outdoor glued panel durability

[RichardA]

On 2/7/2022 at 9:20 PM, wtnhighlander said:

My house has WRC siding, and those bees have turned sections of it into swiss cheese. Those bottle-style traps are 'the bees knees'!

Uh huh, I see you've been reading some 1920's books.

[danbee]

The results after 2 years:  I made two cedar panels for the roof of two solitary bee houses:  the panel joints (shingle tongue and groove) have stayed glued, however one panel warped enough that it popped off the support dowels underneath.  The panel warped because of a knot that absorbed too much water through the endgrain, so I cut that section out, added a panel and re-glued with butt joints and it's doing fine so far (now 1 year after that repair).  The bases seem fine.  A number of different tiny bees have been showing up every spring and I have changed some of the blocks to match the hole sizes they use the most.

[Tom King]

I remember a long time ago my Dad put up a Martin house on a high pole.  He had some1/2" thick Mahogany (probably true Honduran back then) left over from a boat hull repair.  I made shingles for that birdhouse roof out of the Mahogany.   Many years later, years after my Dad died and my Mom had to move in with us, we decided to sell that house and one day while I was there cleaning things up that birdhouse pole, an old creosoted light line pole, had rotted off at ground level and the bird house hit the ground.

The house was mostly rotten like the pole was, but that Mahogany roof showed little deterioration.  It had probably been up there something over 50 years.

[Coop]

Tom, good idea on the shingles. I have 5 Martin houses that I built from cypress and the tops are made from two pieces on each side due to the width. The houses raise and lower with a winch and a 1 1/2” square tubing running down the center for maintenance. They are lowered now for hurricane season and the birds have gone south for the winter. I think I’ll add cedar shingles while they’re down. They say that the same martins return every year. Hopefully they will recognize my truck if the shingles confuse them?