House Wraps

Just a quick heads up for all of you people who are building garages, or re-siding your homes. House wrap, or Tyvek, or Greenguard, or Typar, are all brand names for a similar product know as House wrap. It is a wonderful product which acts as an air barrier, preventing drafts in your walls, as well as preventing liquid water from penetrating. It is however permeable enough to allow water vapour to pass out of it, making it ideal to apply to the outside of your house before putting on whichever style of siding product you choose. It does have one major limitation to it and not many people seem to know about this, contractors included. House wrap deteriorates from exposure to UV radiation. This means that once you put it up on a building you have a limited amount of time that it can site exposed to sunlight before it no longer performs as expected and voiding the warranty on the product. Most house wraps have a 3 to 6 month limit on the length of time it can be exposed to UV radiation before voiding the warranty. If you are one of those people who, and we have all seen them as we drive around the city, have left your building wrap exposed over the winter, sorry, but you have just spent between 100 and 300 bucks for nothing. If you know that you will not be covering your house wrap within 60 days, DON'T PUT IT ON! I know, I know, 2 moths, that seems like forever. No problem, you say, I will have that banged off on the next weekend. I don't know where anyone else who might be reading this lives, but this is Winnipeg, weather is not our friend. In fact weather here is like that friend who is sometimes there, like when you have a party, but sometimes they are in a bad mood and ruin the party. Or when you are moving and they say they will show up, but they don't or worse, they bring a Civic and can only carry pillows! Seriously, make sure you can do it within 2 months. If you are unsure, leave the sheathing material, most commonly OSB exposed, it will weather better than the house wrap will.

Happy Building!