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.
There’s a problem with the way telephone and video cabling are traditionally run in your home. There is no expandability or configurability built into the system. Additionally, your typical new home is not pre-wired for networking the 1.5 computers in the average US household.
