What does Level 5 Drywall mean?

welcome to Vancouver carpenter today I want to teach you guys what a level 5 finish actually is because this term gets thrown around a lot in the building industry and I think a lot of people don't really understand what it means they just use it as this kind of prestigious term to be like I had my whole condo level 5 but they don't really know what or why they needed to do that because chances are they probably didn't the first one level zero yes there is a level zero that is just installed drywall with nothing done to it so no coats of anything just screwed on drywall the next one level one is commonly referred to as fire taping so this is just simply where tape is installed with mud and it doesn't even have to be wiped out nicely basically you just need to cover all the joints and any openings that connect one room to another with tape so this does two things one is its gonna slow down the spread of flames but it's also super important for slowing down gasses getting through so you don't want smoke and other gases getting through into other units so that's why it's referred to as fire taping places you'll find something like this as in Heat closets where people don't really look in there so like I said it can be as simple as slapping the tape on and wiping it out with your hands so it doesn't even have to be done with a knife in most cases level 2 is tape and corner trims installed and wiped out so you've got to actually wipe all the mud out so it's smooth and even apply one coat of mud over top of trims and fasteners tool marks and ridges are acceptable at this point meaning it doesn't need to be sanded level 3 so this is basically tape and two coats but it doesn't necessarily have to be all that nice or sanded yet so this is done where you're gonna be applying heavy textures or heavy wall coverings like say maybe thick vinyl it's not suitable for paint wallpaper or light textures next we're gonna get into level 4 this is your standard drywall finish that you're gonna see just about anywhere so this is tape and two coats over top of everything three coats over top of screws sometimes it might even mean three coats over top of butt joints and corner beads - if it doesn't look flat enough so at level four finish should provide a uniformly flat and even looking surface tool marks and ridges are not acceptable at this point so this is going to be for paint for wallpaper and anything where you need a nice flat surface this finish looks good under just about every condition except harsh lighting and that is what brings us to a level five the only time you ever need a level five finish is for really harsh lighting whether it's light coming in from a window or if it's coming from sconces or pot lights basically as soon as you have something illumining the wall you are now going to have to have a level five to not see what this is the big question the answer is the difference in texture between the drywall paper and the drywall mud that's all it really comes down to so a lot of people think a level five is actually like leveling out the walls floating things out making it all nice but actually a proper level four should have already done that the level five is just to stop you from being able to see the difference of the paper and the drywall mud so what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to put a coat of paint on this we're going to shine a light directly across it and I'm going to show you guys the difference between what those two surfaces look like painted and then you'll better understand what we need to do to get a level five and why we need to do it so right now we have this drywall perfectly sanded for a level four finish now you can see some marks but we're pretty we're up pretty close and so this is supposed to look like a screw there's another little bit of mud on there so I'm gonna put some paint on this and there's going to be three different textures actually there's going to be the unscented paper which we actually don't have any we've got the mud we've got the sanded paper and we've got this little space in between the mud and the paper and so they're all gonna look a bit different let's go with a nice thick coat of blue paint why not they got to make sure to get this real nice and uniform so that we can actually see these differences leave that for a bit and check it out later now that this is starting to dry let's take a look at it so if here's the really smooth drywall mud you can just see the very faint scratches from sanding which we'll fill in in a couple of coats then we'll move over a little bit you can see it gets a little bit rougher so you can see more surface texture this is the bare paper so there's two reasons this is happening one is because it just is a little bit more rippled than the smooth drywall mud the second reason is also the paint lifts the grain of the drywall mud it lifts the the fibers so what you're looking at here is you're seeing all of the hairs and the ripples getting kind of magnified by the paint and the light so here's what would be a screw you can see how it kind of stands out there and then the rough paper and then another screw the rough paper and then the smooth mud so you could just see how everything is kind of outlined now what I want you to do is imagine that on like a 20 by 20 foot wall with a huge window on one side of it shining light down the entire thing especially early morning light or sunset light like right before sunset when the Sun goes through the windows at just the right angle so what you're gonna see is when you see a wall of unpainted drywall you're basically going to be seeing the same thing you're gonna be seeing all the spots from the screws you're gonna be seeing the grid from all the joints and it's really unpleasant the only way to get rid of this is to apply a uniform coat of drywall mud over top of the entire surface well it's not actually the only way there is other products so there's surfaces you can use and what those are intended to do is equalize the surface of the mud and the drywall I don't know what they're they're basically like thick paints that you then send but those are risky I've seen big problems on jobs before where the painters come in and they spray a whole house with surfacer so they spray this super thick coat of paint on and then they don't have adequate heat and ventilation and so what happens is the whole house gets saturated it's humid it almost feels like it's raining inside there and the drywall then soaks up all that excess moisture and the tapes start to buckle you start to see all the joints peeking the screws shrink so basically you can take a perfect level for finish and ruin it by applying too much level-5 surfacer without enough ventilation and then it turns into this nasty fight between the painter and the drywall ER trying to figure out who caused the problem most of the time is the drywall ER because people don't really know about those kind of problems and so that brings me back to one last point so what is the reason of having all these levels and why were they developed so the reason they were developed was basically to stop a lot of the arguing between you know the contractor architects the painter the drywall er is to get everyone on the same page and to also help make sure they're comparing apples to apples when organizing quotes so they can say this room gets this finish this room gets that finish and everybody can be on the same page when putting in competitive bids okay I hope this helps demystify what a level-five finish really is and what some of the other levels of finish are and why they came about so as you can see the level for finish is going to be adequate in fact more than adequate under almost every single condition so there's no reason to get all hoity-toity demanding that your drywallers do a level 5 in your entire house you don't need it anyways thanks for watching Vancouver carpenter hope this was useful and until the next video

Channel: Vancouver Carpenter

Views: 259,557

Keywords: drywall, patch, hole, wall, repair, plaster, spackle, paint, taping, mudding, tape, mud, joint, skim, finish, fastest, level 5, DIY, painting, beginner, tutorial

Id: jaHqULjGxLE

Length: 8min 25sec (505 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 17 2020