Do You Need Tyvek Under Siding

Its possible the damage could have been even worse with tyvek.

Do you need tyvek under siding. In fact many builders disagree on the effectiveness of house wraps altogether and while some builders will only install 15 pound asphalt saturated felt paper underneath exterior siding others swear by plastic fabric house wraps such as typar or tyvek. This explains why the house does not retain heat. Our house was built about seven years ago. Faq s acronym s terminology to tyvek or not to tyvek that is the question.

Use tyvek over building felt under siding. If some one decides they should have been informed about what was under the siding i need to know how to respond to that. The contractors had installed foam board on most of the house before i asked why they hadn t installed the tyvek we asked for and have in the contract. Vinyl siding is one of if not the most popular exterior cladding for residential homes.

That said adding 1 2 to 1 of foam insulation board over sheathing and under siding will do much much. Tyvek is designed for new homes only. We re in the middle of having vinyl siding installed on our 1950s house. Tyvek is not designed as a product for older homes.

It seems that we have two options. I want to replace the tar paper but i can t find it at homedepot or lowes. During a recent repair to our siding we found that the house had no building wrap tyvek under the siding. I saw a new house with felt paper under the siding rather than tyvek.

In the end the decision to install house wrap under your siding is a personal one that you should make after discussing it with your contractor. There is no logical reason not to have house wrap under vinyl siding and many authorities strongly agree that it should be viewed as mandatory even if your local building codes don t necessarily require it. Its mostly just bad flashing but if the flashing fails the tyvek is supposed to be a back up right. One would be to remove the siding wrap the house and then reside it.

My personal recommendation assuming you are in a locale with winters where the practice is to put a full vapor barrier under the interior drywall is to use a closed cell foam board rated for use under siding if additional insulation is needed covered with drainwrap or better yet foamboard then vertical treated or cedar standoff strip. Why do homes need house wrap.