Charlie: Karen is looking to build a home in Tomball, and she wants to build it energy-efficient. She’s heard you talk about vent skinning in the past. Can you explain what it is and where can she get some information on building a house with this?
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Tom: Information is out there. With Google today, you can probably Google a million things up there. I don’t know enough about what type of home she has. Is she going to use brick? Is she going to use stone? Are we going to have Hardie? Is it a two-story, a one-story. There’s so many details we have to go over. I think whoever designs the home with more specifics will be able to figure out, but just to give a quick synopsis.
If it was Hardie siding, for instance, you would sheath the home with hopefully 1/2-inch plywood, which I would prefer, and then you would wrap it with a moisture barrier. Because we’re going to do a vent skinning, I would use the ThermaWrap by Tyvek, which is a radiant barrier and moisture barrier all in one. Then, would use 1 by 4 furring strips every 16 inches on the studs where the studs would lie behind the sheathing, and then you put your siding in, and you created this little 3/4-inch air space.
Now, with brick, you have a natural air space., so you don’t have to go through that, and with stackable stone, you have the same thing too. All you need to do is make sure the air space is open up to the soffit vent, so you don’t take your soffit all the way back to the house. It just lets a little movement of air that goes up from the bottom to the top as hot air rises, removing the moisture and not allowing heat transfer into the building.
Charlie: Is that going to save her money?
Tom: We’ve done it for years and … years ago, it saved people tons of money, but Charlie, we have this discussion all the time. Energy is so cheap right now, as long as it doesn’t cost her a lot of money. Brick is naturally done, so yeah, you might as well detail a little different. It doesn’t cost you anything. The ThermaWrap you should put on a house anyway. Today, if you’re doing Hardie, with the way the Hardie set and the ThermaWrap is designed, you can almost bypass the furring strips and it still will give you a radiant barrier, just not the vent skinning, but the way energy is so cheap right now, investing in energy savings, it’s almost not worth it to a point where you’re not going to get your money back. That’s where you have to make a personal decision.