Episode 008 1995 - 96 Season
| House Wrap | Fiberglass Wall Insulation | Sun Tunnel Skylights | Accessorizing (design) | Building with Bricks | Conventional Loans | |
To order a Video Tape, call 1-800-TO-BUILD and ask for Episode #008.
Michael Holigan: Before we start talking about insulation, we're going to talk about putting a wind breaker on your house. If you've ever been out on a cold windy day in a sweater, you may have gotten very cold, with the wind blowing. Put a wind breaker on, your okay. That's what we're going to do with the house. We've got an energy specialist with us, Steve Easley, good to have you here, Steve.
Steve Easley: Hi Michael.
M.H.: Why do we need a housewrap on a new home?
S.E.: Homes have thousands of places where building components come together, and everywhere that they join, there's a crack or a gap. That causes air to infiltrate in, which causes you to be more uncomfortable and raises your energy bills.
M.H.: I've heard horror stories about people hearing their house whistle, hearing air blowing through it, or putting their hand up next to an electrical outlet, and actually feeling air coming through the house. Will this prevent that?
S.E.: Absolutely, and that's the great thing about an air barrier, is that you wrap it around your home, it seals up a lot of those cracks and gaps that would be difficult to do with caulking. Over time, caulking wears out, where an air barrier wrap, it's there for the life of the home.
M.H.: If we don't have a house wrap on the house, how much air are we going to have coming into the house?
S.E.: If you have a R-13 wall and you have even a 9 mile an hour wind blowing across the home, that reduces the apparent R-Value of that insulation down to about 5.
M.H.: More than 50% cut in R-Value.
S.E.: Absolutely.
M.H.: So that's why people get cold even in a brand new house, or get warm in the summertime, just missing a housewrap.
S.E.: It's real important to control air infiltration because every time that air infiltrates into your house, that pushes out the air that you've already paid to heat and cool.
M.H.: Does it do anything else besides prevent air from infiltrating the house?
S.E.: The unique property about Tyvek housewrap is that it's breathable. It allows moisture vapor to pass out, but keeps the air and water out of the home.
M.H.: Okay, and there is a lot of new moisture everyday inside a house, with showers running, pots and pans boiling water, people just talking. There's a lot of moisture being put out on the air and a heating and air system is trapped, it can't let it out, so you need some way to get it out, don't you?
S.E.: Absolutely. An average family puts out about 70 pounds of moisture a day and it's important that that moisture has a way to get out of the home.
M.H.: Steve, they're going ahead and wrapping right across the window openings, what are they going to do for the windows?
S.E.: Well, they'll take the housewrap and they'll wrap it around the entire home, and then they'll come back later and X-cut around the windows and doors, and they'll flash around the windows as they normally would. This just allows you to cover everything up, that way you get all the cracks and gaps around windows and everywhere, then come back later and flash around your windows.
M.H.: So that way you're sure that your wind breaker is zipped up, there's no openings, no cuts, nothing like that.
S.E.: Exactly.
M.H.: And if we do have a cut while they're installing a housewrap, we can come back and just tape over that to hold it together?
S.E.: Right. There's a special sheathing tape they use to cover up any rips or snags that happen to occur.
M.H.: Doing this to a house has got to cost some money. I mean, it's not free. What can a homeowner expect the builder to pay to do something like this to a house?
S.E.: Well, it depends on where your at in the country, and a variety of circumstances, but on average, you would save somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple hundred dollars a year on your energy bills.
M.H.: Really? And installation of it couldn't be more than $300, $400 dollars to do a house.
S.E.: That's about right.
M.H.: So you can save it back in the first couple of years.
S.E.: Yeah. We see paybacks anywhere between two years and eight years on a typical home.
M.H.: Depending on the climate that you live in. And it makes sense that it would work in a cold wind or a hot wind, so it's a summer or winter, north, south part of the country, it doesn't really matter, does it?
S.E.: Anytime you have conditioned air exfiltrating out of your home, you've got to pay to reheat or cool it.
Episode 008 1995 - 96 Season
| House Wrap | Fiberglass Wall Insulation | Sun Tunnel Skylights | Accessorizing (design) | Building with Bricks | Conventional Loans | |
To order a Video Tape, call 1-800-TO-BUILD and ask for Episode #008.