Podcast Episode 752: Grass-Fed OSB, Alabama Fixer-Upper, and Adding a Porch Roof

A recent Fine Homebuilding podcast episode took up a listener's question about renovating a 1930s house in central Alabama, and the plan touches on a lot of the same upgrades homeowners with old houses often weigh. The owner wants to fix up a 2,200-square-foot fixer-upper with a vented crawlspace, plank wall sheathing, single-pane windows, and no eaves. His plan includes new house wrap and siding, fiberglass batt insulation in the walls, open-cell spray foam in the roof rafters, new double-glazed vinyl windows, and a blower-door test (a fan-powered check for air leaks) paired with a smoke gun to find and seal drafts. He's weighing tradeoffs that come up in a lot of old-house upgrades: whether to vent or seal a crawlspace, how deep to insulate walls and roof, and whether a dehumidifier in an unused attic space might cause more moisture problems than it solves.

The episode also flagged a newer building material worth knowing about: OSB-style panel sheathing made from grass instead of wood, developed by a company called Plantd. A major national homebuilder has reportedly started using it, though it's still an emerging product rather than something widely available yet.

The rest of the episode covered a listener's porch-roof design question for a 1984 house in Illinois, dealing with snow load and roofline geometry — useful if you're planning a porch addition, but not tied to any rebate program, deadline, or specific efficiency spec that applies broadly to other homeowners.