Tag: air barrier

April 29, 2015

Upon hanging the TJI insulation cavity, the vapor open Weather Resistant Barrier (WRB) was installed and all seams were taped.  Given the pressure of the cellulose that will be blown-in behind this WRB, we decided to use Solitex Mento 1000 and taped with our favorite Tescon Vana tape.
mento and tape blog
The next layer is the ventilation cavity / rainscreen / furring strips.  We decided on horizontal with vertical furring strips to keep the cellulose bulge in check and maintain an acceptable ventilation cavity as well as provide a more substantial nailing surface for our engineered wood siding.

December 9, 2014

Just in time for the holidays, our construction crew (Gosnell Builders) received a fine lesson in taping from Santa’s finest little taping elf (Michael Hindle, CPHC, Passive to Positive). Our elves were happy with the performance of both SIGA Wigluv and Tescon Vana tapes, which are being used over our primary plywood sheathing air barrier.
LESSONS LEARNED:
LESSON ONE:  Get in the field and see how planned methods work. Get your hands on the materials yourself to see that what you draw actually works. Or doesn’t.
michael taping
LESSON TWO:  With membranes and plastic sheets, corners matter. A lot.  Don’t just drape the membrane into an area with hopes that it will be sealed by the extra material.  Cut neat, flat areas in the field of an assembly, and bring them up to – but not over the corner – and tape it off.  Then tape a smaller, more manageable patch to fit into the corner.  Neatly fold the corners with sufficient, but not excessive overlap (it really is just like wrapping a gift).  Above may require a YouTube video of of above mentioned elf.
house taping
LESSON THREE:  As defined in our Sequence of Operations, we installed our SIGA membrane over the top of the foundation wall and under the sill plate, to be taped to the exterior sheathing later.  When the guys were installing this membrane, they used a large strip with lots of over-lap. This made it hard during taping because where one sheet ended and another picked up, the overlaps were so excessive that it was very hard to know if you were getting a continuous taped seam.  Also the excess material flapped in the western breezes over the course of a month and was in less than pristine taping condition.  If we use this method again, we will stipulate that overlaps be no more than 6″ and only narrow strips of material be left “hanging out” and be taped down temporarily.
 
 

November 5, 2014

framing 2
And suddenly…it’s a house.  The trusses arrived and were set at 24″ on center on top of our 24″ on center 2×6 structural wall on top of our 24″ on center MSR 2×10 floor framing on top of our basement wall.  Walking through the skeleton to see the clean, aligned bones was really exciting.  Our framers did a fabulous job with advanced framing and aligning all the structure.  It sounds simple and straightforward, but I’ve walked in many that seem junked up with unnecessary studs and multiple upon multiple jacks and kings.
framing 1
The blue line along the top plate is Tescon Vana magic tape sealing the corner edge of our plywood air barrier. Each spliced top plate is taped as well.
Next comes the roof sheathing, finalizing the plywood air barrier and taping all the seams.