Insulated Studs? This is a BIG Innovation in Framing!

for the last 100 or so years when you're gonna build a house in North America you make a call to the lumberyard and they drop off a pile of sticks like this the problem with traditional framing though is everywhere you've got a stud you've got a huge inefficiency in your wall you've got a huge thermal bridge in your wall on the build show today I'm gonna show you a brand new type of framing you have never seen before today's video is sponsored by T stud let's get going okay so first let's look at traditional lumber standard 2x6 right here what's the problem with that I've build a lot of houses out of two-by-six very strong but the problem is about 25% of our house ends up being wood and wood is not particularly good at insulating you'd never build your cooler out of wood would you this is roughly our six point eight whereas the cavity in between our 16 inch studs we're gonna put let's say in our nineteen bat in there so compared to the center this stud is very very inefficient now in today's video we're about to take a tour of this house that's been framed with this brand new product that I have never seen before this is called the T stud and this is what it looks like in the naked version what you're looking at basically is a truss you've got a 2 by 3 on both sides and it's connected structurally with dowels and then what they do is at the factory they actually use closed-cell spray foam in between there so remember that 2 by 6 that was an AR six point eight this isn't our twenty can you imagine that this is as good as that cavity without our 19 bat so now we have no need for exterior insulation that big blanket that I talked about putting on all those houses because the studs themselves are not conducting the heat through our 20 that's pretty cool all right without further ado let's go out in the house and actually show you what it looks like on a whole house framed with the T stud okay let's start here guys this is an uncomplicated part of the house we're in the bonus room above the garage and this I think is going to give you the basics on what the T stud is all about so first off they've run these on 24 inch on center marks and you can see this is that T stud this is actually five-and-a-half inches deep so the same depth as a standard two by six and then here on the front though this is where it differs we're actually two and a half inches wide on the flange so in effect it's a two by three with another two by three and then those dowel rods and you can see here they come to the jobsite in a pallet already foamed in the center but if you look at this from a wide angle you can see what I really like about the system we've got a single bottom plate right here you've got studs and 24 inch centers and then you also have a single top plate on here with the T stud as well because that T stud is a truss you've got a lot more strength and we're gonna talk to the inventor in a minute will tell us the specifics but I love how if you look at this exterior wall right here you basically have that foam that's in the center all the way down the wall and that's how they are able to get these into an AR 20 so now when we put our 19 bats in let's say on this 2 by 6 you actually have more insulation value at your studs than in your cavity which is totally different now the electrician's have just started on this house and there's also a couple of interesting things when it comes to electrical the electrician's actually just going to poke through here because there is a void and you can do that with a screwdriver and then always gonna do is stab his wire through no drill necessary now in this case we've got framing below us so they're fastening with these screws right here because we've got that two and a half inch wide bottom plate you can't use just a standard 16 penny nail you actually need at least an inch pin Edmund so you'll see they've staggered these screws and they've screwed them down now in other parts of the house where we're on concrete slab on grade they're gonna have a Jay bolt that's gonna come up in the center of this foam here and then they've got a big wide plate that's going to go on top of that so that that Jay bolt will transfer its hold down power to this bottom or pardon me to the kind of top and bottom cord so to speak on this t stud and then wear walls come together it looks like the framers framed this wall here separate from this wall that they put a strap you're gonna see that on typical standard top plate or single top plate type framed advanced framed houses and that's what they've done here they put a strap there they've also done that in this corner here where they've strapped the corner together and they frame this with it what we call a California corner so this wood right here is just gonna hold drywall up and they've done a good job of holding that back a little bit inside the corner so that insulation can go all the way back through man what a totally wild totally different system that I'm used to seeing okay this is something interesting too they've used it for headers let's look at this one first so we've got a looks like an eight-foot patio door right here no bigger than that it's actually a nine-foot patio door now we're on a gable end right here so we don't have a lot of load but look what they've used they've used tee studs for the headers as well so in effect you've got an insulated header they've run these that horizontal single top plate all the way down and then they've got three tee studs acting as a header same with these windows over here if you look at these windows over here they've got a single tee stud in the center which again is insulated that's that are 20 stud and then they basically just pack the cavity the framers said that it was actually easier to do it this way than it was to put a bunch of small cripples in there so again you've got that continuous top plate all the way across there and then here they've got their king stud and their jack stud and those two right there are helping with load as well and then these two studs that are in here they're basically just drywall nailers they're just holding it but again because it's an AR 20 they're providing insulation so now you've got an insulated structural header you can basically eliminate all of your normal lumber that you might use for headers so your LS LS your lvls all those things that we might have to build in the field and a sandwich capacity with some insulation in between you can eliminate that and you do that with the t stub pretty cool wasn't what a unique system simple yet something I've never seen before pretty wild let's go grab Jesse the Builder and see what he thinks about these hey guys I'm here with the Builder of this house Jesse Jesse thanks for having me on your job man my pleasure is this your first time using t stud oh this is not this is probably our 15th time using T studs we've been solid T studs for a little over two years now dang did you tell me earlier that your own house was the T stud house that you built that's correct about to a little over two years ago my own personal house was the first t-star house built how the first he's not house so two years later what's it been like you know as a builder the biggest difference I've noticed and come to appreciate is the fact that we've got in this freeze-thaw cycle we've got up here Minnesota yeah you tend to get your builder callbacks on your nail pops your sheetrock settling and things like that and we've seen a drastic reduction in any of those gonna call that there's one year marker when you're normally going back to fix that stuff a lot less because of this what do you attribute to that do you think for us I think it's it's got to be the stability of the t stud and the thermal break in their traditional wood studs are in this climate you know you're building in the rain you're building the snow of those things just tend to dry out and they can buckle on you so for us we've just seen a lot of stability with these studs Jessie would your framer think about this either the first time or now 15 houses later yeah well we've got a couple different framing crews and like anything in this industry guys move a little slower and so the first time they