Roof Plywood Or Osb

Plywood is better than osb for subfloors.

Roof plywood or osb.

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. 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.

Once the area is known divide by the area of a 4 8 sheet to find how much sheathing is needed. Speaking of osb it s a top choice of homeowners looking for something more affordable than plywood. 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. Find the area of a roof.

This is one of the reasons why some people prefer using plywood for their roof or subfloor. New homes will usually see a few rainfalls before a roof is on and as noted above osb doesn t handle moisture well. 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. Despite its common use as such we don t recommend using osb for subfloors but that s really just for aesthetic reasons.

Thankfully there are osb materials today that are designed to be moisture resistant. 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. To find the amount of plywood needed to cover a roof start by finding the area of the roof.

Plywood is made out of laminated sheets of veneer. It is generally believed that osb is cheaper than plywood. Both cdx plywood and osb tend to come in standard sheets of four foot by eight foot 4 8. Because of its construction some manufacturers actually make larger sheets of osb.

Osb is made by combining glue resin and wood chips and pressing them into the shape of a plywood sheet then baking everything together. It s a top choice because of its characteristic wherein it expands evenly when exposed to water unlike osb wherein only the edges expand. When it gets wet the sheathing could swell and thicken up because of the moisture. It becomes soft and weak when it delaminates.

For plywood it is like 5 to 10 more expensive. Osb boasts a more consistent density. It is true as the price of every osb board is around 15 20 per sheet 4 8 sizes.