With slight modifications for the vinyl windows typically used in our homes, this is how we install our windows - the right way. I have yet to see another builder in our area install windows correctly.
Water is the number one thing to cause building systems to fail, yet few builders pay enough attention to managing the water that either forms upon, or falls upon your home.
Vinyl siding is a popular exterior wall finish in our area. Installed correctly it can look good at a reasonable price. However, vinyl siding is not a water barrier! It will slow water down, but H2O has little problems getting behind vinyl siding. This makes house wrap important.
House wrap serves dual purposes. For one thing it helps control air-infilitration, which makes your house more comfortable. Many builders don’t realize that it is also an excellent water barrier. Because of the way it is constructed, products like Tyvek will prevent drafts, while at the same time allowing wet lumber (which will inevitably happen) to breathe. It also prevents wind-driven water from penetrating through to the lumber. Many builders, either through lack of education, or for cost-saving measures, don’t apply house wrap to the gables of a house. Their reasoning is that there’s no reason to prevent air-infiltration through the attic, since you try to ventilate attic spaces very well. This totally discounts the water-blocking properties of house wrap and allows water to directly saturate the building under the vinyl siding.
Note our measures to control water on our buildings:
1. House wrap applied to all gables.
The follwing picture shows the job at 417 Trevor Ct under construction with housewrap applied to the gables:
2. Decks flashed to ensure proper water flow
Following are two pictures showing how we flash where decks attach to the home ensuring that water travels down the housewrap and over, instead of behind the deck structure. Notice also the bituthene (the black stuff) applied to the wall behind where the deck is attached to the building. This product helps seal around the holes formed by the bolts used to attach the deck to the building.
3. Properly flashed windows and doors
This is yet another area where your typical builder fails to protect the home. By applying housewrap to a building you are providing a plane for water to run down the house. If you then install windows and doors through this plane the water will go behind these obstacles into the walls. Typically, the builder applies the housewrap to the walls while the walls are lying on the floor. He will then make cuts in the housewrap and wrap it into any openings in the wall. After the walls are stood up, doors and windows are inserted into the wall. This is where most guys stop. However, for the housewrap to do any good, you have to then apply additional flashing around doors and windows.
Note again how in the second image we paid attention to the flow of water. The felt paper at the top of the window is inserted behind the housewrap above it. This ensures water does not penetrate the structure.
Note the following job-site pic of Form-A-Drain installed:
We first set up the product and use it as a form for pouring our concrete footings. Later, we completely cover the forms with 1″ clean gravel. This serves the purpose of promoting water movement into the Form-A-Drain system (the water enters the drain system via the slots you can see in the above photo). We then cover the form and gravel with filter fabric which aids in filtering sediments out of incoming water to prevent the drainage system from being clogged. Finally we cover the fabric with another layer of gravel which is then covered by dirt as we backfill around the foundation. Later, we dig a trench away from the footing and attach a pipe to the drain system that runs to daylight to drain water away.
The advantage of this system to you, the homeowner, is that you end up with a nearly perfect drain system. The conventional way of draining water away from your foundation walls is to lay black, perforated, flexible pipe around the foundation and then covering it with gravel and some sort of filter. The drawback to this is that it’s nearly impossible to create a level drainage plane around the footing with the cumbersome drain pipe. Additionally, many contractor’s put the drain pipe on top of the footing. While this does allow a more consistent level all around the foundation, that moves the drain plane up to the same height as the concrete slab inside the basement, leading to potential problems.
With loan commitment from New Era Bank, we’ve begun our latest project at 417 Trevor Ct in Bonne Terre, MO.
I wanted to begin discussing this project by highlighting the footing forms system we’re using. But first some background on conventional footing systems.
Conventionally (at least in our area) footings formed up with two rows of 2×10 lumber outlining the perimiter of the house which are then filled in with concrete. Typically you’ll spend part of one day setting up the footing forms, part of another day pouring the concrete into the forms, and then part of yet another day removing the forms. Next you’ll form up the foundation walls (we’ll talk about this step in another post). After that, you’ll lay perforated pipe around the entire perimeter of the foundation on the ground next to the footing and cover it with gravel and either filter fabric or straw to filter out dirt particles and allow water to flow into the perforated pipe and then out to daylight.
The footing forming system we’re using eliminates some steps and guarantees a higher quality job. It’s called Form-A-Drain and it makes for a better job. A problem with traditional foundation drainage is that on the jobsite it’s very hard to ensure that the pipe remains level all around the foundation. Jobsites are rough places to be and ensuring that the pipe is level down in the trenches is difficult. FAD ensures a perfectly level drainage system all around. Another quality advantage is ensured by the straps that hold the two sides of the footing forms apart. The straps are engineered with a “U” shape that dips down into the footing. You can lay your courses of steel rebar reinforement on these straps and are again ensured perfect placement in the footing. Additionally, the forms install quickly.
Since this is the first time I’ve used this product we started out slow learning the system, but once we got going on the project and learned the ropes we could just fly around installing these…while at the same time ensuring a higher quality product.