Questions on Framing

[Miedrn]

Someone here mentioned building better than codes for long lasting buildings. I also just read on "This Old House" and article about framing where they encourage framing at 16" OC instead of 24".

I assume they are still talking about 2x6 framing although the article didn't specify it exactly. I want my home to be structurally sound and last for as long as possible but I also want it energy efficient.

Could I build with 2x6 at 16" OC and still make it energy efficient? I haven't found any information about insulating with these dimensions.

It also encourages the roofing at 16" as well as the floors. Is this feasible? I'd rather spend money on the basic construction rather than finishes which I could replace later.

Your thoughts?

[PEG688]

My opinion would be 16 "OC on all walls , and the roof if it's stick framed. If it's a truss roof 2' OC is just as good. I much rather have 5/8 CDX plywood roof sheathing , holds roofing nails better in my experience. I also prefer comp roofing hand nailed over gun nailed , and don't even consider putting comp shingles on with staples driven with a gun .  You might as well just throw them up on the roof and "hope" they stick

 The reason for 16" OC is strenght and looks , walls framed 24" OC tend to telagraph the dips and such between the studs IE wavey walls . On the interior you can used 5/8" S/R to combat that effect some what. It is not so much about insulation as you'll still be insulating with a R -21 batt or BIB 's you 'll get more R value , of course it will cost more up front ,the BIB's .

 Your loss point is the stud / wood it's R value is lower than the insulation , IMO that loss point is pretty small and most people's savings are so far down the road that the pay off for super insulation is never reached in a real world situation.

A normally insulated home today that conforms to code in your area MTL is efficiant enought. Another strange twist to insulation is the required heat exchangers , in a elec. heated house your required to put in freshair 80's or 120's , essentially 4 or 5" holes in the wall to let fresh air in after you spend thousands to keep it out.   Most people I know open a door or window a few times a day letting in some air  


Those are a few of my thoughts , for what they are worth          

[glenn kangiser]

PEG -- if we had to pay what your thoughts are worth, we'd all be broke.

[Amanda_931]

The really nice thing about air-to-air heat exchangers is that you can put fresh air anywhere you want--closets get a bit mildewy?--get everything cleaned, clothes and walls as well, run your fresh air in there.  An internet acquaintance with heavy duty allergies did that and loved it.  He did have a dehumidifier in line with the intake air, though.

Same person said that pressurizing the house a bit keeps things like ragweed or maple pollen out of the house during those times of year.  (or dust from the 30 dump trucks a day that used to go past my house in Nashville)

[John Raabe]

Amanda's suggestions are good:

Build a tight house and then control the air intake. Doing this you can clear out dust, allergens, excess moisture, etc. An air to air heat exchanger can recapture energy in cold or hot climates. A slightly pressurized house pushes air out of any cracks.

Wood stoves, fireplaces, downdraft ranges and other "big air" appliances need to have ducted makeup air.

Super insulate the walls with an inch or two of foam insulation. This isolates the framing and insulates the voids. Seal and insulate rim joists, insulate basement walls and slabs to higher than code levels.

An air sealed super insulated house may not be cost effective for folks in mild climates who do not have allergy, dust or noise issues. However, longer term these systems will payoff if you expect energy prices to continue to rise. They payoff now in very cold or very hot climates. A cleaner, quieter and more even tempered interior is the gravy.

[davestreck]

 I hope I'm not gonna start a war with this suggestion, but...

Anyone else a bit concerned about the trend toward super-insulated, airtight homes? I'm all for energy efficiency and all, but to my mind a house that "breathes" is a long-lasting house. Even vapor barriers kinda freak me out. They built houses for years without that, and while the old girls are definitely drafty (wear a sweater, I say) they're still standing after a few hundred years or so. Nowadays it seems we're supposed to encase the wood frame with more and more super foam, Gore-Tex, and spun-carbon-fiber miracle wraps. And with super-insulation comes all the attendant air quality issues, so we start adding more HVAC doodads and filters and high-tech, expensive, what-if-they-break-down gadgets while breathing recycled air in our over-pressurized biohazard-protected clean rooms. Meanwhile the moisture is building up in the crawlspace ell we forgot about, or the rain is leaking behind the vapor barrier and pooling on the sill plates.

