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Cold Roof System
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Sep 4, 2022
http://go.askthebuilder.com/NewsletterSignup founder Tim Carter demonstrates one type of cold roof system. They help prevent wood rot and can prevent ice dams and the leaks caused by ice dams. Prevent Ice dam leaks: http://www.askthebuilder.com/prevent-ice-dam-leaks-grace-ice-and-watershield/ Get FREE tips like this each week in Tim's FREE Newsletter: http://go.askthebuilder.com/NewsletterSignup
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Hi, I'm Tim Carter from AskTheBuilder.com and I'm here at a new construction job site in New
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Hampshire, middle of winter, cold out here, and I want to talk a little bit about cold roofs. Now
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here's why. This house is being built using a structural insulated panel for the roof. Now
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you might think, well, big deal, Tim, what's that? Well, first of all, what a structural insulated panel is think of an oreo cookie so it's kind of like an oreo it's got osb on the top
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it's got the foam core that provides the insulation and then it's got another layer of osb on the
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bottom here's the trouble years ago when these panels first came out they really didn't kind of
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think it through inside of all houses is a lot of water vapor you can't see it that water vapor just
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travels right up through the house into the attic and it needs to get out of the house or you can if
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it condenses on the wood, it can cause it to rot. And here's what happened. That water vapor would
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pass on through. This piece of OSB is warm because it's on the warm side of the house
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It would go through. The water vapor would go through here. It would hit the cold layer of OSB
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because this is very close to the outside. And of course, it would condense. And that's the problem
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Well, we can do what's called a cold roof assembly to prevent this layer of OSB from
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rotting out, and here's how it's done. The carpenters are going to take pieces of 1x3
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like this. This is a piece of plywood, but it can just be regular strapping, and they're going to
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nail it vertically up and down the roof like this, 16 inches on center, up and down the entire roof
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and there not going to be anything in between the two so that you end up with like a channel almost like railroad tracks each of the pieces Now here what going to happen They going to have those on the roof like this
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The actual roofing is going to be 5-8 inch OSB. This is a piece of half inch, but it's going to
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have this plastic coating on it that kind of act like tar paper. It's going to preserve it in case
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any water ever gets through the roof. And it's going to go on top of the strapping like this
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but look what's going to happen it's going to create an air space three quarter inches thick
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where the air the cold air can come up through the roof taking the humidity with it the water vapor
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and exhaust it out the top of the roof it's that simple that's how you do a cold roof in cold
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climates so your structural insulated panel will not rot out i'm tim carter for askthebuilder.com
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#Home Improvement
#Roofing