How To Install Vapor Barrier

hi its Shannon hear back from house improvements comm and today's video I'm just going to show you how to install six mil poly air vapor barrier we've kind of started hanging it on the wall already but basically it comes in rolls usually a thousand or five hundred square foot now when you go to purchase this you need to specifically say that you're looking for poly for air vapor barrier you can't just use any heavier medium weight poly it needs to be approved for this okay so we've got a simply got a bat wall a bad insulated wall behind us we're at the point now we've got all the electrical around the insulation and we're ready to do the air vapor barrier this is what seals and keeps moisture from your home going through the wall into the cold space of the of the wall and also prevents drafts from coming from outside into the house so a very important part of your house construction basically not very many major tools or need you're going to need a utility knife and some kind of a hammer stapler or some kind of stapler and you're going to need a small caulking gun and some acoustical sealant that's this black stuff that you can see I've already got on there very messy stuff so be careful with it as you can and then I also use tuck tape for sealing some of the joints on that and we'll get to all those different processes as we go so to start out with the situation we have you can see I've got some done here already behind us we've come down a wall here and around the corner and I've got it all sealed with the acoustical caulk as you can see up in the corner we've got a little bit of a different situation here at the end here you can see we've got the rim joist area and over here is the side joist of the house what you can't see is there this space here isn't actually insulated for the most part other than right in this corner but way back in there there is insulation already but we need to bring the seal that we have here on this wall needs to be actually right on this joy to complete the seal so on the sidewall we're going to come up the wall and across and seal and staple to here we're on this wall we're under the rim joist area I just simply sealed it along here and I'm going to deal with this in a different manner we do have some videos showing you a few different ways to actually enslave and seal these joist box joists because they are a little bit difficult to do they can be done with poly they can be done with spray foam and they can also be done with a combination of bad insulation and two-inch rigid foam that's sealed with cans spray foam so so you might want to look at those videos to deal with that area we're just dealing with a normal flat wall we are in a basement so we're not doing the ceiling but if you were on your main floor much of this pertains to exactly the same thing except that you would also be doing the same process up on the ceiling as well so I normally what I would do is I'd do my walls and then I would install the ceiling right over to the corner let it come down and then where it comes down I would I would seal that to this to the wall stuff that's already done but really it's just like dealing with with the wall except that you're working over your head okay so we've gone ahead and just got the poly cut to length normally I would just roll the roll out lean on the wall and try to do it as continuous as I can but for this demonstration I had a cut here already for this demonstration we're just doing a smaller piece so that you can see the less joints the better because you know there's less ceiling to do less chance of not getting sealed so we've cut a piece off like I said just to do this demo we've got it already started to be hung up there normally like on this wall I just brought it up and I was able to use this top plate as a guide to kind of get my length rate so I'm straight and everything and I just went along stapled it let it drape down and finish it off after here like I said we're actually sealing around the corner and up here instead of here so what I did is I just pre mark the poly at the distance I wanted so that I can use these marks as a reference here so that I get everything straight and I and I don't run short on the poly so so we just kind of did that ahead of time so basically just let it drape down oops don't get tripped up on it around my ladder okay so these marks I had we're just running along the top plate here so that I have this lip to work with one thing you want to do is when you staple don't staple initially don't sleep oh right where you're going to be acoustic you try to keep your staples down a bit so you can pull the poly down run your bead of acoustical then pull the poly up smear it into the acoustical and staple it in place if I was to staple it up here then I'm trying to peel down this little thing and that you're just going to have a mess so just you can see I've given myself a flat there to work with once you have the poly kind of started you can keep yourself Street by just letting it hang and it you know it's not all full of wrinkles when you get into corners especially when you're going around a corner and continuing on make sure you have you know a bit of a fold of the poly in there if you pull it across too tight let's say you've got such a pelear and staples over here but this isn't going right back into the corner when you go to drywall or somebody goes to dry wallet they're either going to cut that or they're just going to have a heck