*
Gentlemen:
I am currently building a 2100 sq. ft. home in Piedmont Carolina. Since I will be doing the floor, walls and roof myself, progress will be slow. Are there any suggestions, short of a tent (FHB #51 Back Cover), I might employ to keep the house dry. I am told that plastic sheeting on the floor may trap moisture causing more damage than it would get exposed to the elements. Also, felt paper on the roof seems to have a very finite life. Any substitute with a longer life span? On vertical surfaces, Tyvek says their product must be covered in 120 days.
Thanks for your assistance
Replies
*
Once the roof is decked,Braced,and solid,I would felt the whole deck using large plastic head cap nails.possibly use some lath strips along roof edge for additional re-inforcement.If you are serious about keeping it in the dry go ahead and shingle it etc.,holding off on other work untill roof is functional.Shouldn't take 1 guy to long to roof a 2100 sq. ft. house anyhow.
Good luck,stephen
*Bill,I think the best approach is to get your structure under a weather tight roof as fast as possible. Here are some ideas. If you are using roof trusses frame the interior walls after the trusses are in place, decked, and roofed. Instead of felt, put down roll roofing and follow with shingles (costs more than felt but goes down just as fast). This will give you more time to shingle and you can partition out the house in the dry. You may be able to get discounted roll roofing at a salvage building materials dealer (Hoods here). If you are building over crawl space drill some 1/2 in holes in the subfloor to drain moisture. Order out only the materials you will need in the near time and keep your stock of materials under plastic tarps (or otherwise dry)until you are ready to use it. Good luck,Steve
*As I see it, the most damage that is done by weather exposure to your building project is to the subfloors. There is a new type of subfloor material that is sold in our area (NC) called Advantech. It looks like treated 3/4" T&G OSB and the manafacturer claims that it can withstand months of exposure without delamination, swelling, etc.
*BillyK,Sometimes if it looks like we're headed into the rainy season, we will mop on a layer of Duck's Back or Thompsons Water Seal to protect the sub floor. It will help get you through.Good Luck,Ed. Williams
*
I'm assuming it'll take a while to get the roof up since you're working by yourself, and you want to protect things in the mean time. Plastic on a flat surface would be a big mistake. It will get water under it from condensation and leaks, and won't let it dry. If you have a basement, you must get some air moving (in the basement) on the underside of the subfloor to avoid condensation there. I ran a regular household fan for six months straight and it helped a lot.
If you want to use plastic, it must be over a
sloped support, and it must be tied down every six feet or so along the edges. Then you get the joy of untying it each time you want to work on the area it covers.
I second Ed William's advice about painting the subfloor. I used exterior house paint instead of a stain/sealer because I was worried (perhaps without cause) about odors later on.
Hang in there..
Ted LaRue
*
Hi there,
My advice is simple,
Build a smaller house so that you can afford to build it right and hire the help you need to close it up fast.
You expose a house for longer than required and you will have an inferior product.
Gabe
*
Thanks Gabe:
A smaller house is going to be tough when the basement is already in.
I can see by the responses that I failed to mention that the house will ultimately have a standing seam metal roof which is why I don't want to take the time to shingle.
I do appreciate your reply. I think this is a great forum for us novices.
Regards,
Bill
*
Hi Bill,
It would be impossible to over emphasize the need to cover asap.
Even if you want to use a standing seam roof, buy a felt paper and cover the roof as soon as it's sheated.
Put strapping over it and use drywall screws so you can remove it in sections, without damaging the felt too badly.
You have a lot on your plate, just make sure you're not exposing yourself or the house to unnecessary water damage. Once the plywood has swollen, you have a problem with every piece of finishing from that point on.
Do be careful, this is your home,
Gabe
PS Do not paint the plywood if you intend on gluing anything to it in the future.
