Hey Matt, Thank you for this information. Question-Do you have a video or reference with your Good, Better and Best options for this type of application?

Fun fact: the three little piggies originally had a fourth little piggy who built his house out of cardboard, but he's generally excluded from the story because children found the idea of a cardboard house so silly that it completely broke the immersion of the rest of the story.

When you place vinyl siding over it you can literally kick your way into the house, it actually happened.

I should have been saving all those amazon boxes. I could have made another house.

Almost bought a DR Horton here in the Houston, TX area. We didn’t realize this is what the house was built of until we walked around and saw some of the others being built. You are right, unfortunately it meets minimum requirements of local code. Absolutely terrible for strength, weatherproofing and stability of a home. I was perplexed. It should be illegal. And yes, the home was almost half a million dollars. Criminal.

As a homeowner, I've used that cardboard sheathing product... to protect the floor. Also to protect the surface of my workbench when I was doing a lot of cutting with a utility knife.

I am speechless. Not only are they using probably the absolute MINIMUM product, they're not being diligent about seams and punctures. How are these companies not liable for damages down the line? This is like super gluing wheels on a car.

It is what the production home builders have lobbied for and those houses will not last. I am a mold instructor in Dallas for the licensees for assessment and remediators. This is EXPENSIVE to fix when moldy and the drying industry HATE this stuff.

Currently removing this from my 80’s built home. A 1” wide staple every inch on the perimeters it’s got more steel staple than board. And then the builder covered this with cheap pressboard siding. Aluminum windows nailed in on top of the siding. No caulking or taping to speak of. It’s basically a garden shed but slowly renovating with new methods learned from the build show. Thanks Matt.

Building truly high performance requires you to fight all kinds of battles at the building department (at least over here) meanwhile this kind of foolishness is allowed by code and encouraged by first-cost building. Infuriating and Shameful. Keep shining the light on it Matt!

Speaking of trash on job sites, my in laws were having a house built and would frequently visit the job site after work to check progress. One time they found a bunch of “food trash” in the wall in the stairs, which was partially dry walled at the time. They cleaned it out, and came back the next day and checked, and it was there again. I think it happened a couple of times, it was like the crew was throwing the trash from their lunch into the wall everyday. I don’t know if they finally complained about it or what happened, but can you imagine the bugs that would attract?

Here are some contenders for worst building products:

Matt, please keep up the rants and make residential housing better!

A lady I know recently bought a 6 year old house NE of Dallas. It had vinyl siding but two sides of the house were just covered with mildew and mold on the siding so she hired a company to pressure wash her house (they claimed to be experienced and that there would be no problems washing the siding, riiight hahaha).

I live in a new home neighborhood with a blend of custom builders and production builders. One of the production builders used this cardboard on all their homes and I cringed watched them consistently build $1M+ homes using this stuff! I also saw their subs miss areas with brick or siding and see their exposed cardboard. It’s crazy. So glad you’re publishing this to raise awareness for homeowners and buyers!

I was young working for a general contractor building houses. We remember seeing that on the shelves at the lumber store. My contractor I was his protégé and I remember him laughing and scarfing out that garbage..

As Red Green would say "When cardboard gets wet, it loses most of its strength." That $1 savings might not look like much, but when you're a spec builder those dollars add up to the accountants.

I could not be a builder today. If I was I would probably either go broke, have a stroke, have a nervous breakdown, or go to jail for throwing subs through walls and off roofs. Here in Tennessee I haven’t seen the cardboard sheathing but our code adoption is about 6 years behind, our inspector’s knowledge of the codes is about 10 years behind, and our builders and subs are about 3 generations behind. It’s amazing to me that in spite of all the advances in construction technology almost none of it shows up in most homes.

Matt, this is actually an excellent product that I highly recommend for covering floors on active jobsites. Using it on exterior walls makes as much since to me as using 1/4" MDF as a shower tile backer.

Cardboard is a popular material for building houses in slums worldwide. Surprised to see it used in the US for expensive homes.