of a time getting the drywall corner nice so make sure you got a little bit of a ripple back there so they can get their board or they're finishing material right back in Nice so so you can see I've got just a few staples in it's hanging pretty good obviously you want to make sure it goes right down to the floor and have a little bit access as well you can see we have one receptacle down here we'll deal with that as we get to it so you basically get it hanging level I don't like to go to hog wild with the staples especially if you're going to be covering it up in fairly short order you know within a week or so it's really not a big deal so basically what I'll do is about every couple feet every second stud I'll just put some staples in just to hold it back and that's it's just keeping it taunt and and flat and it kind of keeps the insulation from having a chance to move around okay so just go along like that just kind of use my hand to keep it smooth and pull pull it a little bit tight I get over to the corner here we're going to be running a bead of acoustical in the corner so as long as I've got this flap here I'm good so I'm going to staple it on this stud so I can pull it back and cou stick back there or tape okay so we've kind of got that all just roughly hanging and I haven't stapled right to the floor because again I need to be able to pull this up and get under there to work and not have acoustical all over me so so we've got it hanging there I've got my acoustical caulk ready and I'm not going to do the whole thing I'm just going to show you basically what you need to do so like I said I'm going to do the caulk up here don't go too crazy with this stuff because like I said it is messy and if you get it on you especially your clothes you're going to wish you had never seen it I think mineral spirits is about the only thing effect effectively cleans us off okay we had a bit of a patch in the corner here to make this transition so just in case you're wondering what all that is going on there so I need to actually get back to my original spot and then back over this poly and then I'm going right down this corner and I don't know if you can see now my back to you and everything but just going right down over the first layer of poly that I had in there just putting a bead trying to keep my new sheet out of the way I'm just going to go right to the floor here you could tape this joint as well which is less messy okay so I'm going right down okay when you when you're dealing with this it's really stringy so you don't want to just stop and pull it away from the wall just kind of work with it and get the little strings wrapped up or tied up so they don't get on everything now when I go across the floor many times if you didn't seal your bottom plate in this this case too would or in this case to concrete but it could be to wood as well then you'd want to run that bead of acoustical rate down in the corner to seal that joint rate up in this case we've got the plate sealed already so I just need to get this on the plate itself right here I'm running over top of an area that's already sealed on the first go around so you're going to see what I'm doing until I get out here but now I'm off onto some new wood okay so like I said if if your plate wasn't sealed you'd be right down in that corner there and I'm just going to stop there always have a scrap of poly to lay that gun on so that it's not dripping on your floor and you're walking in it or something okay so just get my poly down what I do with my Stabler okay bring my poly over and remember I said get some you know make sure there's this is pushed back in there little bit sollars it's not pulled tight across the corner press that right back into that acoustical that you had there and staple rate through the acoustical if you do that which I don't know if you can even see that because I'm working in the corner the stapler caught the sheet as it went by so if you miss or puncture it anywhere where's the Anton lamp just take a bit of this red duct tape that's used commonly used on you know host wrap and that sort of thing works really good to seal you know lap joints locked over joints and stuff in this - or punctures where was I there I try to do those as soon as I make them because otherwise you forget where it is sometimes they're hard to find I find the the flog in okay so I'll just continue working my way up here get this all sealed in I'm going about every on these acoustical joints I'm going about every six or eight inches make sure your staples are right in now you see how this you know these inside corners are kind of tricky because the Polly wants to fold and band and stuff so you see how it just kind of naturally made this first fold like that but if I just simply push this up there's actually an air gap through here where air could come through so now once I staple this first fold I'm going to actually put some acoustical in there so that when this gets all up there it's this sealed rate up and you don't have a sameer passage through there just pulls that all right back up see how stringy that is if you're kind of zoomed in there so now when I fold this up and staple it that just creates its own seal right there and again I'm making sure I've got some excess up in here so when this is dry walled it's not interfering not interfering with anything okay so it's important to try to staple through the acoustical as much as you can so it's kind of sealing up most of those staple holes okay so