5 BETTER FRAMING Options!

how could you upgrade the worst built home in america now if you haven't watched my last video press pause here real quick and go watch the last video i published i'll put a link in the description we went and toured a house under construction by a production builder that is code legal but is absolutely terrible just terrible construction and there's a few things that could be substituted product wise and methods wise let's say that would make the performance go up exponentially and really wouldn't cost that much more so in the build show today we're going to explore five wall assemblies traditional stick building really not much different than what you saw on that job site but swapping some materials and some methods to much higher performance today's build show all about fixing the worst built house in america let's get going all right guys so first off let's talk about what we saw at that job site that was two by four construction with a cardboard sheathing on the outside and then ultimately a standard fiberglass r13 bat now i say that's code legal but it's not code legal everywhere in the u.s and you need to figure out which iecc international energy conservation code cycle you're under but currently where i am we're under the 2015 codes and that says that in climate zones one or two you can build a standard 2x4 wall with r13 cavity insulation and you're legal and that's what we saw at that house so that is legal per code in terms of insulation requirement now i would venture to guess that if they had a blower door test they would not meet their air tightness requirements although that's not being enforced in many jurisdictions of the u.s yet it's going to be and as we publish this video my hope is that you're interested in building not just a code legal house but at least that or better okay so a two by four wall that's actually legal to build in all climate zones you can build a house that will meet insulation requirements with just a two by four everywhere but if you look at this requirement as you get into zone you either need to put r20 in your cavity meaning now we got a frame with a 2x6 wall or you need to go r13 plus a number and when you see a plus that means exterior insulation that's either something like this which is zip r that has insulation bonded to the sheathing or that's rockwool comfort bat on the outside or polyiso or xps or some other type of sheet insulation installed on the outside of the house so even in the very coldest climate alaska is a mix between climate zone seven and eight you can build a two by four wall you just need r10 on the outside or you can build with two by sixes and using our five on the outside so back to our original question how do we upgrade america's worst built home that i was in the other day the easiest way to do that is this right here we're going to go ahead and swap out that cardboard sheeting for osb sheathing this is going to be the least cost way to sheath your house and then put a standard mechanically attached house wrap tyvek basically a white house wrap that you're going to hammer tack a staple on to hold on this is going to be a much much better house it's going to give it much better rack strength it also means that we're going to have to now force our trades to drill through and make a clean hole that we can actually air seal later and when we put a house wrap on the outside instead of that cardboard sheathing we can use much better products to waterproof the house because water is the number one animated durability and if you saw that house there was all kinds of penetrations that were done poorly including windows they were using a standard visqueen a black visqueen which is plastic basically for a sill pan for the windows and if you look in the corners there's a bunch of cuts in those corners because it's not a flexible material which means that those corners are vulnerable if water would get in there and anytime they penetrated with wires or pipes it's really hard to air seal when you're using that cardboard sheathing when we go to plywood or osb or a solid sheathing and then put a mechanically attached house wrap so much better so that's number one now let's talk about cost i promised in the last video that i would show you some costs in today's environment materials have gone up quite a bit and so remember that depending on when you're watching this video these costs are going to vary but even six months ago a lot of these materials were cheaper today in my town if i were to buy a sheet of that cardboard sheathing it's around nine bucks osb is about double or slightly more that cost around twenty dollars and again that's gonna vary depending where you are in the us but twenty dollars for a sheet of osb house wrap uh like tyvek if i were to buy that on let's say the lowe's website is running about 13 cents per square foot one square foot of that so i'm going to try and break down my costs as i talk about these wall assemblies per square foot of wall and this is inclusive of the 2x4 the sheathing and whatever type of wrb weather resistant barrier house wrap we're using so this first wall assembly the one that's the worst build house in america i'm estimating that house costing about a dollar 62 per wall square foot and upgrading to this assembly that i think is a better assembly with osb and house drop we're talking about two dollars and 18 cents per square foot so that's a 35 percent increase just in wall costs remember we're not changing the slab we're not changing the roof other things that's just per square foot of wall so it is a little bit more but i would say that labor is not going to increase a whole lot more but let's also look at effective versus nominal r values when i say nominal r value what i mean is when you look at that bag of let's say rockwool insulation it's going to say r whatever on there r15 let's say for a 2x4 high density rockwool bat when we talk about that wall we often as builders say oh that's an r13 wall but in fact the nominal r value is different than the effective r value the effective r value takes into account the two by four studs the headers the double top plate the windows all that sort