The purpose of rain screens is to provide protection to the outer walls of any building from rain and other weather conditions. It diverts rainwater’s direction to save the construction from moisture. When you get a rain screen system, it usually has an external cladding.
What is Cladding?
It’s a process of coating one material with another. It provides additional protection to the finished surface to ensure that it keeps the structure’s beauty whatever weather it faces. Like rain screens, cladding keeps the water away from the surface to prevent moisture problems.
Cladding for rain screens is different from one another when it comes to the materials used. They’re made of metal, stone, wood, or masonry. Despite the various materials used for cladding, they all have the same purpose, and that is to reduce the force where rain strikes the most while the cavity minimizes the thrust of the rainwater over the wall. Ideally, claddings have a permeable nature and also have vents, which facilitate the airflow to the cavity and stop the moisture from building up in it. In addition to covering the surface, cladding also ensures that moisture won’t cause harm to the building.
Types of Rain Screen Systems
There are two types of rain screens, and these are simple rain screen and the pressure-equalized rain screen. Simple rain screens are perfect for areas where there’s low rainfall. The cladding of this system is vented and the support wall, which is covered with a waterproof material, is airtight. An example of this rain screen system is a brick masonry on top of the concrete wall.
Pressure-equalized rain screens are best for areas where there’s heavy rainfall. As the storm hits the building, the vents in the cladding keep the air in the cavity to bang the layer of the support wall, which balances the inner and outer pressure, and thus prevents moisture.
However, balancing these two pressures works better in theory than in application. Nonetheless, it helps to separate the cavity. To get additional protection from rainfall, you need to size up the joints of your cladding to deliver excellent results. You can use quality sealants and drainage layers to ensure that the balancing system works well.
There are several companies which offer a rain screen system. If you want to buy quality rain screens, then you should get Dri-Design rainscreen systems. They offer quality rain screens at a reasonable price. Moreover, their rain screen systems use dry joints, which mean less maintenance as it doesn’t use sealants to keep the water from entering your cladding. Lastly, you’re guaranteed that their rain screen systems are in top-quality because they test each rain screen before they sell it to the public.
For these reasons, there’s no point why you should get cheap and low-quality rain screens. With their products, you don’t have to worry about your house as they protect your building from rainfall and moisture. If you want to get their products, you may visit their website to know more about them.