Tips on Preparing for Siding Installation
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Transcript from Siding Installation Tips Video
Oh baby, it’s a big day for me on the job site. We’re at my house under construction, and my hearty plank siding is going on the house. It’s, absolutely looking beautiful, but on today’s. Video we’re, going to talk about the other side of the house.
All the prep work that needed to happen before the signing guys actually started hanging. Some siding on the house, specifically those little pieces of wood that are strapped to the house. Those battens or those pieces of wood are called a rain screen and we’re, going to make the case for a rain screen, and we’re going to talk about all the details before siding starts today’s, build Show siding prep, let’s, get going all right.
The guys are doing a fantastic job on siding install, but before they showed up there’s, a bunch of work that we did on this house now, first off the most kind of uh, visible thing that’s. A little different.
Is this right here? Obviously, i have exterior insulation on my house. This is two inches of poly iso insulation. It’s, foil faced and then on top of that i ran these 1×4 battens. This is basically just a piece of pine wood that’s been screwed into the studs, and this is actually going to accept the hardy plank on here, so that there’s.
Actually, an air gap behind that siding that air gap is called a rain screen. It’s actually code in a lot of parts of the country. When i worked in portland oregon, that’s code for you to do a rain screen behind your siding, but it’s, not code everywhere, but it is best practice everywhere.
I heard a great analogy. Actually, i watched a video on youtube from the guys at mti and they made an analogy that i’m, going to steal from them, which is this rain screen is kind of like putting a shield up.
You know if you’re. If you’re, a roman warrior, you have a shield up in front of you so that if an arrow hits you it’s going to penetrate the shield, but it’s not going to penetrate your body. If i just had a a jacket on and an arrow hits me, it’s going to penetrate and it’s going to cause some damage right.
But if i have that shield up it’s, going to stop those arrows and they’re going to they’re, going to have that gap. That gap gives me a lot of durability and a lot of insurance so that if water gets behind my hardy, what’s going to happen? It’s just going to fall down harmlessly now.
I’m gonna be putting james hardy siding on the house, but you could do any kind of siding. On top of these batons – and you’d – be good to go, you could put wood, you could put lp, you could put whatever brand flavor style you want, but if you have that air gap, you get a lot of durability.
You get a lot of forgiveness in your wall system. Now you got to get the details right there. You want airflow in there here’s. What we’re doing at the bottom of the wall, let’s, see if i can [ Music ], show you right here so at the bottom of the wall.
This is my bottom plate behind here. I actually sheed the house with zip sheathing. You can kind of see that right here, so the whole house has zip sheathing and we’ve, sealed all our penetrations at the zip.
That’s really. Ultimately, my waterproofing is way back here at the zip. Then i put my two inch insulation on and then the rain screen battens, but at the bottom of the battens i’ve got this product right here.
This is a corrugated plastic. It’s uh. You know it kind of looks like cardboard that’s made from plastic, and this is actually a manufactured product from core event. This happens to be their sv5 siding vent and if you look at those corrugations like, if you were to zoom in on that, you could actually see the sun through there.
The idea is that air could flow through there, but on the bottom side they’ve pre-installed, a bug screen. I don’t know if you can see that very well, but there’s. A bug screen that’s actually glued onto this.
They make this in different thicknesses, but this is the perfect three-quarter thickness to mate in with my three-quarter 1×4 battens on the bottom of that. I also just for extra durability. Put a bug screen on there that i stapled up here to the zip sheathing and then i’m wrapping that around.
That also gives me a little bit of extra protection on the bottom of my two inch poly iso. Now, if you watch my old videos, though at the bottom of my poly iso, i actually put a 2×2 pressure treated at the bottom below this, so this is going to land on a 2×2 and then i’ve got this but point being.
This is where air can flow up at the bottom stay tuned. For my next video, where i’m, actually going to talk about all the specific details on my james hardy install, but at the top of the wall, we also need an air gap up there.
That can either be at the top of your siding. Like if you have a freeze board, you could put a gap there and you could use another one of these core vents there or you could have a vintage soffit and have that go into that soffit area either way.
But the idea is water penetrating through that siding is going to hit that air gap and it’s, going to fall harmlessly out of the way. Now, when i’ve talked about this. In the past i’ve. Had people say, oh, why aren’t you using pressure treated battens here you don’t need them.
These batons are living behind the siding. They can fully dry. They’ll, never have the chance to rot. They’re, not touching the ground. They’re way off the ground and then that airflow back there means that if there’s a little bit of incidental moisture that gets behind there, no problem it’s.
