Drwall and Insulation ?'s

Garry Smith

Member
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36
In sthe process of building a house and
my question is with drywall and insulation.
What are ther pros and cons on stapling the insulation to the sides of the wall studs and gluing drywall to studs using the least amount of screws as possible.

If the paper on the insulation does not lap over the inside face of the studs, is the vapor bearior compromised?

How long before the glue holding the drywall on the walls crystalises ?

Thank for the feedback

Garry
 
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Staple the paper of the insulation to the side of the studs not the edges. Screw the sheetrock on with the screws spaced as recommended. I believe that this allows for the give & take & movement of the structure of the house. A house is never completely stationary.
 
Garry I always staple the paper to the sides of the studs, that way the construction adhesive (drywall glue) has a place to stick to. The guys I sub to do my drywalling nail along both edges (head joint) and screw the top and bottom (bed joint) on the studs and only put screws in the "field" if there is a problem that they forsee. the glue will hold the drywall tight after it cures, and that way they do not need to finish the nail/screw holes.

As far as vapor barrier compromise...no one seems to feel it is enough to worry about.....inspectors, trades, etc.
 
Hi Gary.

At the risk of starting an argument, I will toss in my opinion. Mind you that I am not in the construction business.

The material that is used for insulation does little to insulate in and of itself, but it is selected to have a very low coefficient of thermal conduction. Fiberglass excels in that arena as does foam. All of these products have the main job of trapping air and not allowing it move. The trapped air is the main insulator. Compressing fiberglass bats into the wall stud spaces reduces the amount of stagnant air trapped by the fiberglass, and thus reduces the overall quality of the insulation.

What I did in my garage addition was to staple the insulation to the 2" edge of the suds. This gives the insulation room to trap the air and gives more effective insulation of the wall. If you are not using 2x6 studs, you should be in order to get an R19, instead of a meager R11.

Regarding the vapor barrier, I haven't seen this done recently so I can't speak with any authority. When I built a home back in the 1976 time frame, in Ohio, the vapor barrier was just stapled to the edge of the studs. Today would guess it is glued to the studs. Either way, it performs the same task, that of keeping the transfer of moisture to a minimum. When we built 5 years ago, I used SIPs(R30)for walls, and vapor barriers were not required. Our drywall was just nailed to the SIPs.

So, what I would do is to secure the fiberglass bats to the inside 2" stud surface using staples being sure that the fiberglass is not compressed. I would go over the bats assuring that the staples are completely driven into the studs. Then I would follow up with the standard vapor barrier. I think just stapling the barrier to the studs over the insulation kraft paper would work. By the time you screw the drywall the vapor barrier will be firmly pressed against the studs and work just fine.

As I said above, I am not in the construction business. While I am most likely not up to date on current construction techniques, I will standby my trapped air theory of insulation.

So, Steve and Bart, where am I going wrong.:huh: I won't argue with you, but I reserve the right to ask question.;)
 
At the risk of disagreeing with the two pro's, I wouldn't glue the drywall, or staple to the sides of the studs. The batts are designed to be stapled to the faces (as far as I know anyhow), to reduce the possibility of compressing the insulating material, as Ken described, and also to improve the vapor retarding properties of the kraft paper facing. The only advantage to stapling to the sides is for gluing the drywall field, which is ok for contractors in a big itchin' hurry but not the best method for a DYI'er who may want better insulating ability for the life of the structure at the expense of a bit of speed when hanging the drywall. Personally, I wouldn't glue drywall under any circumstances, because it is a big pain to deal with glued boards in a remodeling situation.
 
Gluing drywall..

Drywall should be glued (IMHO). As for insulation, stapling it to the side of studs is fine, but you are right try not to compress it. If you staple the paper to the outside edge, you cannot glue the drywall because only paper would be holding the drywall.

Gluing helps prevent cracks and nail pops because everything has to move together. We always screw our drywall. One screw on each end and 4 in the field ( 2 screws abouts 2 inches from each other)* ** ** *.