of thing now i'm going to leave off the windows for now just thinking about a section of wall that includes two by fours we think that's r13 on that first example but in fact the opaque assembly is really 10.526 per an online calculator that we found it's a pretty good one by the way i'll put a link in the description now this next assembly when we swap out that osb it's actually slightly better because wood does have some insulation value and half inch osb according to that calculator is like r0.6 so we're talking about an 11.11 effective r value of that wall assembly now let's upgrade that a little bit let's go to an r15 insulation and let's upgrade our sheathing from standard osb or plywood to something like this now this is huber zip system full disclosure they've been a long time show sponsor of mine this isn't necessarily a sponsored video but i do have a good relationship with these guys because i really believe in this sheathing this is a sheathing that's made from oriented strand board a much higher grade than standard commodity based and you can get it in 7 16 you can get it in half inch which is brown or you can get it in 5 8 thick which is also brown now my house under construction i used standard 7 16 on my walls it was green and then in my roof i went up to half inch zip sheathing on my roof and that's brown now the reason why i think this is an upgrade from that first assembly is because this zip system has an integrated weather barrier this brown facing or the green facing you see here this is going to shed the water and keep the osb perfectly dry they also have a fantastic system of tape and fluid applied to take care of the joints so when the framer installs it and nails this on then we're going to go ahead and use the tape and the liquid flash to make this a both watertight but also here's the big upgrade a much more airtight assembly now when you look at this assembly number three what you're seeing is we can air seal between the sheathing and the concrete that's zip liquid flash you could also use other fluid applied products as well there polywhile makes blueberry which would work really well pro-sigo makes fast flash and joint and seam which would work really well now i can air seal where the house meets the foundation and remember anytime we air seal we're also going to do a great job of bug sealing and keeping those bugs out of our house so this is a big upgrade it's not a quantum leap forward in terms of insulation value but it's a huge jump forward in terms of air tightness and remember air is secondary only to waterproofing when it comes to those control layers on our house let me take a quick break here real quick and use an example yeti coolers why are these so effective there's really two reasons number one there's no thermal bridging you don't see these insulated from wood studs and then they've put insulation in between these have continuous insulation this lid right here is one oh latches well too is one big piece of insulation in here and it's about i don't know inch and a half thick let's say and secondarily the second reason why these work so well is because you have a really good air seal see this rubber gasket that runs all the way around the lid when i close this lid that rubber gasket seals up nice and tight and they've got these rubber straps too so that when you close that lid it's really airtight in there we've got good insulation and we've got good air sealing and that's the genesis for these next couple assemblies i'm going to talk about okay so let's finish off with number three though this assembly is two by four construction with zip sheathing and r15 bats again this is going to work in climate zones one and two but you're gonna have to increase to a two by six cavity if you're in climate zone three four five and this assembly would work in all those now this now we're going to bump up another 20-ish percent this is 2.63 per square foot of the assembly and that's a 21 increase over standard osb and house wrap with fiberglass bat insulation so we've gotten to a higher density rockwool we've gone to a better zip system i'm not counting all the accessories though so take this with a grain of salt when i'm giving you these numbers i'm not talking about the liquid flash i'm not talking about tapes and sealants and all that kind of stuff i'm really just talking about strict material costs i'm trying to get as much of a closer apples to apples as i can on these assemblies all right in assembly number four what i like about this assembly is now we can build a 2x4 wall that will work in any climate in america including alaska and my assumption is canada i actually don't know the canadian building code super well but if alaska works my assumption is it's going to work in canada as well and that's by using a product like this this is zip r this is insulation bonded to zip sheeting so this is r3 zip r3 r3 insulation bonded to zip the way you install this is you're going to nail through the insulation the zip is still going to be on the outside you won't even be able to tell actually when you look at the house that there's anything different and what i like about this is it's really straightforward and standard for the framer for instance my friend matt carricker when he's renovating his abandoned mansion he did the zip r3 his builder who had never done any exterior installation before was able to do it really easily with a framing crew that had no idea about these insulation details it nails on really simply and now we've got all the same waterproofing details plus we've got exterior insulation now if you're in tube if you're going to use two by four walls and you're in climate zones three four and five we need r5 on the outside of our building so we're actually going to want to go to this this is r6 so now we're going to be able to meet the code we could do two by four construction with a zip r6 which is an inch and a half total in thickness and now we're going to meet that code now or if we're up in alaska or canada you're going to want to go to one of these two to meet your codes and those areas you're going to need are 10 on the outside with a 2x4 wall or with a 2x6 wall at least