Stick to Mike’s process to make it right
Right protection and products still need the right installation procedure to work
To make a home right you need the right protection, the right products and the right procedure.
What does it mean to have the right protection for your home? A strong and durable building envelope that is also watertight.
There are materials and products that help you achieve this, such as PinkWood, ice and water shield, insulation, house or building wrap, siding and so on. These are the right products, but if you put good products in a house the wrong way, you’re going to have issues. Let me give you an example.
I was on a job where the cladding on the outside of a home was letting water penetrate and it was getting into the basement. The house was only seven or eight years old. Finally the homeowner thought it was time to pull back the vapour barrier and see what was going on.
What he saw no homeowner ever wants to see — a rim board that was completely rotted with black mould.
After we started pulling back the cladding on the outside we discovered the rot was all over the exterior sheathing, below the cladding and making its way into the subfloor.
A home’s exterior cladding has a sheathing layer underneath it that is attached to the exterior structure. This sheathing is usually made from aspenite, OSB (oriented strand board) or plywood. I prefer plywood because in general, it holds less water than OSB and doesn’t swell as much.
To protect the house and keep the elements out we wrap the entire house in a superior weather-resistant wrap over the sheathing, including all of the window and door jams. On the sheathing we use a house wrap that is vapour permeable, so moisture in the wall cavity can escape. We then wrap window and door jams with building wrap that is impermeable, so if there is moisture it can’t get through to the windowsill. After we wrap the house we install vertical strapping to give space between the siding and the sheathing. This allows air movement, so water that gets in behind the cladding can escape and dissipate. Then finally our exterior siding or cladding goes up.
In the case of this house, there was no vertical strapping. The cladding was installed directly to the sheathing. So water that got behind the cladding had nowhere to go.
On top of that, the house wrap stopped at the windows and doors — it wasn’t wrapped around the window and door jams. So water was penetrating through the windows and getting to the sheathing. And because there was no strapping it couldn’t dry.
The siding was a great product. But for any product to do the work it was designed to do it must be installed properly.
The builder on that home actually seemed like a good builder. But remember: builders hire all kinds of companies to do some of the work. Sometimes, the sub-trades aren’t as good as they should be.
In truth, the cladding company was responsible for installing this mess. But the reality is after these guys leave, it can take years before the problems make their way to the surface. And by the time they do it’s too late. So you better make sure you know what it takes to make it right.