Exterior foam and housewrap

Finally we are installing the exterior foam and house wrap to get ready for the windows to be delivered on Oct. 10th and installed that week. The foam is 2″ of polyisocyanurate Or Polyiso for short. The house will be wrapped with Vaproshield Reveal shield house wrap for the open rain screen design of the fiber cement panels. This stuff is like a goretex fabric on the house.  As I install the foam, the housewrap needs to be put on right after to keep any rain off of the foam, as we are expecting some rain this week.

I had E’s help again for the day which saves me a lot of time. We installed the 2 basement windows today as well.

E. cutting out the windows with a reciprocating saw after covering them with exterior Polyiso foam.

Back part of the home covered with Polyiso exterior foam.

Back part of the house partially covered with the Vaproshield house wrap.

A new helper.

I also had a new helper, freshly back from a journey through Eastern Europe. E was a fantastic help with some framing, and some air sealing the foundation to framing joint. Oh, she’ll be back to help more! Smart, and a hard worker!

E cutting on the miter saw

E grabs the nail gun and continues framing while I was busy with the mason, who cam to check out the chimney job.

We have a roof and Oh, siding material, what a long journey you have made, please come inside!

The roof insulation dried out enough that the roofers could put the Sika Sarnafil PVC membrane roof on, just in time for a lot of rain predicted in the next two days.

Today the siding arrived. It has made a long journey from Switzerland to our home, and I had the pleasure of offloading it with a forklift (of which I have only driven once before in my life) very carefully. This is really great cement board that has an integrated color all the way through. No painting, no re-painting, EVER! It will be used as the siding for the front area of the home, and a different color for the roof fascia. I got it safely in the garage, where it will wait for install.

Lastly, after the rain that soaked the house, and somewhat messed up the (finished) concrete floors last week, I threw some OSB plywood over the windows to keep the wind driven rain from the oncoming storm out of the house.

Next we put the 2″ of exterior foam insulation on the house, covered by Vaproshield house wrap, and get the windows installed about October 12.

The roof finish material installed, no rain can get through now!

Kind of a selfie loading the siding material into the garage.

SwissPearl siding material in the garage.

House boarded up from rain, as if it was abandon.

 

A visitor to the house.

Not much has happened this week. Finished framing the interior upstairs walls, and while L and I were cleaning up lumber around the house, we found this little bat between sheets of OSB plywood leaning against the house under the patio roof. He stayed there all day, so we left he plywood so as not to disturb him/her.

We will get the Sika Sarnafil membrane roof installed on Monday. Then we’ll start on the exterior insulation at the main floor level, getting ready for windows in a couple weeks or so.

After windows go in, we are officially “dried in”.

Our bat visitor hiding between sheets of OSB leaning against the house.

Well…the sun does shine, eventually.

It rained, and rained, and rained from hell! 3 months of no rain and it rains the day after we put insulation on the roof.

The poly-iso insulation on the roof got really wet, as well as the rest of the house, but the roofing contractor insists the insulation will dry and can be roofed over on Monday. I have my doubts as to whether it will dry enough, but it will be able to dry to the inside for months over the winter. We have a very dry climate here, which will help.

This is part of the construction process, weather happens, and can not be controlled, so you just deal with it the best you can. I just hoped we could get it covered before any rain since we had been lucky enough to have it stay dry over the course of framing. Oh well, the sun did come out today!

Rain soaked roof insulation.

Rain clear into the basement.

Sunset in the afternoon.

Exterior wall insulation drying.

Yesterday sucked, today sucked worse!

Well, we loaded all that foam on to the roof to put the exterior insulation on the roof. L and I put down 3.5″ of insulation, it went pretty fast, and fairly easy. The next step was to put down a water barrier for  a few days as there was a possibility for rain, and this type insulation should not get wet. In the mean time the last 1.5″ of insulaiton was stacked in bunks on the roof.

We started putting on the water barrier….then the wind came. It’s like having an out of control sailboat on a roof. We called it a day weighted down the bunks of 1.5 insulation and left.

Enter the next morning where we arrived at 7:00 a.m. while the wind was calm, to find the carnage of 1 bunk of insulation off the roof, and in the neighbors yard, some of it impaled! We got the water barrier on without any trouble, and all was well…then the wind came…again!!!!

When I came back from grabbing a sandwich for lunch, some of the water barrier was ripped off the roof, so I climbed on the roof to find even more torn off by 30-40 MPH gusts.

I threw up my arms, and pulled all the water barrier off after only putting it on hours before. Had I not, the wind would have done the job for me, and stacked it neatly in the neighbors yards, again.

Man overboard! Foam carnage in the yard and neighbors property.

L helping to install Polyiso foam atop the roof

More water barrier being torn off by wind.

Water barrier being torn off by wind.

After lunch surprise of water barrier hanging off roof.

Framing is almost complete and foam, lots and lots of foam.

I haven’t updated for a while, so here goes…..Framing is almost done, some hangers, blocking and brackets left to put in then we will get the framing inspection early next week.

I spent a fair amount of last week framing the deck.

My wife, “L” took this past week off work to help out. Together we framed the interior upstairs walls. Then we rented a 26′ Penske box truck that we loaded with 4,000 square feet of rigid Polyiso foam insulation for the roof and walls, we unloaded it at the building site, and proceeded to stack it on the roof, and inside the main floor with an all-terrain fork lift. All I can say is I have the best wife and life partner in the world!

Sunday, with the help of two brothers, we will nail on the roof insulation and cover it with a waterproof material until the roofing contractor comes up mid week and installs the Sika Sarnafil membrane roof. This will be a big relief as it is one BIG step closer to getting the house dried in for winter. After the roofing goes on we’ll put exterior insulation on the walls of the home, cover with a waterproof, yet breathable house wrap, and get windows in around the first of October.

Deck framing. When your friends tell you they want to join you for a beer on the deck, you better build one. The deck is about 64 feet long and 8 feet deep and wraps from the back patio to the front porch.

L guiding the bunks of insulation onto the roof and unloading them.

Upstairs wall framing. 4 interior windows up high will let light flow from the great room to the private areas of the home.

Roof sheeting almost done.