I think the BIGgest problem is breaking the paper. When you break the paper on the drywall the screw/nail serves no purpose. Consider being in a room with a ceiling that has been glued, and a ceiling that hasn't... Now, which one would you sleep under?

And besides isn't that what drywall adhesive is for.. hahaha.. (jk) anyway, you also want to seal all penetrations (where wires are run, etc..) with a foam spray to make everything air tight. I guess the idea is get it so tight, that when you light a match your whole house is warm.. heh... Insulate in between windows and their jack studs also.
 
Golly, now tonight I will be afraid to go to bed.:D Every sheet of drywall in our 3200+ sq ft house is nailed, both wall and ceiling. I guess people in different parts of the country do it differently. :dunno:
 
I guess construction methods must vary greatly in the different areas of the country, because in my part of the world, I have NEVER seen OR heard of anyone stapling the paper to the "sides" of the studs, always to the 1 1/2" edge, and they also NEVER glue the drywall to the studs in the walls or on the ceiling either. Drywall screws every 8" is the normal procedure, and unless the paper on the Batts is damaged, there is no other vapor barrier added.
 
Well.

I've seen the insulation done both ways. I have done it both ways
Whats best? :dunno:

I've seen drywall screwed, glued, nailed, and tatto'd.

Whats best? :dunno:
I've always just screwed it on. I hate the nailing, as my fingers get tired of being the soft pad between the hammer and sheetrock:eek: :( :D
 
Well.

I've seen the insulation done both ways. I have done it both ways
Whats best? :dunno:

I've seen drywall screwed, glued, nailed, and tatto'd.

Whats best? :dunno:
I've always just screwed it on. I hate the nailing, as my fingers get tired of being the soft pad between the hammer and sheetrock:eek: :( :D

Boy am I ever with you on using the Screws, Steve. I've nailed a LOT of drywall in my younger years helping my Dad with remodels and small new consrtruction in his side work, but since discovering drywall screws I have NOT driven a nail in drywall since. Drywall screws don't loosen in ceilings and allow the drywall to sag either, as nails sometimes will do, (as in some rooms in our current house that I'm having to take care of now, and what a PITA).:(
 
Well I just don't know nothin about Insulation I just install untold thousands of square feet of it both in comercial & residential buildings over several year to make a living. I worked for my Cousin that owned the largest insulation company in SW Washington state. I won't argue with anyone on this been there done that never again.

So do it your way.:wave:
 
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I guess I'll say this about insulation technique, if you have framed the walls correctly the insulation batts should fit snug like friction fit. stapling the paper to the SIDES of the studs and done correctly is all that you need to do, it does not compress it enough to worry about loss of R value. Incidentally on my custom homes I use 7/16 osb wall sheething and 1/2" Tuff-R insulation board over that coupled with R-13 insulation. A couple of homes I have built we had insulators come in and spray the stud cavities with a water based insulation that needs 2 days to cure before the batt insulation is installed.

Now on to drywall technique.....in my college days I worked on the weekends for a drywall contractor (1976) at that time we nailed everything and glue had not found it's way to the Lansing area yet. We hung a LOT of board using nails and nailing the beejjeebers out of it. As was mentioned you can not pierce the paper and expect the drywall to keep it's integrity. So using the glue is a added plus in many ways. I don't worry about the problem of remodeling because when I have encountered remodels where glue is involve I just use a drawknife to remove the existing glue on any stud, joist or rafter that may need to be re-drywalled....all other studs, etc that are not re-used simply is of no consequence.

We built my dads home in 1974, no screws no glue.....1980 the drywall all had to be renailed because of nail pops....those pesky unsightly things homeowners don't for some reason like the sight of. My first realization that glue was a very good thing.

So, this is again how I have my custom homes done....the paper is nailed to the sides of the stud, joist, etc to allow that 1 1/2" of area for glue to be applied so that it makes contact with wood to drywall. Using glue also helps to fill to a small degree any imperfection with a bowed stud.

