Vapor management inside the home often leads to confusion—How does it move? What climates are impacted? What products work best? What perm rating is ideal? New VaporWise is a cutting-edge solution to help ensure optimal interior moisture control in cold climates, adapting to seasonal changes to help take the guesswork out of moisture control for interior walls.
What Are the Challenges With Water Vapor?
Just like on the home exterior, excess moisture on the interior of the home can create problems within the building envelope.
A family of four can produce 2+ gallons of water vapor per day just by cooking, showering, breathing, and doing laundry. That’s a lot of moisture floating around inside a home. If that water vapor doesn’t have a path to dry out—or worse, if it gets trapped inside the walls—it can cause mold, rot, and expensive repairs.
This is a particular problem in cold climates in winter: When there is hot, humid air inside and cold, dry air outside, moisture can build up on the inside of the wall system’s exterior sheathing and condense into water droplets (condensation). (Learn more about the science of vapor movement in our blog “Vapor Movement and Why It Matters.”)
Adding proper vapor control can help prevent this.
How VaporWise Helps Interior Moisture Control
VaporWise™ vapor-variable interior membrane installs on the interior side of the exterior wall system to provide advanced moisture management.
Most notably, VaporWise adapts to seasonal changes: During winter, VaporWise acts as a Class 2 vapor retarder, helping to prevent interior moisture from entering the wall cavity; in the summer, the membrane’s permeability increases, allowing moisture to escape and ensuring a dry, healthy wall cavity year-round.
VaporWise also can be detailed to serve as an air-control layer to help improve energy efficiency and indoor comfort.
For optimal durability, VaporWise is made with tri-laminate construction—a reinforced mesh for strength and resilience, plus a translucent outer layer that provides visibility for installation and monitoring.
Versatile VaporWise can be used for wall and roof applications in new construction and remodeling projects, and is an enhanced system addition to any vapor-permeable insulation assemblies.
A Smart Solution to Water Vapor and Interior Moisture Control
Vapor control doesn’t have to be complicated. VaporWise is the latest innovation from Benjamin Obdyke to help pros design and build high-performance wall systems that manage air and moisture for more resilient homes.
