I am doing wrong.


  #1  
Old 09-17-19, 08:45 AM
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Vinyl soffit for ceiling? Tell me what I am doing wrong.

I am putting a ceiling up over my screened in porch. I planned on using vinyl soffit, but it is not going as planned. The overlaps look horrible and the pieces seem to sag in the center. If it is sagging like that now I have no idea what it will look like in a few years.

I am pretty sure I am cutting the notches correctly for the overlap, but none of them look good.




Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?
 
  #2  
Old 09-17-19, 08:57 AM
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Having just gone installing soffit material on my shed with a small porch area the only thing I could suggest is rotating 90 degrees which if less than 12' would eliminating the overlap joints.

Probably means you would need to add some furring strips but that would go up easy to the rafters!
 
  #3  
Old 09-17-19, 09:05 AM
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The photos look more like vinyl siding to me rather than vinyl soffit.

In either case it is the wrong material for your roof job.
It is meant to hang from the nailer strip vertically.
It does not have the rigidity to hold itself up.

Only thing you could do is face nail it in the valleys but this also has problems.
Your roof does not look insulated and nailing it will not let it expand in the heat so it will buckle lengthwise.
Also even if you were able to match /paint the nail heads today in a couple years their color will change and it will look like crap.
 
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Old 09-17-19, 09:08 AM
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I agree, I always try to orient the soffit to avoid joints along it's length. Soffit doesn't make good overlap joints. If you want to keep the orientation pick which direction will get the most viewing then orient the overlap so the opening faces away from the most viewed side.

manden: That is soffit material. It has a very obvious and different look than siding.
 
  #5  
Old 09-17-19, 09:36 AM
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In either case it is the wrong material for your roof job.
Its the same that I used, if it's nailed/screwed every 16" it is quite stiff, my front porch is about 6' wide and it looks great, my shed porch was only 30" wide and it also looks great!
 
  #6  
Old 09-17-19, 10:39 AM
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If this is the wrong material for this job what maintenance free material could I use?
 
  #7  
Old 09-17-19, 10:52 AM
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As the others have said, it should be running the short direction, perpendicular to the way it is now. You would need to add strapping (1x4s) perpendicular to the joists to do this.

It is not the wrong material, although personally I would not use vinyl soffit because of this very fact... it sags horribly. Aluminum soffit lays a little flatter, but it sags too so either way, if you want to control the sagging, you need to fasten the soffit continuously in the ribs with white trim nails or white headed screws... roughly 24" on center, where your 1x4 strapping should be.
 
  #8  
Old 09-17-19, 12:55 PM
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Just Google ïnterior ceiling boards"and you will find lots of ideas.
 
  #9  
Old 09-17-19, 01:53 PM
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Whoever said these materials were not designed to be laid in long runs horizontally was correct. There is no way around the sagging unless I use the trim nails to tack it up. Then I will have issues with buckling.

I will look in to the ceiling boards referenced. Thanks for the insights.
 
  #10  
Old 09-17-19, 02:45 PM
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You used triple-four, which has a reveal width of 12 inches. Double-five has a reveal width of 10 inches and would not sag as much as the triple-four.
 
  #11  
Old 09-18-19, 04:53 AM
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I have vinyl soffit material all over the place on my home. A couple porches are 12' deep without trouble. The key, as it's been said, it to run the material in the other direction so you don't have seams. This also means the soffit will have support more regularly along it's length to avoid sagging. All this works out OK as long as your porch isn't deeper than the length of soffit material which is often 12' long (it's one of the reasons my porches maxed out at 12' deep).

You probably choose to run the soffit the way you did because of your rafters. First you must install furring strips perpendicular to the rafters and parallel to the house. 1"x material can be used but it can be difficult to nail into. In that case you can hang the soffit material using lathe screws. You can use 2"x (actually 1 1/2") thick material for the furring strips. You loose more ceiling height but the thicker wood is thick enough to withstand nailing better. Then if you really want to avoid sagging put your furring strips closer together. 24" or 16" might be commonly used spacing but you can go closer. A 14" or 12" spacing will provide a lot more support for the soffit to reduce sagging between fasteners. There will always be some slight bit of sag though which is unavoidable with vinyl but if installed properly it's not bad.
 
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Old 09-18-19, 05:07 AM
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The issue of orientation will not solve my problem. The porch is ~16x16, so I have the same issue regardless of direction. Overlaps. I am looking in to other materials made for this application.
 
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Old 09-18-19, 05:14 AM
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Probably the best thing you could use if you dont want to add strapping is a real wood product... something like beaded 1x4 that is tongue and groove. This product is about as thin as it gets...

https://www.homedepot.com/p/5-16-in-...E&gclsrc=aw.ds
 
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Old 09-18-19, 05:28 AM
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I have the same issue regardless of direction.
The material you have is exactly what is used for porch ceilings so dont give up yet.

How about installing something, like a ceiling beam to split the room into 2 , 3 or 4 sections which would completely eliminate any need to overlap.

Three 5 x 16, or four 4 x 16 sections would reduce waste!
 
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Old 09-18-19, 06:55 AM
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How about installing something, like a ceiling beam to split the room into 2 , 3 or 4 sections which would completely eliminate any need to overlap.
Interesting idea. It would eliminate the overlaps and I think the shorter lengths would be less likely to sag.
 
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Old 09-18-19, 09:05 AM
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Since you need a seam I would use soffit joint trim down the center of the porch. I provides a nice, neat looking straight line down the middle and there are no seams in the soffit panels. You'll have a lot of wastage of your soffit panels but I think running the trim down the center looks better. If you want to economize you can run the strip 12' off one wall.



 
  #17  
Old 09-19-19, 03:17 AM
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I would use soffit joint trim
It looks like this is the route I will be going. Two questions-

1- Am I correct in thinking the shorter the span (i.e. instead of a full 12' panel the span would be 5') the less likely to get the sagging?

2- Your picture depicts back to back j-channel. I was looking for H-channel for this thinking it would look better. I have a snag in that I bent all my own aluminum J-channel for this job. I am out of material. I wish I could find H-channel in white aluminum.
 
  #18  
Old 10-03-19, 01:23 PM
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Since you need a seam I would use soffit joint trim down the center of the porch.
I wanted to stop back and thank you for the idea with the H-Channel. It came out pretty darn good. In fact, I think I like it better than without the H-Channel.

 
  #19  
Old 10-03-19, 03:14 PM
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That looks WAY better than your first pic!

Thanks for posting pictures of the final results!
 
  #20  
Old 10-03-19, 04:47 PM
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That looks really nice! Hopefully you were able to reuse most of the original material.
 
  #21  
Old 10-04-19, 04:04 AM
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That looks really nice! Hopefully you were able to reuse most of the original material.
Absolutely. I thought I was going to have to throw away everything I had installed and buy some specialty product. Doing it this way minimized the waste. Thank you again for the idea!
 
 

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