Sound like too much of a rant? I dunno. I'm a "keep it simple, build it well" type of guy. The less there is, the less there is to go wrong. Plus I hate the look of those high-E, argon/plutonium filled windows with snap-on plastic muntin bars. Gimme old school, drafty, stuck-during-the-summer wood double-hungs (and a sweater during the winter).

No offense to the guys who are pushing the envelope and figuring out ways to reduce our heating bills. I guess I'd just rather be a little chilly!

Just my 2 cents...

[Amanda_931]

Yep, I'd like to think that a breatheable house would make my house liveable with nothing added.  But I'm not sure at all that I believe it.

And while air flow (a window fan on except when I uncomfortable enough to use the loud and smelly AC) mostly kept my then rented place in Nashville semi-OK the summer that every day the official temperature was over 100 degrees F., I wasn't home much in the day that year.  And those highs in the summer mean that it didn't get under 80^o at night either.  And I don't seem to tolerate heat the way I did 25 years ago.

When I lived on Guam we kept electric lights on in the closets to keep out mildew.  It worked, at a cost.

And it takes a fair amount of air circulation to keep mildew out of a small, no windows bathroom.  Bleach is not an alternative any more.

[glenn kangiser]

Crimony, Dave -- kinda late for that much coffee, but yeah -- I'm right there with you.  A big fire in the wood stove will take care of any drafts.

I still fail to see the logic in building them so tight you have to open a window to close the door -- then also --- I have air quality issues --- just ask my wife.

[davestreck]

Yeah, that post kinda made me sound like a crazy person, didn't it? I gotta switch to decaf. OK, no more rants!

And Amanda's got it right: in a "breathable" (ie. "drafty") house its a hell of a lot easier to stay warm in the winter than it is to stay cool in the summer...

Still, if the criteria is longevity I gotta believe that, all else being equal, the drafty house will still be standing when the super-tight one has long been consigned to the landfill.

[glenn kangiser]

Think nothing of it, Dave.  Rant away.  I need company - I don't want to be the only crazy one here.

I really enjoyed your comments.  That is exactly how I feel -- I grew up in houses that you never had ot worry about being too tight.  Slam a door the window would fall off.  No air movement problem there.  It moved just fine.

[bartholomew]

This is kinda like discussing religion. Anyway, call me a believer, I'm planning to build a very energy-efficient cabin. I just wanted to address this point...

They built houses for years without that, and while the old girls are definitely drafty (wear a sweater, I say) they're still standing after a few hundred years or so.

That's an example of survivorship bias. You see the surviving houses; you don't see all the ones that rotted away long ago. The rotted away ones vastly outnumber the survivors. In most cases, the survivors are only around still because in each case someone at some point decided it was worth saving and put a lot of time and money into repairing the damaged portions.

And while it is true that "the less there is, the less there is to go wrong", that does not mean it is less likely to go wrong.

[davestreck]

Excellent point about the "survivorship bias"...for every example of a well-preserved centuries-old home there are hundreds of poorly built ones that have long ago mouldered away to dust. I guess my point is that there's no substitute for quality craftsmanship. Any well-constructed home, built with high-quality materials and properly maintained, should outlive its builder. I just wonder if the rate of survival in the homes that typically get built nowadays will match that of the ones built 200 years ago. At least 50% of the houses on my street that were present in 1800 are still there today. In 2200, there's no reason that the house I grew up in (circa 1770) shouldnt still be standing (barring fire, flood or nuclear attack). The chestnut and oak frame is as solid today as it was when it was built. Will the same be said of the new 2x4 and flakeboard house that went up in our back field in 1998?

Then again maybe there's no reason for a house to be built with an expected lifespan measured in centuries. Is it OK to say "this house will be warm, dry and tight for 50 years, at which point we'll tear it down and build a new one"? Building practices that take advantage of quickly renewable and recyclable materials maybe should have their own standards by which they're judged. I could live with that.

Wait...did I just totally contradict myself?  :-?

