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In response to Jim “Crazy Legs” post regarding his experiment, the products in question that allow all the water seapage are actually products doubling as landscape fabric. Of course they allow water seapage. The same test performed with actual Tyvek will receive much different results. Until they produce 30# felt in a 9′ roll, I’m going to stick with Tyvek under vinyl.
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The builder in a sub-division I am looking to purchase a new home
uses building paper under vinyl siding. Should I try and convince him
to use housewrap instead. Are all housewraps created equal?
*I still use building paper. There have been a few articles about housewrap not keeping water out as well after a few years. I don't know what the truth is but tarpaper has worked for a long time. If I ever get strong evidence that housewrap is superior (not from the house wrap makers), I'll switch.
*I'm a believer in the building paper vs. house wraps, not being a fan of plastic siding, the only question I would have is what does the mfgr. recommend? If they are OK with tar paper under their siding, I'd use it before house wraps.
*Manufacturer recommendations can sometimes be misleading - especially if they also make the housewrap.Paper is better than housewrap for many reasons. The main one being that as installed the housewraps don't do the things they claim. Now without the one major claimed benefit removed they are a material that costs 4 times more than felt and doesn't act as a hygric buffer, and allows vapor pressure to drive moisture back into the house much easier than felt does.-Rob
*House wrap is best made into jumpsuits for dirty dusty jobs. I'm unconvinced that it has a single advantage over felt on a well constructed home. I have never and will never use vinyl siding. joe d
*Felt has been on homes 100 years old. I wouldn't worry about that. I'd be suspicious of his quality if he's using vinyl. Vinyl looks like real cedar. He may also be installing $10 faucets made of plastic with a chrome coating. These look like real metal. Wobbly door knobs on cheap hollow-core doors, sod slapped down over clay.... Oops, Sorry, my imagination is just running away here after seeing vinyl.
*Sure don't like the way ladders slide around on Tyvek........ Tore the siding off my house last year and resided. That felt under the old siding, which was probably close to 50 years old, sure looked in good shape. I'll be sticking with felt for now unless better evidence is presented. One HELL of a lot cheaper too..... Sam
*<>Probably a regional thing. In NW Ohio, vinyl gets used on most new construction, the good as well as the bad (although not as much on the few great homes going up, of course.)Bob
*I just replaced 45 year old cedar siding with new ones and underneath was 30-lb tar paper that was good as new. Still had the chalk line from when the house was built. I lifted one section to investigate and the lumber used for the wall was good as new. I returned two rolls of 15-lb tar paper I thought I was going to need on the project.(Why did I replace the old siding, you may ask.There were six layers of paint on the boards and last several layers were applied poorly. Stripping or repainting became a very poor option, and some of the boards had started to deteriorate. But they did last 45 years !)
*I have torn siding off of many old homes and found good paper underneath, but I'll admit that I really liked the idea of house wrap and used to use it. Last spring there were so many flame wars about the subject, I did a test.I taped a piece of Typar over the top of 2 old drywall mud buckets, one with the writing up, the other with the writing down. I shaped the paper so that I could pour a couple quarts of water into the hollow in each. I filled them up and went about my business. 6 or 8 hours later I checked and sure enough the piece of wrap that was writing up allowed a lot more water to pass through than the other. I then flipped each piece over and refilled them. Yup, same results. The water passed through the piece that was writing side up about twice as fast. Just the opposite of what I expected. I have switched back to paper whenever I have the choice. Hype. Pure hype.
*I've read of many instances (here and elsewhere) of 40, 50, 60 year old tarpaper still being in good shape. I don't disbelieve it, but when I stripped the fake wood paneling off the inside of my enclosed garage (to insulate/rock), the tarpaper behind the stucco, on east wall, was dried out, brittle and falling apart. It would have been 28 years old at the time. This is central valley CA: extremely hot/dry summers, mild/mod wet winters.I've since wondered: was some "inferior" tarpaper used? Or what?
*Jim - I can see a huge difference between 15 and 30-lb papers.It is perhaps possible 15-lb stuff would dry out or become brittle.The 45 year old 30-lb paper in our house feels like a layer of asphalt pavement was shaved off and hung on the wall. Heavily saturated stuff.
*Although most of my place was covered with what appeared to be 30# paper, there was a section of the house that appeared to have actual roll roofing. Talk about wrapping the house. That stuff was in perfect condition. Not sure I'm ready to start using roll roofing but it gets a guy to thinking. Sam
*In some parts of the south (like from Virginia to Florida) the siding is done once the rolled roofing is in place.(please send all flames to JoeFusco@...)
*In response to Jim "Crazy Legs" post regarding his experiment, the products in question that allow all the water seapage are actually products doubling as landscape fabric. Of course they allow water seapage. The same test performed with actual Tyvek will receive much different results. Until they produce 30# felt in a 9' roll, I'm going to stick with Tyvek under vinyl.