Design & Specification Guides

These guides turn a material preference into a buildable specification: how a panel is priced, installed, and expected to perform, not only how it looks. The parent map is the metal wall coverings guide. The readers are architects, specifiers, and contractors.

These pages distinguish three layers on purpose: general material behaviour, product-specific properties, and matters that require an engineer or local code review. The Whole Building Design Guide metal panel wall systems article is useful because it keeps the wall in that larger unit.

The six guides

Metal cladding cost: why the installed number moves with gauge, finish, system type, access equipment and labour. It will not issue a quote and it will not publish city price lists.

Metal wall panel installation: substrates, clips, flashings and sequence. A correct metal on the wrong substrate is still a failed wall.

Metal panel finishes: PVDF, powder coating, anodizing and living patinas. Finish class belongs in the specification. A sample chip is not a coating system.

Metal cladding corrosion: galvanic couples, coastal salt, cut edges and wet cavities. Isolation and drainage are design items.

Oil canning: the visible waviness of flat metal. Width, stiffening, gloss and expectation management reduce it. It is usually a visual issue, not a structural one.

Metal wall panel fire performance: the page that exists so no other page has to overclaim. Skin, core, insulation, cavity and attachments are listed separately. Metal panels are not fireproof.

How these pages should be used with materials and systems

Read materials for the metal and systems for the format, then use this hub to write the limits that those pages cannot honestly quantify.

A Metal Composite Material fire note belongs here and on the system page, not as a one-line claim on a colour sheet. An insulated-panel thermal value belongs to that sandwich, not to a single-skin cassette. A zinc ventilation note belongs on the zinc page and in the installation package.

What belongs in the written specification

At minimum, a metal wall note should name the metal, the panel format, the drainage strategy, the coating or patina class, compatible fixings, movement joints, and the listed assembly for fire and wind where the occupancy requires it. If those lines are missing, the drawing is still a rendering.

Applications tell you whether that note is for a weather wall, an interior liner, a commercial elevation or a house. Do not enlarge a residential accent note into a civic envelope.

How to use this hub

1. Keep the four-question order from the metal wall coverings guide.
2. Open the one technical guide that matches the argument in the meeting.
3. Bring the manufacturer listing and the authority having jurisdiction into the items this site marks as assembly-specific.
4. Use the comparisons hub only after the specification limits are named.