Roof Osb Vs Plywood

Osb boasts a more consistent density.

Roof osb vs plywood.

To understand plywood vs osb for roofing is probably very important when you are doing house renovating or remodeling. Osb is cheaper than plywood by about 3 to 5 per panel. About osb compared to cdx oriented strand board osb is made very differently. Osb sheathing costs a few dollars less per sheet than 1 2 in.

However you might find that osb can better suit your needs than plywood for the roof. Tall wall and the joists below with a single sheet. Sheets which means you can sheathe an 8 ft. Osb sheathing has one irritating characteristic but only if you abuse the stuff.

Thankfully there are osb materials today that are designed to be moisture resistant. Osb panels can be manufactured in lengths up to 16 feet or sometimes even higher while plywood is generally limited to 8 to 10 feet. Osb is made by combining glue resin and wood chips and pressing them into the shape of a plywood sheet then baking everything together. Up until 2000 plywood held the majority of the market for wall roof and floor sheathing when it was surpassed by osb which as of 2018 held about 75 of the market share.

However these days roofing can be made out of osb or oriented strand board. The roof can be made out of several common materials and plywood is one of them. It becomes soft and weak when it delaminates. This is one of the reasons why some people prefer using plywood for their roof or subfloor.

Both cdx plywood and osb tend to come in standard sheets of four foot by eight foot 4 8. Unfortunately an osb is less resistant to water compared to plywood. While a sheet of plywood might be 5 to 7 plies thick a sheet of osb is made from as many as 50 strand layers packed and compressed into the same thickness. Because of its construction some manufacturers actually make larger sheets of osb.

In our area 1 2 in. Home osb is about 700 less expensive compared with plywood if used as the subfloor sheathing and roof decking. And osb is available in 4 x 9 ft. Odds are that if you pass a housing development of wood framed houses it will have osb oriented strand board as exterior sheathing.

So which one is better the old fashioned plywood or the osb. Both osb and plywood absolutely hate water lipinskiy mentions going on to say that the most important part regardless of which decking option you choose is that all penetration points on a roof are sealed. One of the nice things about plywood is the variety of options you can buy. When you count sub floors roofs and wall sheathing osb claims about 70 of the wood sheathing market in north america over plywood.

Osb v plywood which is best. A few other downsides to plywood. When it gets wet the sheathing could swell and thicken up because of the moisture.