Every so often, this subject shows up on the building forum that we frequent. OSB stands for Oriented Strand Board and is essentially layers of strands of wood. On each layer, the strands go in one direction, and the layers of the final board alternates in direction. This is similar to plywood, except that plywood is made up of layers of wood that are peeled from the log.
OSB has a bad reputation - it is often confused with wafer board, and the early OSB's had problems with the glues not holding up. Also, if OSB gets wet, it tends to curl at the edges. Current building codes do not differentiate between OSB and plywood.
The OSB vs. plywood is a hot debate, but the general consensus seems to be:
- they don't make plywood like they used to
- generic OSB is garbage
- in general, plywood is better than generic OSB
- Advantech OSB is the greating thing ever and is better than plywood. Advantech holds up to water better than anything on the market
- Solid wood or super-premium plywood is probably the best quality but is prohibitively expensive.
Our original lumber quote included 3/4" T&G (tongue & groove) Advantech subfloor, but when I went to place the order last week, they no longer had the Advantech and were substituting Norbord Stabledge OSB. Not knowing anything about Norbord, I left the subfloor off the order and spent the week trying to find out more about their product, finding someone who carries Advantech, pricing plywood.
All I could find on Norbord Stabledge is that, like Advantech, they have a 50 year warranty on their product. It is supposed to hold up fine to normal exposure seen during construction (i.e. it shouldn't warp if it gets rained on).
After numerous calls, I finally found some Advantech subfloor - for a mere $32/sheet versus the $20 for the Norbord. I never did price the plywood. We had to order the subfloor by Saturday so that it will be available later this week. And the winner is - Norbord. I think that Advantech's stellar reputation has resulted in the high cost, but I can't justify an extra $1K when the Norbord has the exact specifications and warranty.
Sorry for the boring update - but every step involves decisions that we obsess over! It feels good to get this decision behind us so that we can continue our 4-year research of induction cooktops! Hopefully there will be lots of progress this coming week, and hopefully our windows will be correct when they come in. (Can't remember if I posted this before, but they guy who ordered our windows quit the same day that he placed the order. Pat's short-handed, and is managing 13 projects, and so has not been able to confirm the order, despite my daily phone calls. Sigh.)
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