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Together we’ll learn the basics of home design and construction and demystify the building process, so we can get the biggest bang for our buck and build our dream homes, with or without a general contractor.

“Build tight and ventilate right.”  That’s a mantra that I’ve heard since I started educating myself about home design and construction.  A tight house is a house with minimal air leakage.  Building a tight house is important so you can save on energy costs and make your home more comfortable.  A tight house also protects the structure of your home.  Here’s how:    If a house is built tightly, it prevents warm, moist air from entering or exiting the home.  The unwanted flow of warm, moist air can lead to moisture within your home’s walls and roof, causing structural damage. Building tight can alleviate that potential problem.  You’ll also need to ventilate right.  We’ll discuss ventilation systems in a future episode. Today, we’ll concentrate one of the first steps needed to build a tight house, which is adding a continuous air barrier to your house to reduce air leakage. 

The Zip system by Huber Engineered Woods is a continuous air barrier that many contractors are using to build tight houses.  Most of them agree that the Zip System outperforms traditional building methods using house wrap.  Today, I’ll review Huber’s Zip System.  I’m not affiliated with the product or company, and have no personal experience with it, but I’ve noticed that over the past several years quality builders in my region consistently choose the Zip system over traditional methods, like house wrap.  Plus I’ve read many contractors’ forums and home building websites for a consensus on the Zip System.

Show notes at BYHYU.com