After planning renovations to my builder grade, poorly constructed home for far too long, we’re finally starting the work in the next few days. My contractor is not familiar with modern building practices, so he is basically following my lead.

We’ll be using building products from 475 for our WRB and rough openings (new T&T windows going in), installing 1.5″ Rockwool Comfortboard 80, and 1×3″ furring strips. 

I back up to the woods and have been battling rodents who have taken up residence in my attic by chewing their way through the soffits. We attempted to redo the attic last year and resolve these issues by excluding them where we thought they were getting in and putting in R60 of cellulose. There was a small area over a vaulted ceiling we couldn’t completely remove the fiberglass from and a year later they found that section and made it back in there. 

To try and fix this once and for all, we’re installing aluminum soffits so they can’t chew through them and I also want to install something at the bottom of the wall assembly. I’ve seen suggestions for some bent perforated aluminum, but I haven’t been able to source a powder coated coil that is perforated. We have a walkout basement and a good portion of the underside of the wall assembly will be exposed so unpainted aluminum wouldn’t be ideal. Not sure if anyone has any suggestions here, but they are welcome.

The two main questions I have, which relates to this somewhat, is what to do about our rainscreen. We’ll be using a composite siding called Alside Ascend, which supposedly acts as its own rainscreen, which I assume is simply because it lets air in similar to vinyl siding, but I’m speculating there. 

So, the questions are, when using this siding, do I actually need to vent the top of the wall assembly at all and are there alternatives to perforated aluminum at the bottom of the wall assembly to block rodents? Ideally something finished.