Sheath the Roof Ep.68

[Music] so working at height is great but it's also nerve-racking it's not just nerve-wracking because you don't want to fall but it's nerve-wracking because you don't want to hurt anybody down below you with the things you're working with so there's a whole range of things that are implied as soon as you get off the ground the first is you need to tie yourself off if you can and the second is if anything ever gets away from you you have to let people know so whether it's just the stub of your pencil or whether it's a half a sheet of plywood that the wind carries away or whether it's I don't care what it is if you are on at working at height then something goes to the ground you've got to let people know in my experience it's usually as simple as headache or heads up so the second part of this little conversation about safety working at height and being careful about what's falling is if you walk on to a site where people are working up high don't dilly-dally getting in and off but getting into the center of the work and away from the work it's at the edges that things tend to hit the ground so don't dilly-dally when you come under the eave don't dilly-dally if when you're walk walking underneath a scaffold or wherever it is if people are working just don't hang out there because you're just making their job a lot harder and frankly you're making your life a lot shorter if you don't keep your eyes open [Music] roof sheathing or sheathing refers to the material that is installed on top of the rafters or trusses that creates the solid surface or substrate to which the roofing material is fastened now in times past it would have been sawn lumber boards one-inch thick of various widths and in many cases repurposed boards from other dismantled buildings but nowadays it's almost always plywood or OSB 1/2 inch or 5/8 inch thick it's a lot like the decking on the floor just not as thick and with no tongue-and-groove profile it's nailed to the rafters with eight-penny nails which are a little over two and a quarter inches long on a very specific nailing pattern which is six inches on the edges and eight inches in the field the nailing pattern is important because the roof sheathing creates a shear diaphragm much like the floor and the walls create shear diaphragms that the engineer has used in his calculations to ensure the integrity of the structure notice that this roof sheathing is also laying right out over the top of the car decking we installed on the overhangs in these areas I'm being careful to fasten it down with staples because 1/8 penny nail would push right through the OSB right through the car decking and out on the bottom side and we just don't want that so I'm keeping track of when I'm working over the overhang and switching over to a medium crown stapler with an inch and a quarter leg length as a side note staples are great but they do not hold as hard as a nail so when I'm using staples I put a few more of them an to try and compensate now you may have seen H clips used in roof sheathing and I think that they are a vital component if you're using inch and a half roof sheathing but we're using 5/8 and in my opinion H clips on a roof like this are a huge frustration to install for no net structural gain at all so I'm using them you [Music] you so I spent some time early in my framing career in Las Vegas putting the roof sheathing on houses and housing tracks where you basically spend the entire day or maybe a month or maybe a year doing nothing but throwing down four by eight sheets on roofs cutting them to fit attacking them down and marking the rafters for 15 cents a square foot now usually somebody else comes behind you and nails the roof off but one of the things I learned very quickly is that the air hose is your mortal enemy maybe think of it like a little strip of banana peels it follows you all around the roof it's round so it will roll underfoot and it will knock you right off your feet and in some cases even tangle and trip you up so just be very careful around it never take it for granted and never never step on it and while I'm on this topic another reason that I like OSB for roof sheathing is it has more traction than plywood OSB sheets are engineered with a little extra texture on one side and that little bit of extra gription really does help keep your feet in place so if you're installing OSB on a roof make sure you put the sticky side up [Music] I'm up here rolling out this roofing felt basically at the same time that I'm sheathing the roof itself this 30 pound felt material is a very old very tried and true and very predictable roofing solution it's an organic felt paper product that has been coated or soaked in some type of an asphalt or oil emulsion and it really sheds water it's referred to as a 30-pound felt because historically 100 square feet of this stuff would weigh 30 pounds another very similar product is 15 pound roofing felt which is basically the same thing just lighter weight the purpose of the material is to create a membrane between the wood sheathing and the shingles now as a quick interjection there's another type of membrane product that a lot of people install on the edges of their roof in colder climates this product is called ice dam and the purpose is to prevent moisture that might occur and can penetrate as snow and ice build up around the edge of a house creating a dam think icicles we'll talk more about this later and as you can see I'm not installing it on this roof and in the next episode I'll explain why back to the roofing felt itself here are the reasons why it's important first it provides an additional waterproofing barrier in case there's some crazy wind or snow or moisture getting blown back uphill and somehow squeezing its way around the shingles if that were to happen it would land on or run into this felt paper and quickly run down the roof and off the edge second it provides a barrier that helps protect the bottom of the shingles in the event that there's a nail that did not get set flush or maybe a splinter or not that is projecting up a little proud it also provides a barrier so that the wooden substrate cannot draw out or soak out any of the oils or tar in the bottom of the shingles that are just really important to leave in the shingles or they belong third in some cases after a big storm or weather event some shingles can be blown or torn and ripped right off a roof now if the shingle blows off that does not necessarily mean that the felt paper underneath will have blown off and if it doesn't you've got another layer of water protection right there keeping your house dry sending the water down the hill and over the edge instead of letting it pour in through the joints in the plywood fourth roofing felt creates a waterproof barrier immediately which is always a good thing especially in Oregon and this is really helping us out on this house in September we're not going to get the actual roofing shingles installed for a couple of weeks yet and we could see some more rain so with the felt on that we're dried in and the house will be plenty dry just like it is the fifth and final reason why it makes sense to put a roofing felt down before you put your shingles on is because it's relatively inexpensive and easy and will extend the life of your roof another way to say this is there's just no good reason not to do it [Music] now I'm well aware that there are more modern materials in the marketplace that may have made 30 pound rough felt like this obsolete or at least old-fashioned I would never try to make the claim that this is the very best underlayment for a roof I'm simply saying it has worked for a long time on a lot of roofs and is going to work great on this one also [Music] [Music] the last thing to point out is these tow boards that I'm standing on you've pretty much got to have them on any roof that's steeper than a 612 pitch and this one is nine and a half twelve not only do they help keep me on the roof but they keep the tools and material up here as well as a side benefit they're also helping to keep the felt paper on the roof if a big storm blew in it just wouldn't take much to rip and damage this felt so these tow boards and the two by sixes are giving another layer of protection to keep our house dried in no matter what happens so thank you for watching clear to the end of this video it tells us a couple of things number one you're interested in construction and number two you're getting something out of our little series here on how to build a house so if you haven't already done it subscribe it won't cost you anything it lets YouTube know that you're watching and that you like what we're doing an interesting fact that we've learned is that more than half of the people that watch these videos are not subscribed I don't quite get it and so if you can figure out the button to push that will make you a subscriber to our channel would you do that it'll help us thank you for watching essential craftsmen and keep up the good work

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 287,376

Keywords: anvil, forge, blacksmith, forging, craftsman, mentor, trades, tradesman, career, smith, carpetner, builder, wisdom, workbench, fabricate, tools, tool, tips, trick, hacks, protip, fall protection, toe boards, working at height, roof sheathing, roof sheeting, plywood, OSB, staples, H clips, roofing felt, ice dam

Id: dKtnliaN5C4

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 26 2020