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Wood Structural Panels Provide the Best Safety for Your Home

Everyone recognizes home ownership is a smart investment. But it's critical that the home be constructed with the best materials to make it a safe structure for your family. Wood structural panels – plywood and oriented strand board (OSB) – are a strong, stiff sheathing product that will ensure your family's security while allowing a design that features today's trends.

High-end homes are constructed with the best framing materials and are fully sheathed with plywood or OSB to create the highest quality structure possible. Many owners splurge on expensive carpet, cabinets and fixtures for aesthetic value, but it's important to also demand a structure that can be as much as two or three times stronger and stiffer for usually less that $500 on a 2,000 square foot home, simply by sheathing with wood structural panels.

Wall bracing keeps your home standing in the event of a high-wind event or earthquake. With products other than wood structural panel sheathing, meeting code entails having wall segments as wide as 4 feet next to garage openings, corners and window and door openings around your house. Wood structural panels provide better bracing strength than other products and also enable segments as narrow as 16 inches.

Wood structural panels also:

• Provide a solid nail base for common siding products, which results in a smooth, even appearance of the finished siding
• Reduce causes of drywall cracks
• Help protect your home against airborne debris in high winds
• Provide an excellent noise barrier when used in combination with insulated wood-framed walls and exterior siding products
• Deliver energy savings to you

Want to learn more about the benefits of wood structural panels used as wall bracing? Wood Sheathing Builds Business, Form F125, highlights three builders and a homeowner across the country who explain why they build exclusively with wood structural panels.

If you're ready to dig into the technical issues of wall bracing, APA's publications, Introduction to Wall Bracing, Form F430, and Whole House Wall Bracing, Form G440, offer detailed information about code requirements for bracing and the narrow wall solution wood structural panels offer.