[Greenbuilding] ***SPAM*** Re: r barrier recommendations

[John Straube]

You do need some lateral bracing in all buildings but esp in areas that might experience high winds and earthquakes. sheet wood is a very practical solution but overkill for a modest shop.  Wood sheet siding provides lots of lateral bracing (eg T-111 or SmartSide) but lap siding is not great. Let in diagonal 1x4 used to be used a lot.

Not sure what you mean by woven vs not woven. Polymer wraps are complex muliti-layer materials and come in many versions. You should NOT use a perforated wrap or one that looks like landscape cloth (is that what you mean  by woven?). That said good long proven products like Typar and Tyvek are inexpensive (10 cents per square foot) and widely available and are absolutely sufficiently air and water tight.

Polymer underlayment are proliferating to replace #30 felt. Owens Corning ProArmor / GAF Dek-Armor etc are products that will work under metal roof and can be used over open joists with care and attention to detail.  I doubt open rafters are recommended however, but I have seen it done.

12” gap is pretty good… getting to be almost like open. Sorry I thought you were planning smaller. Clearly, 0” is one extreme, and 2” is a bit better.  But it is sooo dependent on the soil, grading, snow piling, plants that can/do grow up around etc. If you get it to 18” and provide a open lattice skirt, it starts to behave like a floor over open air. But many unknowns.
OTOH, if it is a shop, placing it on a gravel pad on insulation has benefits re rolling/driving carts and such in and out. But that is a project detail you would know about.


> On Jul 12, 2022, at 08:56, Reuben Deumling <9watts at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thank you, John, for the detailed reply.
> I have interspersed some comments below,
> 
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2022 at 5:35 AM John Straube <jfstraube at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you skip the plywood in OSP then you will need to use a standard membrain product such as Tyvek. Is there any reason you would not use the obvious?
>  
> I am not using plywood chiefly because for buildings like this (style, size) I believe they have structurally done OK without it, and it hadn't occurred to me that plywood offered air sealing benefits sufficient to justify the effort/cost/etc. 
> 
> Also you were asking about the air barrier but really the most fundamental requirement of a shed or a hospital is rain control. Thus providing lapped housewrap under the siding and over the framing is fundamental and critical. Much more important than an air barrier.
> 
> That is what I was originally intending to use, but when I looked more closely at those I realized they tend to be woven instead of continuous like tyvek (so expensive!) Which prompted my questions here. But if a woven house wrap product is suitable here I am happy to use it.
> 
> We often call the rain control layer in a roof in a underlayment when it is placed below roofing that does not leak too much such as metal roofing and Ashfall shingles. You could use Tyvek for this as well but it is too slippery to work with and hence special grippier products are widely used. The benefit of large sheets of polymer are that they are strong enough and have few enough joints that you can tape them as an air barrier once you have properly gravity lap them for rain control.
> 
> I have long used 30lb felt in this application but really don't care for its properties. I know there are fancier (special, grippier) products but have not yet investigated those.
>  
> Providing air barrier continuity between the roof membrane which is above the framing and the wall membrane which is to the exterior of the framing is a bit more complicated but for a shed simply installing blocking and sealing with caulking around the edges should be sufficient.
> 
> Thanks, that makes sense.
>  
> There is no good answer for under your floor since what you are proposing is just considered "bad practice". That said I have several projects in my own property that to do some thing similar although they do provide at least 6 inches of clear air over the soil. These projects of mine are small 10' x 10' sized buildings that are not intended to be durable and in fact are likely to begin to have floor rot in 10 to 20 years of service. To locate a wood-based floor system directly on grade you would need to use something you probably don't like that is a foam plastic insulation on the underside of the wood protecting it from water vapour flow and keeping the framing at a different temperature than the grade. You will likely say you are not placing it on grade but you are clearly placing it so close to the grade it's almost the same.
> 
> I am surprised that 12" (range currently is between 8" and 16"j is considered to be equivalent to placing it on grade. Are you saying the air gap + whatever 
> membrane would not offer meaningful protection for the wood over time?
>  
> This one and a half or 2 inch foam layer underneath the wood will allow for a long term durable floor system. In your climate I would not bother putting fibrous insulation between the floor joists.
> 
> I am open to foam. Had not considered it. I think I even have a stash of that stuff left over from another job. I take it you would suggest screwing the foam to the joists using those big plastic washers? And, presumably my method of building the floor sections upside down would be acceptable? I'd plan to keep the foam inboard of the sill plate.
> 
> > On Jul 11, 2022, at 18:53, Reuben Deumling <9watts at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Portland Oregon, dry hot summers; high humidity in the winter. 
> > 
> > I should have mentioned that I am skipping the plywood altogether. I am putting up rough sawn board-and-batten siding over the studs and blocking. My thought was to put that air barrier between those. 
> > 
> > On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 3:35 PM John Straube <jfstraube at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hey there Reuben.  A description of your climate would be helpful before I weigh in..
> > In most cases taping up the plywood or osb sheathing would often be a great solution. 
> > 
> > On Mon., Jul. 11, 2022, 18:15 Reuben Deumling, <9watts at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I hope there are still a few of you smart people out there. This list used to be so fun!
> > 
> > I'm a little rusty on this stuff. So your thoughts are much appreciated. 
> > 
> > I am building a 250 sf shop in my back yard. I am insulating the floor right away (R19 FG batts) and the walls and 12/12 metal roof plane sometime in the future. My hope is to affix a barrier of some sort (6 mil plastic?) to the underside of the joists (ca. 12" unvented crawl space beneath), and wrap the walls and roof plane with some sort of air barrier, but am not sure what a good product choice would be for 
> > - under the floor
> > - the walls
> > - the roof
> > 
> > Thanks for all suggestions. 
> > 
> > Reuben
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