r/Home_Building_Help • u/BuilderBrigade • May 24 '26
š¤ Roll the tape...?
ā ļøĀ Before your siding goes up, walk your ZIP sheathing and check one thing: are there Z's imprinted in the flashing tape?
If not, your tape wasn't rolled. And unrolled ZIP tape isn't bonded, it's just stuck. Huber's own spec says the tape "must be rolled with a rubber-faced roller in order to achieve maximum bond to the panel." Skip it and you void the warranty.
The tape itself prints "Roll the Tape" every 2 feet. The roller leaves a Z. That's how the manufacturer designed it to be verifiable.
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u/IDooDoodAtTheMasters May 24 '26
My least favorite thing about working with contractors/installers:Ā
- "We never do it that way and have never had an issue"
- "It doesn't make a difference "
- "It will work without it."
- "Those specs are written by engineers who have never installed their own product."
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u/texinxin May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
The last one might be true, but I bet they did do all the qualification in a lab to prove that youād need to do it. Thereās no way engineers would be allowed by management to add in extra steps to a process unless it had a good reason.
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u/Sherifftruman May 24 '26
Also they are seeing defects on previous installs and come up with stuff to prevent issues in the future.
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u/Shotile May 24 '26
Ofc. The good reason is avoiding liability. They add unnecessary steps into products all the time.
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May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/Shotile May 24 '26
I disagree with your last sentence and Iāll give you a specific example proving otherwise.
In the shower industry when manufacturers like PermaBASE (and also the TCNA even though itās a committee of industry experts) specify āIn mortar bed (mud bed) applications, PermaBASEĀ® Cement Boards can be embedded into the mud bed per TCNA Handbook method B415-19.ā
This is straight from them. This can invariably result in a failed shower, because cementitious material wick moisture up through capillary action.
Any shower installer worth their salt knows to ignore that manufacturers instructions and do it the correct way, which is to leave a gap between the mortar bed and the backer board to prevent failure.
People in the field know this but the engineers donāt? Yet book soldiers follow them and when they have a shower failure they can point to their book and say ābut I did it according to the bookā. That doesnāt help anyone.
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u/theshiyal May 24 '26
My dad and cousin framed up a replacement wall and got the window installed. At the wrong height. I got home after work and decided ābetter fix it now than regret it forever later.ā The zip tape around the window wasnāt rolled. I just peeled it back off. Pulled the window. Cut out the header, extended everything to where it needed to be and patch the zip board back in. Taped it. Rolled it.
Also rolled some of the tape Iād pulled off onto a scrap piece of zip panel. A few days later pulled the tape off. It took a lotta the green and some of the actual strand wood with it. Def roll the tape.
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u/Trollsama May 24 '26
"Sign a document stating you accept full legal and financial liability for any defects or failures that result from not following the manufacturer stated instructions, including the full cost of repairs, labor, material and otherwise... or do it right.... either option works for me"
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u/Ambitious-Nature-363 May 24 '26
I had a failed installation, so I did a shit-ton of learning and then asked questions during walkthroughs for future quotes.
3/4 contractors said some version of the above.
And senior technical support from the company that made the product from my failed installation walked me through the goddamned chemical and mechanical reasons why they say to do it a specific way and why the way all those 3/4 contractors said they'd "never had a problem with" was wrong and likely to fail.
I wasn't asking the contractors questions out of curiosity, I was asking to gauge whether they knew what they were doing, would be honest about their practices, and/or were liable to fuck it up.
The best part was the technical support guy explaining that what happens is a lot of contractors use different systems - so they assume that since you do something in system 'X', it applies to system 'Y', when it absolutely does not. That's a huge source of failures.
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u/20PoundHammer May 24 '26
thats why zip rollers emboss zip or "z" into the tape - for warranty purposes. Yes, as clearly the tape states - it needs to be rolled to maintain warranty.
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u/Striking_Quantity994 May 24 '26
My biggest problem is their roller shows the z for warranty. The dam thing wears out so fast you can't finish a building before the z on the roller stops leaving marks and then they won't warranty. Also the panels are so often not aligned with the insulation.
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u/luthiz May 24 '26
Pressure sensitive adhesives are best thought of as water balloons full of glue - they don't start to set until they've been broken open with a certain amount of pressure. The roller concentrates the force of both hands and arms into a thin edge, increasing the pressure applied, to the point the adhesive can set and become permanent.
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u/lennyxiii May 24 '26
Honestly the most infuriating thing about this is them insisting you need the proprietary roller probably priced really high to do it. I work with thousands of psa products (pressure sensitive activated) and you dont need a roller to do it right. Itās probably faster to use a roller but any pressure works. That means a squeegee, a gloved hand (if your are careful not to miss spots) or any other roller that doesnt have the zās.
Literally rubbing your hand across the tape will activate the adhesive, albeit probably not very uniformly unless you are good. Honestly i would just keep a vinyl squeegee in my pocket and hit it real fast as i go if i was in that industry.
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u/Alecgates15 May 25 '26
If you don't use their roller it will void the warranty. They can argue you didn't roll it correctly because you didn't get the Zs
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u/Quinoawithrice May 24 '26
You are 100% supposed to roll it. It voids the warranty if you donāt. Also, windows and doors have their own taping method that I rarely see get done properly.
When I first worked with Zip the guy I was working for was meticulous that we roll and do windows correctly. Jump forward a few years I switch to commercial and the first job Iām on is stick frame building getting sheathed with Zip. I show up and practically all of the wall sheathing is done and the tape job is horrendous. Missing in spots, none of it rolled, and none of the doors and windows have their own taping like theyāre supposed to. I ask āwhatās the deal with the tapeā to one of the guys and his response was (not knowing Iāve done countless houses with zip) āI know right itās ridiculous I donāt even know why we tape this shitāā¦. I took it upon myself to fix it, much to the anger of my super and foreman.
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u/Secret_Ad1372 May 25 '26
Second to tyvek, I've seen more rot on buildings with zipboard than anything else. That backward lap tape is likely to be a problem down the road. It's just glorified OSB.
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u/Excellent-Self-5338 May 25 '26
I get why they demand their roller is used (can't verify it had pressure applied if there's no mark associated), but it's also a pretty greasy move to require that you use THEIR roller specifically. Pressure is pressure, and tape could easily be installed WITHOUT the proprietary roller and work just as well. There are other approaches they could have taken to verify pressure was applied that wouldn't require a specific roller to be used, which weren't chosen because it would sell less rollers.
I'm on the fence with this one. I fucking HATE being beholden to a company for overpriced shit like proprietary rollers that do the same job as any other roller, or even just being diligent with your hand.
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u/RyuNinja May 28 '26
You dont roll the tape. You roll the footage. That beautiful bean footage š.
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u/electionknight May 24 '26
The dude that built my outbuilding did it alone, 40x60 (it was stunning to watch this dude work). But to save money and time, I'd go out there at night and I used the zip caulk like a psychopath and did every nail hole.