we've come down the corner and across the floor let's finish this corner off quickly okay and I was able to keep my fold owed away from the acoustical down there so I don't have to do the same thing as happened up there and I'm just making sure this comes down and pressing it into that acoustical you can always tell when you've made contact with the acoustical because it turns really black otherwise it kind of looks like that it's kind of milky when you're just not having contact okay so you just continue that all the way around wherever you need to make that seal like I said we could have just used the red tape there and sealed this lap instead of this bead back here but I wanted to just show you but that way now like I said we go all the way around and finish that off but you kind of get the idea of that I'm going to show you how to do the receptacles so around the electical before we put this up there's already a vapor box around it the wirings ran through there it's acoustically sealed and that's that's keeping the box from leaking air and moisture so what we need to do is get that box sealed to this sheet now so just take your knife now you don't want to cut that box it's behind there so just be careful you don't push through too far just cut this out now what some guys will do is actually cut this hole that I just cut big enough that they could just teat just like that but when you try to push on there you're not it's hard to get a good seal so what I do is I cut this hole just a hair bigger than the let metal box and I pull this flange that surround that paper box through the poly get it out onto this surface like that okay so now I just find it easier to tape this when the when that's pulled through to this side like I said this tape seals really well you could do acoustical around here if you wanted because of the messiness of it I really don't you just make sure you got it stuck right on there go all the way around like I mentioned the wires in this box should be a have acoustical around them as well to make that seal all the way otherwise you're kind of defeating the purpose okay so most penetrations like this electrical or even some plumbing the tape is a lot of times a good option for sealing that kind of thing up so if when you are running multiple pieces you definitely want to make sure like here's our end you definitely want to make sure that when this next piece goes on I come back to a stud because it's easier to seal on this stud than to try to work over here where it's not quite needing the stud so my next piece I would get it hanging up so it at least laps by by a couple inches run my acoustical on here or even tape and seal that joint up I wouldn't recommend trying to just butt it up against your last cut and seal even if it is on a stud make sure you get at least one stud space overlapped and seal that up so I think that pretty much looks after anything that I can think of off top my head on the whole process we've got going on here so again I would just have to finish off the acoustical top and bottom here and continue on with my next next sheet so I think the most you know one of the most important things is just remember to try to seal up as much as you can some people will go and put tape on every one of these staples it's not I don't know that it's actually required by code probably not a bad idea but that is one of the reasons why I don't go and overload it with staples is the less penetrations the better my thinking is I don't worry about it when you put your drywall up here it's going to puncture it with every screw you put in as well but at least the drywall is kind of holding it pretty tight to the stud and it kind of doesn't really seal it off but it will help reduce the air flow and the moisture flow so okay I think that's about it so this is just dealing with the wall but a ceiling would be basically the same thing really not many major changes for the ceiling so okay so I hope that helped you along in your project and if you have any questions about this or any other question you have on Rennell that your type of taking on check us out on the forum and post your question up there you can just become a easily become a member and post your question and myself usually will be myself will answer you we do have a few people on there now that it's getting quite popular and they're kind of helping out a bit as well so somebody will get to your question there's no doubt about that and we're usually pretty quick about it so if you like what you've seen and you maybe want to follow me a little more you can follow me along on Twitter you can follow me on Facebook I try to put a post up there every day during the week on both of those items just links to videos usually is what I do so so you can do that we also are on patreon we've got a patreon campaign going on so if you feel like you want to pledge us a little bit that'd be great and if not that's fine too so so thanks for watching and I hope you continue to subscribe and like what we do a 6 mil Polly vapor air barrier air

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 375,960

Rating: 4.8862681 out of 5

Keywords: vapor, barrier, how-to, diy, install, installation, how, reno, renovate, basement, wall, walls, house, home, improvement, moisture, seep, ground, underground, grade, level, poly, 6 mil, sheet, roll, seal, vapour, air, draft, drafty, DIY, framing

Id: 7cz4y1U7bi0

Length: 20min 3sec (1203 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 15 2016