House Wrap

[Saint Dave]

I've got a question that has been on my mind lately now that it has gotten so cold.

My house is a basic 4 bedroom, two story, newer home (less than 10 years) and is one of those fast assembly jobs. I am very happy with it, but one item bothers me. The outside of my house is 90% vinyl siding - there is a small brick section in the front. If you pull the siding away, there is the house wrap - looks like some type of foam board insulation. After that is the studs for my walls.

So basically you could break into my house with a pocket knife. i.e. cut the vinyl siding, cut the foam board, cut the drywall and reach in and unlock the door. Don't misunderstand I am not overly concerned about this, just trying to convey the flimsy feeling...

I seem to recall seeing homes built with OSB or some other tongue and groove type plywood on the outside. Is this the old fashioned method now?

Seems to me it wouldn't be too terribly difficult or overly expensive to take the vinyl siding off, remove the foam board and put T & G ply on the house. Then re-attach the foam board and the siding. Obviously, I am going to wait until it is warmer outside before I attempt this. It seems to me that this will further insulate the house and make it more solid.

My lovely wife thinks I'm nuts, what do you folks think?

-Dave

[rriopel]

I agree with your wife. That's a lot of work. You'll need a whole bunch of staging to do the job safely. Once you strip everything off and put on 1/2" OSB (which isn't a good insulator BTW), you'll have siding that is 1" to short so you'll be buying a bunch of vinyl siding. Most houses up here in NH don't have the layer of hard insulation, just OSB. I think you're ahead of the game with the hard insulation.

Ray.

[TDHofstetter]

Hi, St. Dave.

I don't know how windy it is in Ohio, but if you get very much of the blowy stuff you might just find that T&G might make your house MUCH warmer during the long dark night of the planet's soul, so to speak. I've stumbled across houses in my day that had no sheathing at all, just steel straps to hold the corners rigid - and only bare siding beyond that... but that sure doesn't provide much protection from the drafts that dodge in to steal your precious calories.

The house my wife & I now peoplulate up here in Vermont has 6" fiberglass in the walls plus plywood sheathing plus two inches of styrofoam outside of that before you get to the vertical reverse-board-and-batten siding. Even with all that, sometimes the wind steals in and pushes up our firewood consumption a little - still, we only burn two cords every year. Well, until this year, anyway... looks like we'll go a little beyond that this time.

Were it me, and if I were convinced that I'd stay in your house for an extended time (maybe lifelong), I'd do everything I could to make the house sturdy and windproof. I'm afraid that means that I, like any compulsive beaver, would do as you've suggested - that being to strip the siding and add the ply. It'd make the house considerably more rigid and lessen the likelihood of sheetrock cracking as the crib starts racking. It'll help defeat the draft. You'll feel better about the place.

It WILL require a large effort on your part, of course, and some ingenuity in spots. It WILL also require some considerable outlay of cashola to buy the ply.

It sounds (perhaps masochistically) like fun, though.

-- Tim --

I believe in fires at midnight,
When the dogs have all been fed.
Golden toddy on the mantle,
Broken gun beneath the bed.
- Jethro Tull -

[Saint Dave]

Okay - I make that one vote for my wife and one for me.

Ray - I am not certain I would need more siding as the corners of the house have some type of moulding (?) to them to hold the ends. I'd bet I could get away with shorting the ends 1/4 inch... However, it is way to darn cold to go look now, but it is definitely something to think about.

Tim - I like the way you think...


Another thing that I keep dwelling on is when I paid somebody to paint my house (Gasp! What was I thinking about there.) the guy commented on what a lousy job the contractors did attaching the siding to the house. I am not certain what he meant and I didn't ask for him to elaborate at the time. My thought now is what if the contractors could only attach (nail) the siding to the studs? This would be less nailing then if there was ply underneath to attach it to.

As Tim mentioned, the wind does blow really hard where I am. My whole house rattles when it really gets going (of course that could just be the siding).

Well, I definitely need more responses to break the tie, but thanks for pitching in...

-Dave.

[logical]

It is becoming more and more common to build houses just like the way that yours was built. I can't give you the page number right now, but I read it in one of my books. You might want to consider the fact that if you add 1/2" plywood/particle/osb all the way around, you may have to replace, or at least add to, all of the siding!

