Wiring and House Wrap

The last few days have been spent on a variety of tasks, beginning with starting to learn how to cut and work with the insulation panels. It turns out that polyisocyanurate makes tiny dust particle crumbles when you cut it, and the particles are nasty. Gloves and a mask to breath through would seem to be advisable. Darn! It does cut easily with an exacto knife though, and can be scored and snapped like drywall, or just cut through with a couple of passes with the knife.

Other tasks have been figuring out wiring, lighting, plug and switch placement and installing electrical boxes, cutting out the remaining windows, putting a strip of treated plywood around the bottom edge of the building in preparation for the housewrap and siding, and getting started on the housewrap. Most of this doesn't lend itself well to pictures, but here a couple showing the first round of housewrap:

I discovered that there are many choices for housewrap available and so ended up doing quite a bit of research as to what is the best kind. I think most of them are probably OK, actually, and from what I can tell good old fashioned tar paper is about as good as any. Tar paper has the problem of ripping easily and getting beat up by the wind if it's not covered fairly quickly though. I chose to use Tyvec stucco wrap because it has good permeability to vapour leaving the house and good resistance to water entering. It also has verticle wrinkles that allow water to travel down the surface of the wrap behind the siding so that it doesn't become trapped there, and it is strong and resistant to sun and wind damage. It does have to be installed right side out and right side up - but that isn't too much of an imposition. :-)

It's pretty easy to put the wrap on, though with one person it would be a bit difficult. It took my father and I about half an hour to put this first layer around though. To finish I need to put caulking around the top edge all the way around the house, wrap one more time around, tape top and the overlap, cut out the windows by slicing along top and bottom and then vertically down the middle and add flexwrap flashing to the bottom window sills - then it will be ready for window installation.
Windows are ordered finally - but won't be here until the end of July unfortunately.

The top section of wrap took quite a bit longer and involved caulking to seal along the top edge and tape on all the edges. It feels good to have it all covered and protected now though.

The electrician is coming tomorrow for a consultation so I can see if I'm on the right track - then I can start drilling holes and pulling wires.