What happens to your wooden shed or summerhouse in a hot summer?

What happens to your wooden shed or summerhouse in a hot summer?

Timber is a natural product and will expand in wet or damp conditions when it absorbs moisture. This moisture then evaporates in warm and dry conditions.

It is Spring and you have just built your lovely new shed, which you are very proud of. The shed sits proudly in the garden with its gleaming new cost of wood protector.

You visit the shed everyday, like a child with a new toy, and you are particulary pleased with the shed as it is a shed you have assembled with your own hands.

The hot weather comes so you take the bbq out of the shed as well as the garden furniture stored in the shed.


Sitting one weekend in your lovely new recliner with a glass of wine in one hand or a glass of beer in the other admiring your lovely shed, clank! you drop your glass of wine or beer as you suddenly realise a big gap in the side wall of your shed. £$%^^% you cry and run into the shed to examine it inside. You are suddenly sweating buckets. Crikey it is hot in this shed then you rush out of the shed again for some fresh air.


My lovely new shed it is ruined. Whoa hang on here, lets look at what has happened to your shed. You have taken your garden furniture out of the shed to enjoy the great weather. You mow the lawn less and less as the grass is too dry to grow. There is no need to be using your tools from the shed as it is too hot.


So you have no reason to enter your shed for a week or so. The shed windows are closed tight, the shed door is shut and it is hot outside the shed. The inside of your shed is becoming hotter and hotter, probably well over 120F when the sun is at its highest point. It is like an oven inside your shed. The moisture from the timber is rapidly evaporating. The shed timber is starting to shrink. This is actually what happens to timber. Have you ever noticed inside your home that sometimes your doors become difficult to close during the winter months, but open very easily during the summer months. This is down to the timber expanding with moisture content and contracting when the moisture content evaporates. The same thing happens to your shed.

So how do I stop this happening to my shed? When it becomes very hot, open a shed window or shed door, to help get air inside the shed, therefore keeping the inside temperature of the shed down.

This seems a strange one but it works. Put a bucket of water inside the shed so the timber takes in moisture again. This will prevent excess shrinkage of the shed timber. Most shed manufaturers kiln dry their timber before manufacture, but nevertheless on those damp drys it is nigh on impossible to prevent timbers becoming damp.

Your shed is not ruined though. The shed boards will usually expand back into place once the wet damp weather returns.

Remember it is timber, it expands and shrinks naturally, tolerances are built into the shed when manufacturing them, but sometimes the hot weather can push those tolerances over and beyond its limits.  It is not a manufacturing fault but just the way timber reacts to the British weather.