Wall Sheathing Video

Hello, I'm Tim Carter from AsktheBuilder.com and today I want to talk a little bit about wall sheathing. Wall sheathing is a material that is nailed to the exterior studs on a home. On this particular home, there are large green sheets of this material.

This is a unique material. It is a plastic coated, oriented strand board. In this small sample, you can see the various layers. This one is about a half inch thick and on the interior side it just looks like regular OSB board. The advantage of using the plastic coated material is that it is pretty much weather resistant. If water should get behind the brick or siding of the home, this plastic coating will do a good job of making sure that the OSB doesn't rot.

Now another really important aspect of the wall sheathing is also strengthens the house so that the house doesn't fall over. As crazy as it sounds, if you just built a 2x4 or 2x6 wall, you could go to the top of it and just push it over. Collapsing it sideways. But when you nail this OSB sheathing every 6 or 9 inches on center along each of the wall studs, it makes the wall very rigid. It would almost be impossible to push it over.

Wall sheathing is engineered wood. It is a very good product. Make sure you use it on your home. For historical purposes, back in the late 1800's (not 1900's as I mistaken said in the video), they used tongue and groove 1x6s were used for exterior wall sheathing. That was following by plywood and now we are using oriented strand board.