[glenn kangiser]

There are lots of answers-- all of them correct and all of them wrong.  Contradiction? Depends.

Check out this article - it sheds some light on some modern materials.  It might be right -- it might be wrong but moreso with modern materials, it depends on the case and even with the best quality workmanship who's to say an unseen problem won't direct a stream of water against your OSB?

Properly done, the old methods and materials were pretty forgiving.

[PEG688]

Talk about thread drift   Old  wood was mo betta .  Where adding a PT wood foundation , in places to a 100 years old farm house at the Sherman farm, I'll post a few photos tonight of fir blocks sitting on rocks in the dirt with little or no rot , they have a lot of powder post beattle hole though

 Old wood (generally anything 20 years old , the older , generally the better,it is )  that can dry out will survive a long time , new wood , anything from the past 20 years will not take any punishment , any conditions less than ideal will cause failure in months , not years .

 The wet/ dry cycle older homes have tend to let them survive ,  add insulation so no drying out can happen and rot is going to happen.

Thats why I harp on flashing details so often , wood needs to be kept dry or be allowed to dry out which means lots of air movement.  

[glenn kangiser]

Thread drift is how we learn, PEG. Things related to things related to things.

Seems I learned a lot about flashing from you.



Note -- this is not PEG -- some think it's me.  I don't think so.

[PEG688]

You need a "purer" ( :-?is that a word)  mind Glenn, I'd never have related roof / sidewall flashing to a prevert in the park. You have corrupted my clean pure mind with filth

And yes ,thread drift is a ok thing , I guess, if I have to agree  :'(

[Amanda_931]

Out West it may be true that old wood is always better.

but in the East--I think all of it--land was cleared for farms, in parts of the Northeast pretty early--maybe by 1825.  Around here they were just getting started then.  But the coming of the railroads pretty well deforested this area.  Also I think the steel mills here worked with charcoal instead of coke.  So I guess it is an "it all depends" for quality wood.

Since, oh, say, WWII, I'd say that "scientific tree farming" with overcrowded monoculture pine has led to a drop in quality, probably country wide.

[Jens]

16 OC gets rid of a lot of headaches.  Like PEG said, walls can get wavy with 24 OC, unless you use 5/8 rock.  5/8 is heavy!  Not so much for one sheet, but hang a hundred or so, and tell me that's what you want to do for your whole life.  In my opinion, the roof should be framed on the same OC as the walls, with all framing members stacked (lined up from mud sill to rafter).  2x6 is also less wavy than 2x4, can fit thicker insulation.  I agree about the tightness of new homes, and also think that a lot of the shear panels, and extra bracing/metal brackets have almost made buildings worse.  The problem is that when you try to change one thing, it starts a chain reaction effecting every part of the building envelope.  In 1989, we had a 7.1 earthquake here, and most of the houses with little or no damage were old, let-in braced, plastered wall, board sided buildings.  The weekest link was the lack of adequate foundation bolts, so some slid off of their foundations!  When a house is able to sway a bit, I think it has a better chance under those circumstances, just look a pagoda.  I too like the old windows.  When it gets too drafty, you make a window blanket (really thick curtain), and presto,  you just saved thousands on new plastic!  Windows that is!  The house we just got finished building, had shear panels that had to be nailed at 3 and 6, 3" on the edges, 6" in the field (middle) of the sheets.  I figured that out, and it is something like 30 % of the 2x4 is nails!  "Put so many nails in it I can see myself or your fired!".  Ridiculous!  Might as well just build the wall without 2x4's, just use glue, nails, toothpicks, and paint away!  Gotta keep the wood-metal weight ratio I guess.  Oh yeah, in the house I grew up in, we almost never used the heater.  It was a fairly mild climate, but I put that raising to good use in our house in snow country Oregon.  When the toilet had a sheet of ice on top of the water, that is when my wife got really mad at me though!

[Amanda_931]

Standard ceramic flush toilet with some ice on top of the water in the tank and the bowl?

You were very lucky that it didn't get a few degrees colder--at least if your pipes didn't all freeze as well.  Then you might have caught the busted toilet before it spewed water EVERYWHERE!