10 DUMB (and Common) Building Practices

on the build show today construction pet peeves you know i've been doing this for 25 years i got my start a production builder i've moved on to building my own custom homes but there's just some things in our industry whether you're building production homes or custom homes that bother me that bug me that are my pet peeves on the build show today construction pet peeves let's get going spray foam for air sealing purposes out of a can is thoroughly dumb and does not work look at this somebody put this bead of orange fire stopping foam all around the bottom plate to the concrete and they did it around this outlet as well and you might think that does something but in reality look at all the air coming through look at all the light you can see around this electrical box there's no amount of spray foam in this two by four cavity out of a can that's gonna seal that up that is a terrible detail and that bottom plate spray foam it's not doing anything for us look at this air coming through and this light you can see here at this break between the plates coming up through the back of the sheathing there's no air sealing in that spot either you can see air and light all the way along there i think this house would be would have a really really hard time getting its code required blower door score of five ach 50 in this climate zone let alone if this was built in the north where it needs to be three ach 50 very very leaky there's so much here that drives me crazy look at this zip sheathing which is a great sheathing but they've used another type of tape this is asphaltic it does not stick very well to zip sheathing you need to use zip tape on zip sheathing this does not stick but my bigger pet peeve is this right here this is a recessed tankless water heater they set this up so the the tankless won't stick as far out of the building it looks like this is going to have siding or really this is set up for rock but there's no brick ledge but this unit is recessed into the wall which is a really bad idea from a waterproofing perspective we've got a little bit of an overhang here but not much let's test it and see if it would leak this is normally the outlet where the tankless is going to come out and this is a box right here so there's your recess box but see this these are all the connections in the bottom for the tankless and those are right in the wall and those are almost slash they are in my opinion impossible to seal so if we get a little bit of water in that tank over time see that water coming out how much of that water is going to get in and come to the inside let's see if water came in here now the the bottom is sloped i do appreciate that but if we had a good rain which we do get pretty often how much water if it gets in the back here is going to flow into the house let's go inside and have a look i'm worried it's yup just as i suspected look at this now when this gets sheet rocked the sheetrock is going to hold all this water in this cavity the back of the sheetrock is going to mold even though this is pressure treated in time this will rot and you'll have a really nasty spot in your garage any older house that has a recessed tankless my guess is that underneath this is a nasty area of mold growth not good that is a huge pet peeve of mine messy job sites what a pet peeve of mine whether the builder knows what they're doing or not when you see a messy job site you just automatically assume that the house is a disaster look at this one i mean it's a mess there's no dumpster there's good materials with bad materials mixed together i mean it's crazy it's ridiculous i'm sorry for that guy working here i wouldn't want to work on this job site that looks horrible if i was that homeowner driving by i would think this builder is terrible now look at this one on the other hand i'm assuming this is the same builder we're in a production builder neighborhood this one's much more clean not super clean but at least the driveway is clear they look like they've got it together that other one looks like a trash heap here's two of my pet peeves right here not doing a proper sill pan on a window this is a piece of basically paper with some plastic on it and this flashing is really garbage they're using this kind of like a sill pan the problem is this is not a flexible material so in the corners this is cut which means that this inexpensive vinyl window which i've done a video before on showing how often these leak in the corners when and if it does leak in the corners it's going to leak right in the building on this house and it'll leak in this corner back here terrible way to do it we need to use especially if we're using zip system they're flexible flashing for a seal pan so much better but here's the one that really bugs me is seeing this at the base of the house this plastic and paper based flashing that you can see rips super easily once it gets wet it will totally disintegrate i remodeled the house not too long ago that was only six seven years old and as we took the stone off to remodel this section i could actually tear this with my fingertips it was just absolutely destroyed and not only that it's not doing anything for air sealing and it's not protecting the bottom of this wood sheathing down here right zip system does a great job here on this face but this face is totally uh wood underneath here which means that water running down here if it collects and this is going to help it collect in that space especially thinking about this look this hurricane strap flapped up this makes a perfect trough so the bottom of that sheathing that wood is going to be nice and wet if if water comes in here and the other thing that happens all the time is landscaping irrigation soaks the side of the house if this area gets soaked i guarantee you we're going to have some rot and some problems in this house oh another thing that bugs me this drives me crazy look at this i mean what is that telling the homeowner about the quality of construction that their house has it's telling them that the guys that were doing their house were drunk now is that really true maybe not they had one beer at six o'clock at the end of the day but leaving that around on the job site the optics on that are ridiculous and the first time that something goes wrong and if that homeowner sees that they're going to think oh that guy was probably drunk when he did that right come on friends we cannot do this my fellow builders talk about this with your crew with the guys working there don't drink on the job not only is there drunk driving issues but just the optics of that wait till you get home to have a beer guys all right remember how we showed you spray foam before and how it wasn't a very good air sealer it's also not very good at waterproofing look at this pipe penetration through the wall you can clearly see there's zip sheathing back there no tape or flashing whatsoever on this this would be a perfect