quick question, Does anyone staple osb sheathing on wall and rafters?
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Some framers in my area use medium crown staples for stapling sheathing in place. For my area (NC) it is code compliant but I would expect it to be more for starter homes - or at least that where I have had it done... Those staples hold like H=11 though... not sure about the end result shear strength, but if you have to remove stapled sheathing, you need to allocate some extra time and patients, and probably won't be reusing the sheathing... :-)
I once saw a guy stapling off a roof with a fully automatic stapler - it was something to see (he basically slid down the roof on his shoes with his finger clenched on the trigger... the sound was unreal....
We have always used 16ga. staples to hold our sheathing. The other day an inspector made us tear it down. said there is no way it holds like nails.
You couldn't just renail the sheathing!!!!
So what does it say in your code book?
John, I don't understand why it couldn't have just been refastened with nails, but....
I've also never understood why people say staples don't "hold" as well as nails--if you've ever had to remove stapled vs. nailed plywood, you know what I mean.
I prefer using staples on the roof plywood (albeit with a much closer spacing) because here in a high-wind zone, the plywood will pull off the framing long before the entire roof racks. I had recently converted from stapling to nailing wall plywood b/c I do believe it's stronger against shear forces.
However, our locale decided to require nailing ALL plywood recently, so I for now have no options. IIRC, the HBA is having the state engineers test panels with nails vs. staples.
Maybe when I get my Ranchhand bumper I can do some backyard "PaulCP" type testing of my own test panels, not that it'll matter squat to code officials LOL.
BTW, our code says
1. 2 3/8 gun nails: 4"/8" on walls and 4"/4" on roofs
2. staples: 2"/3" walls, 2"/2" on roofsJason Pharez Construction
Framing Contractor