DuPont Tyvek HomeWrap and Tyvek DrainWrap have proven time and again to be the highest quality home coverings available today.

First, you’ll want to understand why you’re putting house wrap on your home. It has become more important than ever to use a good quality house wrap, with the widespread use of vinyl siding and fiber cement siding, both of which have poor moisture wicking qualities due to their installation methods.

In modern construction, houses are built for the most part with wood siding below the exterior wall finish. This will usually be a plywood or OSB (oriented strand board) sheathing. These products will eventually deteriorate or delaminate if left exposed to outside moisture.

Hence the introduction of house wraps to replace the old practice of building paper or tar paper covers. The house wrap is supposed to allow the walls to breathe moisture to help reduce the chance of mold build-up while also limiting the exposure of moisture in the sheathing from the outside.

Most modern home wraps use a similar process of taking a waterproof sheet and perforating its surface to allow moisture in the wall to breathe. The problem with this system is quite obvious, if you poke holes in a surface and then expect it to not leak water when it gets wet, you will be disappointed. The problem is that there is a permissible level of permeation or infiltration that these companies meet and that is considered good enough.

This is where DuPont Tyvek HomeWrap and DrainWrap are very different from any other product. These products are manufactured using a proprietary process that creates a non-perforated sheet. They actually create an extremely fine, continuous, high-density mesh of fibers that fuse together to form a tight, strong network. The microscopic pores this process creates allow moisture trapped in the walls to breathe, but at the same time it blocks virtually all moisture from returning to the siding.

Tyvek DrainWrap has the added benefit of having what has been called a vertically grooved wrinkled surface which allows water trapped between the loose sheathing and the wrap to drain and is the recommended product to be placed behind all fiber cement sheathing products.

When properly installed and combined with the recommended DuPont FlexWrap and Straight Flash flashing system, you will have created the most airtight home barrier available today.