saw this there was definitely some swear words but by the second or third house they were jumping at the bit to get to another T stud house and they've really come to appreciate the the differences in the framing the lightness of the walls and so they're actually able to speed frame ax T stud houses a little bit quicker than they can do a traditional house because of the less weight that's kind of cool less wood framing two feet on center versus 16 on center single top plate so yeah they can stand up longer walls with less guys I hadn't thought about that you got a single top plate to sue now that walls a little lighter because you've got a little less weight overall two foot centers single top plate that's cool now tell me about Calvo you know when we get a typical SPF framing package let's say there's at least you know 5% of those thuds that go back to the lumberyard or in the trash or coming from blocking what's your what's your waste factor on these with the T studs you know we're probably looking at less than 1% rarely do we send one back and if we do get a little bit of twist in there then we just end up it either using it for a cripple onto our window or something like that so okay so very little waste that's cool hey guys I'm here with the inventor of the teesta Brian Iverson now Brannon know people watching this video at this point are thinking can this really replace a 2 by 6 for its structural value what would you say to that I can tell you that it's we're actually four times a 2x6 no matter if they're made out of lvl or LSL all feel they call this the x-axis they all fail in the x-axis because they Bend out a deflection if you get too much of a load on it because we're pressuring down that's that's wanting to curve out basically exactly so because we turned the board's perpendicular we stopped the ability of the board to deflect under a load in that x-axis anymore so that was the only way we fail is just like a tree standing in the forest it we want the weight to go straight down so we actually go take the weight all the way down so we're actually certified to hold eight thousand six hundred pounds versus only about 2,200 pounds for a 2x6 and about 900 pounds for a two-by-four Wow quite a bit stronger Bryan that's pretty cool yeah I can admit it was impressive a two-footer held thirty thirty six thousand pounds oh my gosh that's crazy yeah Bryan when I look around the house I don't see that there's any color difference between bottom plates and studs are you selling pressure-treated or how we keeping termites rot that kind of thing happening at the bottom plates we're going to start treating all of our products with next-gen so it's a four in one solution rot mold fire and termite all in one so you'll have the option to buy them with all treated or just the plain tea studs by themselves so you can actually get a Class A rated T stud is that right that's right now Bryan tell me about options this is the tea said they used here which is basically like a two by six replacement what are the other options we could buy from you okay so this we call this the Barenaked tea stud so it's the same frame if you're gonna do spray foam in the cavity you can spray us in in the in the field itself so that so frame the house with the naked tea stud no insulation in already so this is in the wall correct and this is your demo to show that right so here's your sheathing on the outside the tea stud now is here and so then you could spray from the bottom plate let's say from your slab spray in between and continuous from the slab all the way to the roof line right correct and you run put the Barenaked tea studs in run all your lectric old wiring security system whatever you want to run through so you can run everything you want to through there and then spray foam us and in the so you can either do you know one two three inches or all five and a quarter inches of foam whatever however you want to see that and that way you have solved for almost all of your transitions of where you could potentially have air leaks coming into that cavity plus if you've got two pounds spray foam that you're spraying that with you're adding a ton of structure right you I've seen tests before with with two inches of closed cell foam and just half-inch sheeting where a two by four shot out of a hundred mile an hour can and will bounce off so my guess is you're gonna add a lot of hurricane tornado resistant to the house as well if you did this method so we're already hurricane compliant and seismic compliant by ourselves with just this t stud this T stud we know that we're gonna be able to pass all the hurricane testing without the sheathing on that's pretty amazing and then tell me about this guy right here we actually did the boston passive house conference and they have asked us for an hour 30 t stud because they want to get rid of all the staggered stud walls dang so this is an AR 30 version our thirty place basically a two by eight where we are equal in strength to a two by eight in a wall up to 16 feet tall with that but we only have five inches of fiber wow that's pretty cool in our value thirty so we actually heated up that wood member to 200 degrees and we had no transfer to the other side after eight hours wow that's pretty neat so that's that's sick it's impressive Brian I got to say I've never heard of this before thoroughly intriguing so for people watching this video whether you're someone who's about to build a house or a builder how do we buy this how do we get all your product you have a couple of options you can have your lumber yard contact us and we'll set them up as a stocking dealer right away okay if there's nobody stocking in the area we will bundle up whatever that you need to have and we're going to ship it to you direct just have a forklift there to pick it off and so we'll ship directly out of Canada I don't or we'll send partial loads to the lumberyard we'll do whatever it takes to get the tea stones out there that's pretty cool so how do people contact you Brian what's the best way to get a hold of you guys sales at T stud comm the letter T then stud calm calm he stud calm Fred and can you guys help builders out there let's say if I've got a house coming up in two months I'm gonna pour a slab for can you guys help do the takeoffs if I've got a traditionally framed a house and convert that to a two sub takeoff yeah well we'll do those right away we'll actually try to half ways try to compare ourselves to a 2x6 or whatever yet you were going to do especially when it comes to you value calculations or the average r-value we can show you the U value through this for those of you are educated you value for this is 0.03 to 3 Brian last question I know people are gonna be asking cost tell me about let's say a standard 2500 square-foot house what's the Delta how much more are we gonna pay for a t stud compared to traditional number okay so the average house in North America 2500 square feet so we're a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars extra versus a two by six Wow so the more complex the house obviously the more costs to have involved we have a couple of 2,800 square foot two-story houses going right now full basement walkouts they're extremely complex ten-foot on the main floor second floor nine feet tall and we're 5,000 extra and that's the retail price today that's amazing and then there's gonna be some deduct right I mean my guess is with an are twenty stud you're probably gonna use less of a heating and cooling system you may you may be able to forego the geothermal that you might have might have wanted for efficiency because now you really don't need it you could use more standard let's say vrf equipment you're gonna get fantastic air tightness when you couple this with a Huber zip system on the exterior right because we've got a really tight envelope it's impressive stuff guys thanks Brian for having me out for sponsoring today's video what an incredible trip from Texas up here to Minnesota to see what these guys are doing check out TC calm if you're not familiar with my videos we've got new content every Tuesday and every Friday hit that subscribe button below otherwise follow us on Twitter Instagram we'll see you next time on the build show [Music]

