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Topic:	Best $300 You Can Put Into Your New Home
Builder:	Ed Stahl
Company:	R.E.S. Contracting, Inc. PO Box 4198 Prescott, Arizona 86302
Phone:	(928) 776-0301
eMail:	rescon@commspeed.net
Web Site:	http://www.prescottbuilder.com

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Taping Sheetrock To The Floor Is The Best $300 You Can Put Into A New Home

When architect Matt Ackerman asked me to write a column about energy-savings construction tips, I suspected most readers have already heard all the energy-efficient clichés.  The basics of energy efficient construction haven’t changed much in the last 30 years.  The fact that they are largely ignored hasn’t changed much either.  Gizmos and gadgets sell to the home buyer.  Caulking and insulation details buried inside the walls are still as boring as they ever were.

As a result, energy-efficiency is more often than not paid lip-service, while the basics for building an energy-efficient home are largely forgotten.  With that in mind I would like to share one simple technique that anyone building a new home can do.  In my opinion it's got to be the single most critical construction detail that will gain you the biggest energy-efficiency benefit-for-the-buck:  Tape your sheetrock to the floor.

Where Does Air Really Leak?

In the early 90’s I purchased a device called a blower door. This is a calibrated fan used to pressurize a building for the purpose of measuring air leakage. My first test was on a new home under construction. It was insulated and sheetrocked but had not yet received the blown-in attic insulation.

With the house under pressure, an attic inspection revealed that the main source of air leakage was the interior walls. These mostly empty cavities create a path for air to flow into the attic. When wind creates pressure differentials around the structure, the air leakage is particularly pronounced. Attic venting can also exacerbate these wind driven pressure differentials.

Gasketing No Fix

The first solution we attempted was sheetrock gasketing. This specialized material was supplied in rolls and applied to the framing at the point of contact with the sheetrock to create an air seal. Besides being expensive it required a significant amount of labor to install. Worse, drywall installers charged more money for the additional time required in order to avoid knocking the gasket off the framing during their installation of the sheetrock.

Unfortunately the blower door test revealed extremely inconsistent results, and analysis with smoke pencils verified the main leakage point to be the gap between the sheetrock and the floor. An average home has hundreds of linear feet of baseboard, that connection between the bottom of the wall and the floor.  Even though the crack is small it adds up to an enormous gap in the overall integrity of the thermal envelope.

A Simple Solution

The simple solution is to have your dry wall contractor tape the sheetrock tight to the floor! No gasket, no glue, no problem. This technique is easily verified by simply walking through the house.  I consistently achieved a tightness of 2.5 ACH (Air Changes per Hour) at 50 PA of pressure, which is the optimal tightness for a home without a dedicated ventilation system.

Cost

This simple technique is one of the most cost effective energy details I have ever seen. It only adds about $300 to the cost of a typical house, but will continue to pay back for the life of the structure. 

No gizmos required.

Ed Stahl, founder of R.E.S. Contracting Inc., has been building energy efficient custom homes in the Prescott area for 19 years. His interest in technology and experience in the field has led to many unique approaches to the building of energy efficient homes.