More progress on the east wall re-frame. We put the house wrap back on, rain screens, window, window flashing, and siding vents.
As I’ve said in previous posts I was pretty ambivalent about rain screen in the beginning but now that I’ve got a good flow with the system I really think the little bit of extra time weight and money is well worth the extra layer of protection that it affords. Especially considering that tiny houses are generally pretty light on eaves which makes meticulous flashing details all the more important. It’s also pretty cool that you can potentially re-side your entire house without disturbing your house wrap layer or trim.
As the freight train of climate change bears down on us I think a lot about wise material use and carbon footprint. So often in building science green choices are really not much more than greenwash. It’s nice to choose products that are a little easier on the earth when I can but truthfully I think that the biggest gains in overall embodied energy and carbon footprint comes from building things to last a really long time. A structure that lasts twice as long is going to have half the impact. It’s too soon to say how much rain screens will impact overall building lifespan but it seems like they at least have the potential to make a difference.
We meticulously video documented putting this whole wall back together for our YouTube channel so people unfamiliar with rain screen can get good start-to-finish instruction without having to piece it together from a bunch of different sources.
– Brian
