I am building a house which has a REMOTE wall system in it (foam “outsulation”). Although I passed on the relevant information to the builder, who is usually on top of the details, he managed to mess up with the window bucks.

The wall structure is 2×4 studs (with R13 cavity insulation), plywood sheathing, Tyvek Drain Wrap (wrinkled stuff) 2 layers of EPS foam of R10 each sealed with Siga Wigluv tape, then 3/4″ plywood furring strips followed by wood siding.

The problem is I purchased Tyvek Flex wrap to be wrapped around the “outie” window bucks (per the REMOTE manual) but he forgot to install it before placing the 4″ of foam. So, at present, if water were to get back into the foam it will run down to the headers and sides of the window openings, contacting the bare wood.

We could cut out the foam around all the windows to get to the Tyvek and then place the Flex Wrap. That’s going to be messy, probably screw up the tight and carefully staggered foam joints and I think will need lots of spray foam cans to fix the gaps when putting it back. It will also need a bunch more Wigluv tape.

I read about using foam itself as the WRB and am reluctant to do that (because of potential board shrinkage leading to gaps / tape coming unstuck etc). I was thinking that the fastest way to get back to a continuous WRB would be to rewrap the house in Tyvek Drain Wrap on top of the foam (effectively abandoning the existing layer at the sheathing). Then we can use Flex Wrap to tie the window bucks to the new Drain Wrap. I know you are not supposed to create a membrane sandwich – but will trapping the foam between two layers of breathable Tyvek membrane be likely to reduce permeance enough to cause an issue?

The house is in climate zone 6 in SW Colorado. Many thanks for any advice on this or alternative solutions……. Gary