"They just drywalled right over it. In the US. In 2018. In a luxury condo."
This happens regularly in the SFBA, in Marin County. Every rainy season I see at least one house being built through Nov-Dec-Jan that is in the bare studs stage and gets soaked with a week or so of constant rain.
And then the sun comes out and they immediately tyvek wrap and seal the whole house up. Sopping wet, soaked studs, entrapped on both sides. I would love to open up the drywall in one of those two years later and see what the inside of the walls look like...
These are very expensive homes ... the four I am thinking of over the past two years were all 2M+.
The speaker is a little hammy, but he's doing (more or less) legitimate science, and he laid out a bunch of principles I didn't understand before.
In particular, the different layers of the wall (ballistic, water, insulation, vapor, structure) really need to go in the right order, and at literally every exterior joint in the house you need to match up all five layers. There are also several layers that it is crucial to vent/drain.
It's extremely complicated, and for the most part just obeying code and convention will only get you 80% of the way there.
It seems to me there are also anti-patterns ensconced in code and convention. The idea that insulation goes inside the structural layer for example. You want your insulation layer to be unbroken.
This exact scenario is going to play out near my house over the next two weeks. SF Bay $2m houses. I should send pictures to the county building inspector.
This happens regularly in the SFBA, in Marin County. Every rainy season I see at least one house being built through Nov-Dec-Jan that is in the bare studs stage and gets soaked with a week or so of constant rain.
And then the sun comes out and they immediately tyvek wrap and seal the whole house up. Sopping wet, soaked studs, entrapped on both sides. I would love to open up the drywall in one of those two years later and see what the inside of the walls look like...
These are very expensive homes ... the four I am thinking of over the past two years were all 2M+.