Installing New Cedar Shake Roof Over Skip Sheathing During the PNW Rainy Season
I am breaking ground on a house this fall (I know not ideal timing). We live in the PNW, so it will definitely rain during framing/roofing. We intend to do a cedar shake roof the correct way over skip sheathing to allow the roof to breathe. Anyone with experience and tips on how to do this best practice with the weather? The felt paper gets laid course-by-course with the cedar, which will leave the rest of the un-roofed portions of the house open to rain falling through the skip sheathing.
My simple thoughts are, that everything is just going to get wet, so upgrade the subfloor to DryPly or something similar and just keep the schedule tight between trusses and roofing to minimize the amount of time that rain continues to fall into the house….
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Paper the whole thing with 15# before the shakes and shake felt
Mike,
Would you stick with felt paper or use one of the newer underlayments?
Thanks
I suggested felt because there is no question of compatability with the shake felt. I'm not sure about any of the newer products. #15 would be the minimum, but it would be stiff enought to cover the gaps in the skip sheathing. I'm giving away my age, but we used to space skip sheathing with a framing axe blade I think that's 3 1/2 inches. Walking on this with felt should be no problem if you walk flat footed with your foot parallesl to the rafters and not the sheathing. Spacing may be different depending on the shake layout.
Makes sense! Any concern for causing the roofers frustration by covering up the skip sheathing? I kinda thought they would need to be able to visually see the ship sheathing during the installation. And I guess from a safety standpoint they would just need to be aware not to step through the gaps in the skip sheathing...
I’m going to kick the hornets nest and say that there is no reason to use skip sheathing. Cedar breather provides plenty of ventilation for cedar shakes and avoids all the installation issues you are describing.
I agree: solid sheathing, underlayment to dry-in, cedar breather, off you go...
First, buy a tarp large enough to cover one side of the roof completely and securely.
As to the skip sheathing installation, the correct method is to install a single piece
of strapping along the bottom of the rafter tails across the whole length of the roof first, then take a bunch of the strapping (16 footers hopefully) and stack it 8-10 rows up the rafters, now fasten EVERY OTHER piece of strapping, remove the unfastened pieces and stack them on top of the last row you nailed off, adding more pieces to the "stack"
as you go up the roof. You should stagger the butt joints as you go up the roof,also, say, no more than three pieces in a row on a rafter (vertically). You can continue adding more strapping on to the roof as you go, say 6' up the roof for the first group, you can use the strapping as a "ladder", hence the reason for securing all the strapping as you climb the roof, and it's a good way to ensure you don't "miss" securing any strapping.
Good Luck!
Geoff