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 1,277,647

Rating: 4.8282461 out of 5

Keywords: framing, framed walls, insulation, insulated studs, building science, 2x4, 2x6, 2x6 studs, 2x8 framing, 2x6 framing, thermal bridge, exterior insulation, framing innovations, new framing lumber, lumber, framing lumber, house frame, tstud, t stud, Thermal Stud, Build Show, Matt Risinger, BUILD

Id: mxDSulcLpAE

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/no-mad]

It is a great idea but sucking in chemical based insulation dust on every cut makes go no.

[u/DangerHawk]

I've seen these before and I was honestly skeptical at first. I don't like poly foam insulation on principle, but the truss design of the stud is legit. These things are crazy stronger than regular studs. They'd be good for REALLY high walls or for structures in high wind/seismic zones. I'd like to see what the potential R-Value would be if you used empty ones and filled them with Rockwool or blown in fiberglass.

If the price points are true, only $1000 more than standard 2x6, that's well worth it in my book.

[u/chiselbits]

Doesn't seem any worse the all the other poisonous products we've all been installing for the last 100 years.

Plus you can order them bare and have the insulators take care of the cavities.

[u/R1PKEN]

I think the T stud folks keep referencing fiberglass batt insulation to help offset the cost of the manufactured T stud. I feel if you are going to pay the premium for the T Stud and want that thermal break, why would you then install the cheapest and least effective cavity insulation possible?

They also mention some non-standard attachment requirements which seems like it could increase labor costs, but maybe that’s offset with being more efficient? It’ll be cool to see some cost comparisons if these are more widely used. But in my opinion, if you’re going to go for a premium wall system SIP is still the way to go.

[u/2AspirinL8TR]

These houses are next level cost and technology and mind blowing to somebody that works on old houses and cabins.

Who has a job that can afford this and what is it ...

Very interesting

[u/KookeyMoose]

They use to call us carpenters, but with this shit we’ll all be called Lungers. Fwack sake what retard came up with this genius idea.

[u/sambo728]

How eco-friendly is that ? Also that stuff can't be good for the workers who install it ? I would assume they would have to be wearing respirators at all times plus there would be off gassing too

[u/greg4045]

I'm building a 600 sqft luxury cabin for myself in a few months.... might go ahead and do it with this as a trial.

[u/preferablyprefab]

The bare ones could be good for certain things, but I’m not into the foam.

What’s the point chasing a higher R value with disregard for the embedded energy in your products? All that foam and fire retardant etc has a massive carbon cost and it’s terrible for your health.

A house like this will take many decades to offset the environmental cost of its construction.