Jay Peters : It sounds to me that Brian Knight is Talking about Rainsreen Cladding, see the Wikipedia article by that name. Somewhere in my house I have a book titled
' Houses are designed by Architects, and built by Gorrilas 'This is a quite new use of modern materials and I would worry about it being installed correctly, this is a
job for a master builder !
For centuries we lived in mud huts,
cob timber frame, ramed earth, and brick houses, these are all materials that hold tremendous amounts of water ,also these houses
were not very tight allowing enough moisture carrying warm air to leak out, and cold drier air to enter our homes, mold and mildew problems were minor,with the Energy
Crises of the 70's
people started asking for tighter houses and moisture problems blossomed up over night !
Add in the new materials that are supposed to be insulating, but actually trap water vapor against outside walls where it can collect,reduce insulation values to zero ,bad!
Delaminate or rot all types of wooden materials, BAD, Freeze, BAD ! And create mold and mildew problems, Bad! and then there is the whole out gasing of materials issue-
certainly not good !
There is good news,hopefully you realize that you still have much to learn, and will take the time to figure it out! Any home in our latitudes should not only be well insulated
AND tight it should have some kind of simple heat exchanger Scavenging the heat from exhausted air and warming incoming air, In europe they are building 'Passivehouse's
that use no fossil fuels for heating and
cooling, and this is a great goal, lets push you in that direction !
Please goto>
cchrc.org , The Cold Climate Housing Research Center is an arm of The University of Alaska, Fairbanks, you and I know Cold, They know COLD ! On their
site they have articles and videos to explain how to build for all types of Circum-Polar housing needs ! The videos can also be found on their channel on you-tube !
It is possible with great care to have a house sealed with vapor (only) permeable walls, placing the Thermal Mass Rock walls on the inside and all the insulation on the outside
of the building allowing for 'rain walls', or 'rain screening walls' that allow excess water to condense and weep out of your exterior walls without freezing ! In many places where
the only way to get # 2 home heating oil to where you live, ( and everything else thatncan't be grown or shot!) is burn Aviation gas to get it there, this brings the price of a gal.
of fuel to $10.00 U.S. multi generational houses with 4 or more people burn 120 -170 gal during a long 'heating season', there is your measurable success!
Any article that you really like consider posting to these forum threads, Even Better ! Start a new Thread ! For the good of the craft ! Big AL !