Getting ready to install shakes for the first time. Its a repair job on a throughly rotted 3 season room that i’m rebuilding. The previous builder installed plastic behind the shakes and it did a nice job of holding the water in by the wood i’m replacing. I’m thinking tar paper or nothing. Is this correct? Seems obvious that the plastic was the wrong way to go.
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Replies
Good thinking - use tar paper.
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Thought so, thanks.
I've seen homes with 100 y.o. cedar shakes with just rosin paper behind them.
Tar paper will be just as good.
The plastic was definitely the wrong way to go. I hope that builder has learned since.
When I was working for a high-end residential builder, we did a lot of shakes. We would always wrap the house with housewrap and also run a 12" layer of tar paper over each course of shakes, so that as the shakes shrunk up over the seasons, water couldn't run in behind anyother courses of shakes.
Derek
That sounds good and through. If I was doing more than patch work I think I might go that way.
It would probably be overkill for patch work.
To illustrate, I built a small shed for a neighbor 4 or 5 years ago and simply wrapped the sheathing with tar paper and put shakes over the top. Last summer he asked me to take the shakes off and put on some beveled cedar siding to match his house and there was no signs (to me) of any moisture problems, and that is after a few pretty harsh Michigan winters sitting on a dune on Lake Michigan.
Derek
This in in Grosse Pointe. They did a wonderful job on this one. It was originally a open porch that was closed in. The knee walls arent plumb with the upper false beams. To remedy this they capped the knee wall with a completely flat piece of 2x8 (gee cant imagine how thw ater got in the wall).
With the snow tray on top of the knee wall and the plastic holding in the water it has been a fun week.
The topper is that the posts were empty columns of 1x material that were lost to rot at the bottoms.
When I started on monday I pulled out of the post what I thought was a dead frog. I got it into the light and realized it was a 4" slug(shelless snail?) that was as thick as a quarter. Never seen that before.
The two best things you can do is dip the shingles and use something to seperate the shakes from the wall so they can breath. See link.
http://www.benjaminobdyke.com/html/products/slicker.html
Its supposed to be half lap felt .
Lay out 30 lb felt in strips equal to the exposure of the shakes your using. First course is shingles followed by shake directly on top w/o so that the first row of shingles has no exposure at all and all the felt is covered and not exposed to sun. Then just lap by 1 1/2 inches on the sides and cover all the felt with shakes. When you've laid first two courses of shakes, if you can see any felt between the sides of each shake your doing it incorrectly . No felt should be visible when looking down at it from above. If you see felt at all get someone who done it before (correctly). There's too much info to cover here.
we are talking about "shakes" and not " shingles "........ right ?
Well, there going on the wall if thats what you mean. I dont do much siding thats not vinyl (bring on the comments). I'm only repairing where the sheathing was literally non existent due to rot. I used to know the difference between the two when I took my test for my license but, not top of mind it tends so slip away.
Shakes are thicker, irregular, hand split, and usually lay 10" exposure out of 24" material length.Shingels are sawn, smoother, even and square butt to edge. They are laid from 4" to 6" to the weather, and are 16" or 18" longyou could probably Google images and find what each looks like.Mistakenly using the work shakes for cedar shingles is very common.With shingles you just underlay them with tarpaper. With shakes, you use a lot more tarpaper and time interweaving the felt with the shakes.
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Thanks Piffin, They're shingles.
TarpaperAnd give someone a licnse to shoot the previous guy with his plastic
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Tar paper is difinitely the way to go. I hand-split (or more correctly reeved) shakes for a friend's house some 30 years ago. (And yes, we cut the cedar bolts ourselves!) I want to say it was maybe a 9 in 12 roof. It was/is tar paper under hand split shakes. The house has never leaked or had any other roof problems. And it rains an average of 120 inches a year there.
And just to be sure we're talking about the same animal, shakes are hand split. Commercial ones are typically sawn on one side (the bottom!). Shingles are sawn on both sides.
Edited 7/19/2006 1:30 am by luckymudster
Edited 7/19/2006 1:31 am by luckymudster
Pretty much any question you'd have are in their guides. http://www.cedarbureau.org/installation/wall-manual.htm
I agree about the tar paper. We did a cedar shake roof on a shed we built a few years ago. I had to cut an 18" row of 30# tarpaper for each row of shakes. By the time we were done, I was certain there were several tons of tarpaper on the roof. The neighbor, who is a WOF (wise old fart), came over to visit while we were working on it. He said that the only purpose for the cedar shakes on a roof is to hold the tar paper down so the roof doesn't leak. He might have a point. Years later, the roof looks great and doesn't leak. It is the only cedar shake roof we will ever do!! Ever!!!!! It was so much work, plus I got to go for a ride on the scaffolding that I had balanced on rocks instead of concrete blocks.(Not recommended). My husband actually fell on the same rocks while cradling his almost new drill instead of using his arm to break his fall. Well, no major injuries and another project completed.
I did a shake roof once, long ago. Got some printed material from the cedar shake institute before I began.
Here is the prerequisite, and it's a big one. The roof is skip-sheathed.
Period.
Nothing else will do.
From there, one proceeds with the eave courses, the base course, the interleaving with felt, etcetera. Blah, blah, blah.
What I remember is that the shakes came not resquared, which means that all had more or less a wedge shape, and had to be tooled off to fit with their little margin.
Being a tool freak and collector, I bought a shingling hatchet, sharpened it up, and used it to whack all my WRC shakes for the job, doing it as I went up.
At the end of the job (a little garden and equipment shed) I ended up with what looked like a nifty little pile of toothpics for giants.