When we decided to rewrap the house and replace the siding, we looked for a high performing house wrap. We chose the SIGA Majvest.
This product is waterproof, windtight, tearproof while vapor porous. We will use a companion SIGA product, the Wigluv, to seal everything off. These SIGA products have been used widely in Europe and have good track records. The specifications look great and we expect good results.
The key to ensuring air tightness is just taking care of all details and taping over every little crack.
Coming next: Attic Insulation
See also: Partnering With Green Hearted Companies and the entire From Foreclosure To Green Home series.
This forum provides you with resources about home renovation, improvement, makeover and repair topics such as bathroom design, bathroom remodel, cabinet replacement, construction, countertop selection, drought tolerant landscape, faucet, finding contractors, flooring, furnace, gardening, home design, hot water heater, interior design, landscape planning, landscape replacement, low flow toilets, mold removal, paint selection, remodel planning, roof replacement, roof tiles, solar hot water, solar system, window replacement, and many others. While we focus on issues in California, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Jose, Oakland, Cupertino, Lafayette, Menlo Park, Mill Valley, Orinda, Palo Alto, Sacramento, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, San Rafael, Sonoma, Walnut Creek, most information is applicable in all parts of USA as well as the rest of the world.
How easy is it to install majvest?
It is no more difficult to install than Tyvek. Both Tyvek and Siga mfg directions call for complete sealing of seams and penetrations. I have rarely seen Tyvek installed correctly. If you were to follow the mfg directions from either Tyvek or Siga, the labor should be very similar. My crew preferred the Siga tapes to all others for ease of installation and holding power. While not inexpensive – they work as advertised when installed correctly (even sticks to poly well. Siga also includes an excellent installation guide. See Martin Holliday’s excellent article in the recent Fine Homebuildign for more on tapes. http://www.finehomebuilding.com/tool-guide/articles/backyard-tape-test-10-months-later.aspx
There is also a large difference in what the materials do as the Siga is a 3 layer membrane and Tyvek is a single layer with a lessor perm rating. We found that our blower door number was positively affected by the application of the Siga over the wood siding. It also functions as our rain screen.