Roof Plywood Or Osb

Thankfully there are osb materials today that are designed to be moisture resistant.

Roof plywood or osb.

It is true as the price of every osb board is around 15 20 per sheet 4 8 sizes. 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. It becomes soft and weak when it delaminates. However you might find that osb can better suit your needs than plywood for the roof.

This is one of the reasons why some people prefer using plywood for their roof or subfloor. Find the area of a roof. 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. To find the amount of plywood needed to cover a roof start by finding the area of the roof.

For plywood it is like 5 to 10 more expensive. It is generally believed that osb is cheaper than plywood. Osb boasts a more consistent density. Both cdx plywood and osb tend to come in standard sheets of four foot by eight foot 4 8.

A few other downsides to plywood. Talking about plywood or osb for roofing you cannot miss the information of the cost. Multiply the length of the roof in feet by the width of the roof in feet to find the area of the roof in square feet. 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.

Speaking of osb it s a top choice of homeowners looking for something more affordable than plywood. Oriented strand board isn t plywood nor is it a type of particleboard fiberboard or wafer board and although it is a newcomer to a plywood dominated market its use for exterior sheathing is. Because of this manufacturing process osb is at least half the cost of cdx plywood. When it gets wet the sheathing could swell and thicken up because of the moisture.

Once the area is known divide by the area of a 4 8 sheet to find how much sheathing is needed. Because of its construction some manufacturers actually make larger sheets of osb. It s a top choice because of its characteristic wherein it expands evenly when exposed to water unlike osb wherein only the edges expand. New homes will usually see a few rainfalls before a roof is on and as noted above osb doesn t handle moisture well.

Unfortunately an osb is less resistant to water compared to plywood. Plywood is better than osb for subfloors. Earlier types of osb were known as waferboard which is now considered a sub standard version of oriented stand board.