Highly accoladed and weather-protected Pacific Northwest home will be featured in upcoming TV series.
A residential project in the Pacific Northwest that’s been highly lauded by the design community will soon be showcased on a much larger stage – a national TV show and streaming platforms. The Rambler, winner of a 2023 AIA Honor Award, will be featured on an upcoming episode of America By Design on CBS News and multiple livestreams, simulcasts and on-demand platforms via CBS affiliates. Its air date has not yet been announced.
The project is described as a “modestly sized house located northwest of Seattle on the Kitsap Peninsula and built by the local community.” That local community is largely comprised of Jon Gentry, founding partner of GO’C, an architecture-design studio based in Seattle – mostly because the Rambler is Jon’s own residence.
In a promo for the episode, Gentry talks about the air and water barrier system he used (and installed himself) behind the brick-clad cavity walls and exterior insulation.
“The PROSOCO weather barrier is a great sustainable product that meets the Living Buidling Challenge,” he says. That system included Joint & Seam Filler to detail seams, over-driven fasteners in sheathing and at the base of the wall where the sheathing meets the concrete slab. Then, on the field of the wall, the Cat 5 weather barrier was installed. FastFlash was applied at the windows and door rough openings, and finally, AirDam (an interior sealant) was installed at the interior joint between the window and door frame and the FastFlash-treated rough opening.
“It’s a very high-performance air-sealing (system) that can go up in all kinds of weather.”
Gentry went on to say that a PROSOCO rep showed up on site at the Indianola, Wash.-based build to demonstrate how to install each R-Guard product, which Gentry said was “great support for custom projects to have that kind of hands-on approach.”
That rep was Pat Downey, PROSOCO’s Technical Specialist for Building Envelope Products in the Pacific Northwest. When I spoke to Pat on the phone this week, I learned that he’s worked closely with Gentry for around 12 years, and that GO’C (pronounced “go see”) is a loyal specifier of PROSOCO with R-Guard products in their main spec.
“I’ve been helping Jon with homes for years,” Downey told me. “I will review his drawings and then meet his group in his office to go over everything. It’s been a continual relationship.”
As a long-time specifier of R-Guard, Gentry was of course familiar with the products for the Rambler, but he hadn’t installed them before by hand. For the project’s contractors and applicators, they were not familiar with R-Guard products.
“Whenever I work with a contractor who hasn’t worked with R-Guard before, they get excited because it means they can work all winter.”
“The contractors liked it, they just didn’t understand it,” Downey said. “I told them this is what they might want to start doing in Indianola due to the weather here. Whenever I work with a contractor who hasn’t worked with R-Guard before, they get excited because it means they can work all winter.”
Downey’s referring to the fact that R-Guard’s silyl-terminated polymer (STP) products can be applied in the rain and are in fact moisture-cured, which equals fewer schedule delays in the famously rainy Pacific Northwest.
Downey says he’s proud of his work to support the success of the Rambler, but his services provided to GO’C and Gentry on this project are not unique.
“The involvement of PROSOCO, which includes me reviewing drawings and going on site to explain where and how to detail certain material transitions, that’s just what PROSOCO does. We partner with architects, consultants, applicators, contractors, and the GC, all the time. We like to be very involved at this level so we can support our customers and their projects wherever possible.”
The Rambler features these R-Guard STP products:
