Horizontal drywall hanging – why does everyone do it?
PLIERS
| Posted in General Questions on
Anyone hang their drywall vertically? I’m confused as to why nobody would. If your ceiling is 8ft or less you can just line everything up factory edge and cut the bottom if need be. You just need to frame 16 or 24 on center. Then you can slap on baseboard and cover any imperfections on bottom cut. I heard there’s more seams but the seams would go in one direction and you would be dealing with factory edges. Anyone experienced and has been hanging drywall vertically for years?
Joe
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Replies
Joe,
Commercial drywall is often hung vertically, but that's for fire code reasons.
For any room 14 ft and under you only end up with one easy to mud and sand horizontal factory edge. For longer ones you have one additional butt end that can be spliced between the framing to recess the edge. Horizontal seams are a lot easier to finish than vertical ones and less noticeable. They also help hide uneven framing.
Like many construction trades, drywall is a competitive business. If you could do a better or quicker job hanging board vertically, that w0uld be how it was done.
Joe, you want to rely on framers to reliably place a stud every 48"? That's vertical? In theory that works, in the field not so much. But the reasons in favor of horizontal make it a no-brainer for most. They prefer 12' sheets for less joints, which can't be hung vertically. The prefer a single horizontal taper joint at a nice working height all around the room. Nine-foot ceilings are accommodated with 54"-wide sheets. The drywall is stacked horizontally, so it's less work to pull it into position.
The only reason against horizontal, and it's a killer reason, is that the bottom taper makes baseboard installation more work, which annoys the finish carpenters. But they expect it, and know what to do.
Just a homeowner/diyer with a few rooms under my belt, but I prefer the vertical method for the baseboard reason. And because I like to have the bevels at corners, either inside corners that get taped, or outside corners where I’ve been using bullnose beads and those bevels let me get them pretty darn flush and inline with the walls. Of course my wall lengths aren’t multiples of 4 feet so I can’t get two beveled edges at every corner.
Max,
The exterior wall framing has to be aligned with the sheathing, so none of those walls would end up with the recessed edges at corners.
The total joint length is less when you go horizontal. It is less mudding. If you are getting drywall delivered, a normal lumber yard will stock up to 16' sheets so unless you are building a Mcmansion you can usually put your butt joints above and below windows. Also horizontal seams at chest height are the easiest joint on the whole job.
Of course if you are renovating a single room and can only get 8' sheets in there, the extra work of going vertical could be worth it to avoid a lot of butt joints.
>The total joint length is less when you go horizontal.
It depends on the wall layout.
Imagine a wall that is 20 feet long and 8 feet high. Ignore the corners and ceiling because they're the same either way. If you go vertical it's five sheets, which means four joints, each 8', so 32' of total joints.
If you go horizontal, it's two and half sheets, so two vertical joints, 8' each, 16' total. Plus one horizontal joint the whole way, 20'. Grand total is 36'.
In this case vertical is actually 10% less joint distance. But if the wall is 21', on the horizontal layout that doesn't add any vertical joints over 20' and it adds only one foot of horizontal joint. On the vertical layout you're into another sheet for another 8' joint. So the total now is horizontal 37', vertical 40'
At 24x8 both vertical and horizontal have 40' of joints.
Where horizontal really shines is if you're using longer pieces of drywall. That 20x8 wall can be done with just four pieces of horizontal 10 footers and just 28' feet of seams.
That's with an eight foot ceiling. With a ten foot ceiling, ten footers vertical gives significantly less seam length -- 40' on a 20x10 wall vs. 50' for horizontal.
That’s where I was getting at before I read that, so horizontal is the way to go if you have long sheets, you are a contractor, and you can pick up longer than 8, my midsize pickup gets complicated when longer than 8. I have a small space to drywall, only real benefit for me is if horizontal is more forgiving because as an amateur I’m bound to mess up somewhere in framing.
Joe,
The question you are asking is a bit different than in your original post. The answer to that one was: Drywall gets hung horizontally because it's a better way to do it.
Your new question is: Given my limited manpower and inability to use longer boards, is it feasible to use all 8 footers hung vertically? The answer to that is: Yes, it gets done by DIYers all the time.
DC,
- I don't think there is any sense calculating the seams only using 8 ft boards. No drywallers do that.
- Ten ft ceilings get boarded with 5 ft wide boards. You still just have one centre seam.
I can see how if you had 16 foot sheets, most residential homes you would end up with one horizontal seam. My local Home Depot/Lowe’s only carries 8ft sheets, so I would have to order it from a lumbar yard to get longer. The only problem is manhandling these long sheet by myself, how ackward and hard will that be. I could just run 8 foot sheets horizontally and have.a few butt joints but do I need to stagger the joints in this situation. I watched a video where they put a 4 foot topleft corner and then run 8 foot rest of way.
You always want to stagger the joints, that applies for hanging both horizontal and vertical drywall.
Commercial jobs (which is mostly what I do), will typically have a pretty good size crew doing the drywall work. You have two guys bringing the sheets, another guy or two screwing it to the studs. Two guys can move a big sheet of drywall without too much trouble as long as there aren’t too many turns to make. Other guys follow behind taping and mudding (sometimes). It’s a production operation setup for speed. You see some good tricks sometimes (like using spray adhesive to stick up plastic corner bead before mudding), and exciting new ways to bungle things (painting over mud that’s still wet).
Bill