r5 now this is r9 and r12 we're talking about a total thickness here of 2 inches and a total thickness here of 2 and a half inches and again i like this because the details are really straightforward we can still air seal and we can install our windows pretty standard pretty straightforward with this we're not changing anything from the way we've framed houses in america for the last 75 years okay one thing i want to note in this detail though as we get to the foam on the outside of the zip r sheathing we want to protect that bottom of the foam and here's a great way to do it i got this detail from my buddy steve basic and i did this on my house where we're gonna rip a pressure treated two by to the thickness of the zip bar so if it's one inch inch and a half two inch or two and a half inches we're gonna rip that pressure treated to that thickness and now we can use liquid flash by zip to basically air seal and bug seal that base of the of the house anytime i remodel all the rot i found on older houses is all in this bottom one to two foot area so if we can really do bomber waterproofing in that bottom one to two feet we know for the most part that our houses are going to be in good shape for decades to come okay before we move on to the last assembly for today anyways let's talk about pricing for this wall assembly so if we did a two by four wall with zip r3 and a rockwell r15 bat and a two by four wall now we're talking about 2.95 cents per square foot in today's prices of that assembly but check this out we really jump up in performance our effective r value now is our 14.6 i really like that that means we've got over a 50 bump just in insulation performance from where we started at that first assembly or two that's really really good and this is only a 12 jump compared to just standard zip and standard insulation so for only 12 percent more for that wall square foot we can go up to this i really like that let's talk quickly about where zip r is and price today then this is per four by eight sheet and again this is my local price just kind of giving you some local flavors per square foot for the zip r three dollar thirty eight dollar 53 for the r6 zip zip r 9.72 and zip r 12 a dollar 88 per square foot material only so really cost effective and relatively straightforward way to add that exterior continuous insulation to get that yeti cooler effect so to speak and get rid of all those thermal bridges from your studs okay last assembly for today let's talk about bumping up to two by six construction now and this is actually an assembly i've done a lot here in the south over the years two by six construction with plywood on the outside and now we're gonna talk about some other weather barrier options in the south in climate zones one two and three poly wall is a lumaflash plus with a silver facer bomber waterproofing on the outside i really really like it now it does cost a little bit more and we're gonna put a high density bat in there we're going to use a rockwool r23 in that cavity now we're talking about 4.17 per square foot so that's about a 40 jump from that last assembly you need to decide if that's the right move for you and and what your goals are how much exposure that does the house have and all my houses that have really high exposure meaning no overhangs really modern construction this is my go-to i use this all the time this is a really good assembly all right guys we uh we went through a lot of data today there's a lot to talk about here but stay tuned for my next episode i have five more assemblies that i've been working on which take the performance even higher we're going to talk about two by sixes two by eights we're going to talk cost we're going to talk about some other exterior insulation choices including rockwool's comfort board and some other ones stay tuned for this next episode and again we're going to get into costs on these as well but hopefully you learned something today and if you're talking to those production builders out there or those builders that are using those more standard assemblies talk to them about these upgrades i really think these are going to make a big difference and not just performance not just r value or insulation but i think these are going to make a big difference in the longevity and the durability of our buildings in america because ultimately does it really matter how insulated the house was if it falls apart and has water damage and mold and rot no we need to remember that water is our enemy we've got to get our water and all of our details that come with waterproofing correct and remember when air leaks in too it's usually bringing humidity in as long as it's as long as we're talking about the south and when that humidity hits a cold condensing surface there can be water problems with air leakage as well so remember that yeti cooler example we want continuous insulation we want good air sealing and that's going to lead to better performance better comfort better built houses also big thanks to my friend lou varney who did all these renderings for me lou knocked it out of the park and really allowed me to show you visually what i was looking for on these different assemblies he's working on the next five for me for the next video so stay tuned for that and go follow him on his instagram feed guys if you're not currently a subscriber hit that subscribe button below we've got new content every tuesday and every friday and by the way if you want more on high performance construction i'd love to have you go check out our website buildshownetwork.com i've got several other builders and an architect i mentioned him earlier steve basic shooting videos on how to build a better house go to that website and click on the link for our newsletter so you can get an update every friday and what's happening 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: 399,299

Rating: 4.9246678 out of 5

Keywords: building science, matt risinger, worst house in america, remodeling, construction, wall assemblies, zip wall, huber zip, fast flash, prosoco, zip system, best wall assembly

Id: VYqINjqKafY

Length: 20min 17sec (1217 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020