Going to drain and dry out, this is a cheap insurance policy for your house. If i messed up a detail back here and let’s, say penetrated a wire and forgot to flash it or missed it. With this rain screen gap, all of a sudden, those small mistakes are not as big a deal back to that same example of the roman guard, with the shield up a little bit of water penetrates there, no problem it’s, going to fall out Harmlessly there’s, nothing to force that water in they’re, often referred to as a pressure equalized rain screen, because the pressure of that air that wind, forcing that water in is going to all of a sudden hit that space.
And it’s going to fall down there’s, no longer any pressure. So can you install your siding right up against your zip sheathing sure every siding manufacturer is going to talk about that or up against your your white house.
Wrap? Is that best practice? No, it’s. Not this is the best way to do it. How much does it cost gosh? I get that question all the time it’s really hard to answer on my 2700 ish square foot house. I would guesstimate between the cost of the batons and the labor.
This probably cost me 10. 11. 12, 000 bucks somewhere in that range. So in my case, maybe three bucks or 325 a square foot additionally to the cost of the house, but again that insurance policy is huge.
For me, the other thing it’s going to give me is a paint job that’s. Going to last far longer i have the same rain screen on my house that i remodeled 15 years ago, with james hardy, siding i’m going on 15 years ago.
I painted it that paint job still looks great, so you’re. Going to get a longer paint life out of whatever siding product, if you do this, there’s, a bunch of advantages, besides just that extra insurance.
Now let’s. Talk about a couple details, though, when you do this rain screen, you’ve got this stick assembly. You got some other things you got to deal with. I made a whole video on how to install these, so i won’t, get into those details but, for instance, wires that penetrate i want to penetrate the wire from the inside.
I want to go ahead and use either liquid flash or prosico fast flash or i could use zip tape or sega tape, something to water and air seal that, because i’m building a very airtight enclosure. I also want to be real specific about how i drill holes.
I told all of my subs anything that needs to go from inside to outside that’s, going to penetrate that zip. I need one hole for one thing so usually, when freon lines come out, the guys come in with a sawzall and cut a big giant hole and you ‘
Ve got two freyan lines and a control wire. No, no. We didn’t. Do that we have one hole for this frame line, one hole for the return, freon line and then one hole for the control wire. Now these we started the liquid flash.
This one hasn’t been flashed, yet we just drilled that we’re, going to finish that up. We’re, going to it for lack of better term with that liquid flash, which is going to air and water seal. It then we made a bunch of siding boots out of this material.
This is versatech, which is a solid pvc product. You can buy it in sheets. You can buy it in basically two by sixes, which is what this is drilled a hole, drilled. A couple mounting blocks: eventually this will go over top of this, and then i actually have some other cool things going on.
I found this air x titan product, which is meant to basically cover over, so those hvac line sets those copper lines will come through here and then there’s a collar with a vinyl kind of like a boat cover type wrap that will cover Over all that, so this insulation won’t get weathered, so we ‘
Ve got a bunch of options for doing that. I’ll use one of those for this too. This is my sand and water heater. These pipelines still need to get insulated and i’ll have a heat pump water heater outdoors here we also trimmed the windows prior to installing our hardy plank and uh.
This is hardy trim right here. This is basically a five quarter by four from hardy, but this is also a milled profile out of versatech. I still need to paint this to match my pre-painted hardy plank, but we milled this as a more true window.
Sill with an angle on here. You’ll, also notice. Underneath this it has a kerf cut that’s to break the surface tension of the water that wraps around, so any water that hits the sill is going to want to drip down on the face.
The hardy not running back, let’s walk around. Let me show you actually at the front of the house, i’m, going to show you a couple other details, all right guys, so we’re on the front. Porch of my house now and i’m, doing something a little different on the front porch.
Instead of a horizontal siding, i’m, going to do a vertical siding here. So now i ‘ Ve got a cross hatch for rain screen so that i can still get that airflow if i would have just mounted these boards horizontally and then nailed up this vertical siding.
This is going to be some ship lap pattern siding from the hardy artisan collection. I wouldn’t get air flow, so in this case i ran the standard vertical battens screwed those into studs. Then i’ve nailed these on horizontally and then stay tuned for my future video.
We’ll talk about how we installed this. I’ll have uh that same uh corvette product at the bottom for airflow right here. This is set off the porch a little bit because i’m gonna have stone uh set onto my porch, so i have a stone patio when you first walk up to the house and then this will actually vent into the soffit area and Then eventually, i’ll.
Have a wood soffit! I’m using a koya from delta millworks up here and kind of a cool pattern, so stay tuned for that. That’s, going to look real real nice, but let’s end the video on the side of the house.