One more thing to consider for you folks who do not use glue or did not because of the time your home was built....DO NOT allow your shingle crew (when the time for a re roof comes) to slam your bundles of shingles on the roof sheething. True story, a contractor aquaintance was doing a re-shingle on a very nice but older (70's) home just before Thanksgiving. The shingle crew didn't carefully lay the shingles on the roof but instead just "slammed" them....the entire ceiling in several rooms fell completely down from the banging of the shingles up above. Had glue been used the drywall would have remained intact. The contractor paid for the family to stay in a motel and paid for a Thanksgiving dinner for this family because of this big mistake. I always make sure the shingle crew gently lays the shingles down on any building I do.

If all of this is not reason enough for you to use glue and make sure it has a surface to bond to, then as Bart said.....

So do it your way.:wave:
 
Question about gluing the drywall, do you run a bead the whole length of the stud, floor to ceiling, or more like this - - - - -

:dunno:

My parent's house was built in the very early 70's, unfinished basement, in the late 70's and early 80's we finished the basement. We used liquid nails for the drywall downstairs, the original drywall upstairs was all nailed.

Due to a ton of nail pops, about 5 years ago, my Dad completed redoing the whole upstairs, drywall, I guess you could say he re-nailed it, (well, he used screws) and then fixed all the holes and repainted the rooms, one by one.

A neighbor whose house was built the same year as my parent's had to have the whole ceiling in their upstairs re-screwed, as they wanted to get rid of the light fluffy textured ceiling (you know the kind, touch it and it would "snow" down on you) as the docs told them this type of ceiling was a major source of dust etc that bothered the lady of the house's alergies. When the ceiling guys came in to remove the old stuff (they said it was like a giant ceiling scrubbing vacuum thing) the found a TON of popped nails, so they had to have it all rescrewed before they could put a new ceiling texture on it.

Still curious about the glue, like this _____________________ or like this- - - - - - - - ??

Cheers! :wave:

Not a single problem has occured downstairs from gluing that drywall
 
Stu, most of the drywall I have seen, sub contracted out, or done myself has been ______________ but I do know of one installer who does the - - - - - - method. I guess either way is fine :dunno: as long as there is adhesive (glue) getting used and making contact with both surfaces.
 
Well, please allow me to interject this point that I haven't read here yet.

In the 30 years that I've been building, the drywall was nailed (then screwed when screws became popular) for walls that were to be textured and glued for walls that would get wallpapered or just if they were to be smooth wall for whatever reason. If a wall was to be finished smooth, it was a lot less work for the drywall finishers if the field was glued instead of spotting all of the nail/screw heads and finishing them smooth.


And for Stu, I've always seen the glue beads like this ________________.

Just my bit.
 
If a wall was to be finished smooth, it was a lot less work for the drywall finishers if the field was glued instead of spotting all of the nail/screw heads and finishing them smooth.

Yep, I guess I didn't explain that as well in my first post as you did Mark. :thumb:
 
I find it interesting that a house (the home I grew up in) that was built by my Dad in 1948 & remodeled starting in 1968 through 1971 by my Dad didn't have any popped nails in the sheetrock. what did they know then or what material quality was better? Of course there wasn't very much settling. I am sure most of the foundation was dug by hand.

Now a little trivia: Dad said he had something he used to build the house originally that most may not even know existed a swing saw.
 
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here in the sticks it`s glue-n-screw walls and ceilings.....i double screw ceilings just like we used to double nail before screwguns became popular...might be overkill but i`ve never had any trouble...tod
 
Ok George, I'll bite :D :wave: :D

I like the fiber tape, mostly because it couldn't possibly work any worse than paper :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I think most, if not all, pros like paper, 'cause its cheep cheep cheep. Said pros sometimes pay their guys by the square foot hung, though, if that tells you anything.
 
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