We love brick. It’s attractive and durable. So most of the time we bend over backwards to save it. For various reasons, this brick facade was not worth the effort. Additionally, we did not have enough room on the inside for the amount of insulation we wanted. Enter exterior insulation. Read on to see the process:

There are many types of insulation to pick from, but if we let air through, we have missed a critical step. Air makes for a drafty home, and often brings water with it, into places we don’t want excess moisture. So once we patched up big gaps in the brick facade, we painted on a liquid membrane to reduce air movement through the final product.

With exterior insulation you’ll often see the word continuous. The same way in Winter you cover your body with a coat, gloves, scarf - the goal is to not leave any spot exposed. The area around windows is usually a place where heat can escape or enter the house. You attach the window to a wood frame and that wood allows heat the leave the house. On this project we used the ThermalBuck product (the dark brown around the window), which allows us to mount our window to an insulated frame. It also puts our window out at the outer edge of the facade. This is good for keeping water out. Note there is still wood on the brick. We will attach the siding to that. More on that next.

In this picture you see pressure treated wood furring attached to the brick. In between the wood, is a grey insulation product call ThermalTight. This is vapor permeable so if water gets behind it, it can get out. There is zero off gassing, so it is better for the environment than other similar products. And it is a part of a system that integrates with the ThermalBuck, as well as the next step. Remember, the insulation needs to be continuous, and this clearly isn’t.

Here Carl is installing another layer of Neopor graphite polystyrene insulation over top of the whole assembly. Note how it comes even with the ThermalBuck from step two. Now when we install our siding up to the window, everything behind the siding is insulation. Just like a winter coat has a protective shell, with down underneath for insulation. And there is one more layer of protection here: This layer of ThermalTight has a weather resistive barrier (WRB) attached. This means if water gets behind the siding, and it will, it will not get any further. But if water vapor needs to escape, it can. High tech!

Now the factory painted fiber cement siding goes up. Everything, including the corner pieces, uses hidden fasteners for a clean look and fewer spots for water to get in.

You wouldn’t know it to look at the finished product, but this is so much more than new siding. This will protect the home from the elements, keep the owners comfortable, and lower utility bills when combined with the exterior insulation we put under the new roof and high efficiency heating and cooling equipment. This is the future.

This Siding is Like a Winter Coat