In this age of economic downturn, a common sight is that of the half-built house with Tyvek house wrap waving in the wind. In case you're not familiar with it, Tyvek is a type of strong material that is put on top of house sheathing to help make houses more weather-tight. Tyvek house wrap was an improvement on wrapping a house in tar paper (which is still sometimes done).
Georgia Pacific has improved on Tyvek by combining sheathing and house wrap. As they state in their site:
Nautilus™ wall sheathing combines two proven products - OSB structural sheathing and building wrap - into an efficient sheathing solution that can help save you time and money. With building wrap laminated to the sheathing, Nautilus panels eliminate the additional step of installing a separate building wrap. And they provide protection from rain and moisture during the entire building cycle.It does make sense to combine the two. But I wonder if there is any downside to this. Some professional builders have commented on that fact that seams between the sheathing must still be sealed. It's not like you can just slap these things up, and let the wrapping/sealing take care of itself.
It's a fairly new product, so we will see if it has any "legs."
Image Copyright/Courtesy Georgia-Pacific
Comments
Someone will have to tell me how you overlay the wrap over the window, door and molding flashing that can and should be done with typar/tyvek wraps. If water gets behind clapboards it will get behind the flashing ultimately flow into the framing space.