*Bill, you can get rolled roofing in heavier weights- 45 lb. and 60 lb.(which is basically granulated rolls without the granulations) If these are nailed with button cap nails and all protrusions well sealed you should be able to go for a couple years. Is this long enough?John
*
Hey, Bill,
Not to play the safety card or anything here, but framing/ sheathing a roof of even the slightest pitch by yourself seems kind of risky, and piedmont, carolina sounds like it might be sort of, well, you know, "in the sticks." A little buddy can go a long way in terms of safety and keeping a good attitude about a big project. Plus, with a helper and an espresso maker, you could probably frame, sheathe, and shingle that sucker just under of a week. LOL, Clay
*
William , Think about EDPM sheet You can get a thin sheet the size of your floor from Resource Conservation Technology, Inc. ,2633 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, Maryland ,21218
*
Bill, I started a similar project last December. Received advice that covering the subfloor with 6 mil poly would protect it. Fortunately and immeditately after the last piece of subfloor was laid, I used a sealer on the floor. I put the poly down a couple of days late when all was dry. We were blessed with a lot of rain just after that so I thought I was well protected by those two processes. 1.) the sealer saved my subfloor. 2.) Even though I thought I had the poly down and tight, moisture still got under and the floor stayed wet for about two weeks before I got back to the site. Ripped the poly off, let the floor dry out and second coated with sealer. I finally got the bldg. under roof in April and the floor is fine except for two minor spots where water had sat under the poly. my advice DO NOT USE POLY TO PROTECT THE FLOOR.
*
Buy a big blue tarp
*BillI'm never really sure on this forum when someone talks about ai standing seam roof whether they really mean that specific type, or are calling all i raised rib style metal roofsstanding seam.If you installed a 'raised rib galvalume' roof, it requires no costly & time consuming sheathing, you build a roof ladder for your self as you install the 1x4"-6" strapping (skip sheathing) on 24"oc, and you can whip a roof on really fast. . . by yourself, or with a grunt down below to pass the sheets up to you. It's dead simple and incredibly fast. In your case, don't spend valuable time sheathing your walls, just frame it up, and get the steel on, then you can go back and close the rest of it in.There's no argument that sheathing off a ladder is not fun and is potentially dangerous, so look after safety details (rent a good scaffold).-pm
*William,For what it's worth, the Advantech mentioned earlier in this thread does appear to be highly moisture-resistant. I got two small pieces, threw one of them in a bucket of water for a week and let the other one stay dry in a covered area (about 15-18 percent RH) . After a week, I measured them with a micrometer. No difference.If you don't go with Advantech, I've had good luck with OSB in wet climates (Southern Maryland and North Carolina) even after a lot of rain on a deck that wasn't covered if I spray it down with Thompson's Water Seal as soon as I put it down. I just use a cheap garden sprayer and it goes real fast. Like someone mentioned earlier, you haven't seen a mess until you try to take up swollen OSB that has been glued and shot down with ring-shanks or spiral-shanks.You mentioned that you were doing this yourself. You might give some thought to a helper. Good, skilled help will make the job go better, you'll have a lot more fun, and it will be safer, too.Good Luck - Let us know how it goes.
*I have been building my house over a 3 year period. Here in southwest Idaho it pretty much stops raining by mid July and doesn't start again until late October, so I didn't have to deal with frequent rain showers. To protect my progress during the winter I bought a large plastic tarp (50x30), a unit of 2x4s, and the future roof sheeting, and constructed a low slope temporary roof using deck screws. It would take me about 2 days to do this. This worked pretty good the first year, and okay the second (tarp was getting thin) and at the end of third I had the roof sheeting on. I got half of my roof on before the weather really turned to manure, so to protect the rest of it I bought 10 tubes of cheap caulk and a five gallon bucket of asphalt emulsion, for less than $30. It took me about a day to caulk the joints in the roof sheeting and to mop the bucket of emulsion onto the roof. I had a couple of small leaks but that got me through the winter until warmer and better weather came along. We used structural insulated panels for the walls and to protect them I stopped by our local HOMER DEPOT and bought 5 gals of Gliddens finest exterior paint for $30. It was some gawd awful battleship gray color which obviously looked a lot better on the color chip than it did on a piece of wood to someone. Anyway we slathered that all over the outside to protect the panels which it did quite nicely. Tarps are problematic as the wind is always messin' with it. We used a mess of bungee cords and 40 old car tires to ballast the tarp and we still had problems. If you schedule a couple of weeks of time and some help I would try to get the framing and sheeting done as quickly as possible, then you can use the roll roofing suggestion or the paint or emulsion idea to seal and protect the roof deck and the rest of your work.
*
Gentlemen:
I am currently building a 2100 sq. ft. home in Piedmont Carolina. Since I will be doing the floor, walls and roof myself, progress will be slow. Are there any suggestions, short of a tent (FHB #51 Back Cover), I might employ to keep the house dry. I am told that plastic sheeting on the floor may trap moisture causing more damage than it would get exposed to the elements. Also, felt paper on the roof seems to have a very finite life. Any substitute with a longer life span? On vertical surfaces, Tyvek says their product must be covered in 120 days.
Thanks for your assistance