You will be expanding the dimensions of the house by 1 inch just like the guy in the first post said. Look in the corners and see how much play the siding contractors left you. One other thing, siding is SUPPOSED to be loose. When you nail siding, you leave it hanging loose so that it can contract and expand without making the siding looking warped. When you put it back on, make sure that you put it on from the back of the house first. That way you will not see the seams where they overlap from the front of the house. Also, use 1.5" roofing nails. They are long enough to get your fingers under while holding the siding and hammer. Plus they won't rust. I'm no expert, but have done siding several times.

I live in tornado alley here in Mississippi and built my shop exactly like your house after reading that it was ok to do so. We have had some hellatious winds (blew down a tree) and the siding didn't let any water in. Rattled some, but all vinyl siding should.

[daveferg]

Dave---I can't believe what I'm reading. Think what you want about us Californians, but your house would never have been built that way out here. Probably won't do any good---but you might talk to your building department about local codes---personally, it think there are both structural issues (potential for racking) and insulation problems.

Most vinyl siding I've seen has been installed over existing siding or at least over sheething---only nailing it every 16" oc, certainly doesn't provide much rigidity, and provides practically no horizontal support to your studs, to keep them from racking, in case of very high winds, or with settling/age. I think the rigid foam was a feeble attempt to stiffen the vinyl.

Did I read right---there is no blow-in or batt insulation between the studs??? If not, I would think the whole job---insulating, housewrap, and new siding could be justified just with your heating bill savings---to get an idea, take your average bill and see if a friend (obviously, not in your housing tract) has a similar sized, 2-story house and compare bills.

There are a lot of siding choices out there---I can tell you it's perfectly normal to choose one type for the street side and another for the back---out here, we us a lot of T1-11 siding---5/8" plywood, with vertical gooves. See what is used locally and get comparrisons on costs.

[Saint Dave]

Dave -

I do not think that my house is overly expensive with respect to heat and AC. I have a gas furnace and my bills are roughly 120-150 for gas and electric. Seems reasonable for a 2 story house, but I'll ask around and see.

I do think that this is the accepted way of building a house nowadays. Studs, housewrap, vinyl siding... I am not certain if there is any blown in or insulation bats in my walls. I didn't notice any when I was poking around behind the siding, but it could be just a dead area that I was looking at.

I have noticed homes in various states of construction around this area and they appear to be built the same way. The thing that got me thinking about all this was I noticed someone doing a major remodel on an older house, and they had T&G OSB around the outside. I thought, "HEY that makes a lot of sense."

My outside walls are cool, but not especially cold. Given that the temp is about 10 here the last couple of days, I'd say that the house either has some type of blown insulation or the foam house wrap is an exceptionaly good insulator.

Besides dealing with the siding coming up short on the ends, I have been mulling over what to do around the windows. Adding another 1/2 inch of ply would probably pose some problems around them.

Ah well, perhaps it is a nutty idea...

-Dave

[Lou_williams]

To me house wrap is something totally different than you describe. House wrap is a vapor barrier that is made of the same stuff that is used by Fed-Ex for their letter packs. This stuff comes in big rolls that are about 9' wide and you wrap the whole house and tape the edges for a tight seal.

The insulation should be below the house wrap.

And here in Cal all walls are sheathed with OSB or ply for structural reasons. Wood walls with sheathing flex but don't fall down when the ground moves. I would think it would help a lot with those high speed spinning winds out in the rest of the country

[Danford C Jennings]

Lou,

I'd be willing to bet that if he checked the corners that they would be sheathed with OSB/plywood, or have a steel cross brace..."TyVek" is what you are thinking of for house wrap and it goes on over the sheathing...(between the sheathing and siding). I just finished up a job (put in a 57" x 75" Pozzi double hung combo) where the "builder" wrapped the house with TyVek over the studs (no sheathing) and sided with rough sawn T-111 cedar, mildew big time in the bays.....FWIW.

Dano

[daveferg]

Boy, what an education this is for me---always thought it would be nice to get into a new house, with all the modern safety features and improved insulation, etc.---Yea, right! :) It never ceases to amaze me what builders will try to get away with to cut corners. In the '70s it was aluminum wiring---(cost my folks about $2K to add improvements to the system)---Starting in the '80s, some places allowed PVC for water mains---in our tract, all the neighbors in our block have had to replace the PVC after 15-17 years.

Well, if you're energy costs aren't out of line, probably you'll just need to live with it, cause I don't think you could justify the money for an "improved" method otherwise.