LESLIE: Mike in North Dakota is doing some work in the basement. How can we help?
MIKE: I’ve insulated my basement with foam and now I’m putting up sheetrock.
TOM: OK.
MIKE: And I bought both normal sheetrock and moisture-resistant sheetrock and I want to put the moisture-resistant on the bottom. But my question is – I have to cut the long edge of the sheetrock to make it fit on the bottom. Does that hurt the moisture-resistance factor if that’s on the bottom of the sheetrock at – down at the basement level – at the floor level?
LESLIE: Well, Mike, why do you want to use a combination of the two? I mean, the moisture-resistant is really meant to be used in the entire installation in the basement because, you know, even if you’re just putting it at the bottom where moisture tends to be, moisture still gets into the air, especially in a basement situation. So you kind of – if you’re going for the moisture-resistancy, you might want to just use it through the whole space.
MIKE: Ooh, because I’ve already bought it. So should I change that? I just thought maybe – I’ve never had water in the basement. Just for fear if it should I happen, I thought that maybe would prevent it from any mold or a mold problem or something but I don’t know.
LESLIE: If you were working in the basement and say mold spores were to find their way into the air – which is very common – and if you’re dealing with the regular paper-faced drywall in the upper half of the wall surface, these mold spores in the air are going to find that food source – which is paper – now on your traditional drywall and start, sort of, breeding and living there.
So if I were doing some work in a basement, I would go with the moisture-resistance throughout the space. Now that said, when you’re working with a moisture-resistant drywall – I know Georgia Pacific has one called DensArmor, which is great – you can absolutely cut that. The moisture-resistancy is the coating on the outside – which is fiberglass and of course the inside, which is the gypsum product – everything has been treated in the moisture-resistant product so you can cut it and then go ahead and finish it with the fiberglass tape, as you would any other drywall.
MIKE: Well, thank you very much.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) Our pleasure.
TOM: (overlapping voices) You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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