Where i have a couple of other details, i want to show you: okay, along the same vein of siding prep. I had my masons go ahead and run the brick on the house prior to siding, because i’m, going to be using keller plus, which is a pre-painted siding, so no matter which siding you’re using if it’S a pre-finished or a pre-painted siding.
You want to run your brick first, the masons are going to, as you can see, slop a fair amount of mortar onto the ground and whatever is around us. So you want to run that first, so that things are cleaned up and then, when you’re on your side and you’re good to go which, by the way, actually i want to show you that real quick check that out In that cool, that’s, going to be my recessed arlington inbox, so i’ll, have a nice flush spot to put an electrical outlet on there? I ‘
Ve got an aqua hose bib here that’s. My garage heat pump that’s, going to be a mitsubishi system just to keep my garage a little bit cool or a little bit hot. For my workshop space that little pipe that’s sticking through right.
There is a future proof. Pipe and i still need to put a uh kind of a outlet box on that to finish it off square for siding the guys installed another one of these arlington inboxes here for me, so that’ll, get an electrical outlet! That’s, going to look real real nice.
My guys did awnings for me over a couple of windows that i felt like, or in this case a door needed a little extra protection. This is the gable side of my house. If you look up, we ‘ Ve got a two foot overhang, but we’re way up there.
You know this looks like a three story at this point, because there’s a window into my attic. It’s, really a two-story house, but this door had it not had an awning above, would take a beating. You know when the wind or the rain comes for sure.
The bottom half of this door would get wet, if not the top, so that’s. Why we built an awning over this door and then we ‘ Ve got a light fixture box right here that ander and luca, and my team fabricated.
Again out of that versatech pvc, they even routed out some little wings so that the metal uh four inch box that goes in there will sit nice and flush, and then over here i ‘ Ve got another window with an awning on it.
Now this one is a little bit different. This is a recessed uh window. This is the only one like it of this particular style. In my house. This happens to be an innotech window that full disclosure i got as a sample from those guys that gave this to me.
This triple glaze beautiful window set a little differently because it’s, european style flangeless. So that’s. Why? It’s set back, we trim the sides and the heads with hardy kind of making an exterior jam extension and then this seal here we fabricated a little bit different.
This is also from that versatex material inch and a half thick. We’ve got a kerf cut on the bottom here, so we can relieve that pressure, and i still need to get this painted to match this, but man, the guys just did an incredible job.
Getting this all prepped, this side of the house is almost ready and then, while we’re thinking about it, this is probably a future video, but all those crazy holes. You’re, seeing drilled right there.
Those are all of my electrical service wires, and these outlines you’re. Seeing here this is where my panel box, my meter, can my sub panel and my generator panel is going to be mounted. So i still have a little bit of prep work on here.
This will probably be the last side of the house that we side, because i need to make a mounting block for this. I need the electrician to poke all his wires through and then liquid flash every one of those fair amount of work goes into the electrical panel side of the house to make sure that it’s just as air and water tight as the rest Of the house, but man that’s, looking good and then when the video on the side of the house back here.
This is where the guys have started on this back corner on the siding. As you can see there’s. A lot of work and a lot of prep that goes into making sure that, when the siding guys arrive, everything’s correct, but we ‘
Ve done the details right. I think i’m, going to have a really low blower door score here and i’ve ensured that this house is watertight for the life of the house and again i’ll. Make that case for you that rain screen is super vital.
There’s, a bunch of different options, products you can use there’s, dimple mats and there’s 3d mesh products. Whatever you use, try and put an air gap behind your siding. At least the minimum quarter inch three quarters better.
If you do this, you’re talking about massive durability, massive longevity and forgiveness for your house. This is well worth the money spent on it guys if you’re, not currently subscriber. I’d love to have you hit that subscribe button below.
I talk about all kinds of nerdy things on this channel, but i’m really interested in teaching you. The principles of building science learning the details of a really well-built house and encouraging builders and the general public to desire a well-built house and to know what it takes to build.
A well-built house guys hit that subscribe button below new content every tuesday and every friday. All right guys stick around for my next episode. My siding guys have just started. I ‘ Ve got a lot of good details, a lot of specific details on how and why? How to install where to nail, what to nail, what to or what not to stay tuned for a james hardy sponsor video, where we’re.
Talking about all the details on my very specific siding, install see you next time on the build, show [, Music ] guys. I got something else to tell you about. This is really cool a build original series, high performance, canada, my builder buddy nathan, has five awesome.
Episodes about some really well built houses up in canada. This is a don’t, miss series. The first episode we published here on my youtube channel, but episodes two through five. You got ta sign up, so you can go see them.
We’re gonna publish them back to back every single day. New content sign up in the link below we’ll, see you there
