Vapor Barrier Thoughts

[ARAMP1]

After separating from active duty and moving around every few years, the wife and I finally bought our forever home. It has this wonderful extra deep four car garage with 15 foot ceilings that is heated and cooled. Anyway, the house was built in the early eighties and this awesome, massive, attached garage only has one, 120V electrical outlet in it.

So, I've decided to run a couple 240V circuits (welder, plasma cutter, air compressor) and 4 or 5 separate 120V circuits with outlets spaced out around the perimeter wall. I started by cutting a one foot section out of the drywall and will follow with placing the boxes and running the wire.

So, when I was cutting the drywall, I cut into the plastic vapor barrier that was between the drywall and the insulation. Should I try to tape in a new section of plastic when I'm done running the wire? Should I tear down the whole inside wall and re-do it? How bad would it be if I just didn't worry about it?

 

[James-W]

You don't want a break in the vapor barrier. If you can fix it so there is no break, then that would be acceptable. If you can't repair it so there is no break, then I would be inclined to tear it down and re-do it.

 

[bobbyjean]

just my two cents here....why not surface mount everything using emt and run thhn stranded- i kinda like the look...gives me places to hang things...and you can save your vapor barrier

 

[Leaflessshadetree]

It looks like you cut out large rectangle even with the drywall. That is going to make repairing the vapor barrier more difficult. I'd slit it down the middle, fold it back together and tape the slit (along with any incidental damage from removing the drywall.

 

[Ibanez540r]

I'd see if you can do some tugging on the drywall and get it to loosen up a bit from the wall just enough to slide new plastic behind each edge and cover the space. Or take a flat bar at each stud to get the drywall to loosen from the fasteners to accomplish same goal.

You'll have the old screw holes to re-mud in the area where they pulled through a bit, but a hell of a lot easier then removing the whole wall. (And buzz some new screws in to tighten the drywall back up)

 

[ARAMP1]

Thanks for the responses, gents. I really didn't want to surface mount any of the receptacles. I'll tear the whole wall down before resorting to that.