location to use zip stretch tape back there in this spot behind there at the sheathing level but instead they're going to rely on a big fat bead of caulking and look the siding guy didn't even try to get that close you're going to really put a big bead of caulking on there a quick flash boot some zip uh liquid flash would work well any of those things the other thing i want to mention was the the stucco over here is all prepped but the air ceiling is not great let's go take a look at that all right so on top of the zip sheathing they've got two layers of tar paper which is good for waterproofing but look if we walk inside look at all the light coming through here the bottom of the zip sheathing is not particularly tight up against the bottom plate and as you walk along you can see tons of light in that area that's really a place that we need to detail with a fluid applied flashing prosco fast flash uh zip liquid flash if we did that base wall detail there it would be airtight and bug tight this house is gonna have lots of airflow in there and look we've got an electrical outlet right here so as the air blows on that side of the house it's going to come up this cavity and it's going to come right in here the back of the sheetrock is going to get condensation on it and this stud bay right here it's probably going to have mold in a couple years plus just from an energy efficiency standpoint we've got lots of air coming through there plus that's going to be a perfect spot for ants or bugs to just march right in this customer is going to have an ant problem in their kitchen a bug problem a cockroach issue they'll have no idea where it's coming from they're going to be drawn in because that cold air conditioning is going to come through this outlet and down through there and it's going to be an invitation for those bugs to come out of the house huge pet peeve all right we talked about this earlier the light coming through this outlet this is going to be a terrible air leak but what's really driving me crazy here is look at this jagged osb on the side the electrician clearly used a hammer to make that hole come on oh and look they left all the osb right here that is such a pet peeve of mine oh here's one that i ca i i i can't tell you how big of a pet peeve it is this sheathing right here is basically cardboard sheathing see this it's glorified cardboard i could rip that with my hands if this had vinyl siding on top of it i could literally pop my knife out and break into this house with just a knife i could just slam it through here in seconds i won't because i don't want to destroy someone else's work but this is a terrible product for a house for several reasons number one it's not doing very good shear value for us but it's really hard to waterproof and air seal as well and look at this look at their details where they're penetrating up here they've got some vents poking through they've put a layer of tar paper which is going to help a little bit with water shedding but look how we basically have no waterproofing the peeling stick they've used has peeled already it's stuck for a while then it peeled same with this one over here it's stuck and it peeled now this one above this window head is still stuck for the mean for the time being but i would suspect that's gonna lose its grip as well now credit to this builder for putting a head flash on i love seeing that but if the head flash is not integrated with something that's gonna stay stuck it's a goner and again they've used this paper-based oh no no this is actually plastic based um flashing at the bottom probably a little better actually in terms of durability than that paper based one so it's going to shed this water and keep this bottom plate from getting wet that's a good thing but there's no air or bug sealing going on here bugs that crawl up are going to crawl in right here and go right into the house and i bet if we go inside on this house we're going to see daylight all along that base as well what we need to be using is solid sheathing either osb with a house wrap or zip system and i'm glad to see that lots of production builders are moving over to zip system now they got to get their details right they need to use all zip sheathing tapes as well and they need to use some liquid flash especially at their base wall but that solid sheathing is going to allow us to for instance at least do some waterproofing right here where we've got this recessed tankless box you can see they've used zip system tape to the zip sheathing to try and at least waterproof the top of that box now these outlets are cut it looks like the siding was installed and then this outlet was put on so that's a terrible detail we don't want to do that but at least we've got a good base without zip system sheathing oh there's so many pet peeves here this one i'm gonna focus on though look at this this this kind of uh my pant legs are up with a flood this drives me crazy no disrespect for any of the brands being used here but look how this is cut short we've got several inches of osb just bare osb showing we've got to have our house reps go past our sheathing the idea is we're protecting this sensitive wood material especially bare osb which is more moisture sensitive than solid wood this needs to go past that guys thanks for joining me for a few of my building pet peeves the point in this video is not to bash those builders i've learned so much over the years anytime i shoot a video i'm always thinking what would matt from 10 years ago like to know today and so when you watch one of my videos you're taking a job site tour i'm trying to explain things through my eyes on how you can build a better house a house that's not going to have mold problems a house that's going to be healthy and durable and efficient that's always my goal and if you're not familiar i actually have several other builders and one other architect also shooting videos their version of the build show on my network that i started the website is build buildshownetwork.com and every week we have six new videos from job sites around the country teaching you about how you can build and design a better house go check it out i'll put a link in the description to sign up for our newsletter every friday i'm going to send you an email that will have a short video telling you what's new on the website and all the links to the new content over there if you're not currently a subscriber hit that subscribe button below we've got new content every tuesday and every friday follow me on twitter instagram otherwise we'll see you next time on the build show [Music] you

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 882,866

Rating: 4.7916322 out of 5

Keywords: matt risinger, building, bad construction, worst building mistakes, how to be a builder, building houses, build show network, lessons on homebuilding, homebuilding how to, ugly house

Id: LuUxUt6MwIU

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 17 2020