We, too, did the rain screen/air gap design as well. One thing we did in our installation in addition to vertical furr strips/strapping was to run strips of cor-a-vent in key locations (such as at window heads and at the watertable). Coravent provides both ventilation and a bug screen in a single design. You can read more about the cor-a-vent design at their website at coravent.com (I believe). In regards to cost all said, additional plywood for furring, coravent, and rigid foam all added about $2-$3K to our job. Oh, and we put felt paper on the furring strips at the joints. As to the strapping, this design is referred to many as a rain screen design. The air gap creates a ventilation gap that specifically allows any moisture that does get in the ability to dry. This design is thought to extend longevity of the siding and its paint. And yes, all the details can get pretty tricky if not well thought out. For more on rain screen design, Fine Homebuilding's Exterior Siding book has a whole article that walks through the design (with a clapboard installation I recall). Also, another resource you might find is to do a search on the Delores House done by Rollie ? who steps in here now and then. He details step by step in a photo journal how he constructed a house with a rain screen design. I think if you google delores house you may find it.

Thanks for the thoughts, Glenn. I agree, 1/3 seems like too much. I called around to other contractors and discovered that 10-15% is more typical in my area. Unfortunately I had already signed a contract for the install prior to even thinking about diagonal. So if I have my heart set on diagonal, I'm stuck paying 1/3 more, like it or not. :\ I probably misspoke when I said "structural" issues. I really meant cosmetic, such as the sagging/gapping you mentioned. Those are unacceptable to me, and they appear more likely to occur in a parallel install. I've read a lot of conflicting advice about this though. The "by the book method" demands an additional 1/2" subfloor or other bracing. But some contractors (including mine) will say, "Yeah, but that's not really necessary -- you won't have problems." It's a head scratcher. As to the perpendicular layout looking wrong, that's what I had thought too. Yet my contractor insists that _most_ of their installs go in that direction, in order to "open up" a narrow room. Looking around my small neighborhood, almost all the houses with hardwood floors have an installation parallel to the long wall. I'm left to conclude that my contractor has not done any installations in my neighborhood -- only in bizarro world. :) As to the direction of the diagonals. I suppose there would be more traffic entering my rooms from the central kitchen area than the front door/foyer. However, I still prefer the idea of the lines leading from the foyer to the opposite corners of the house. I'll have to give that some thought.

I just disassembled a doorway in my ~75 year old house and was amazed to find that only the hinge side had been shimmed and firmly fixed in place. The lock side jamb had been toenailed into the hardwood floor, and otherwise the whole thing was held in place (quite firmly) by nothing but the casings. Of course, that casing was 3/4" thick and 3 1/2" wide, which may be quite different, but the point is that not every part of everything has to be anchored as if it needs to resist a lot of stress, because many parts won't ever see much stress. Extra time and materials spent making things stronger than they need to be is money down the drain.

I don't really care if a multi-ply beam is top loaded, side loaded or loaded in the imagination of the plans examiner. Our practice is to join them together at installation according to the engineer's prescription or, absent that, the manufacturer's instructions. Joining multi-ply beams together helps to keep everything in registration (i.e., aligned) during installation. We typically use a post and hydraulic jack at either end of a beam during installation to pre-load the beam, fine tune level, and get exact measurements for the posts that support it on each end before we install them and connect them to the beam. Joining the plys together prevents an issue if a jack isn't perfectly centered under the beam during that operation. It also helps keep the face of the beam in the same plane as the studs-- avoiding a potential issue for the drywall installation. The bottom line is that your builder may have adopted standard practices that they find to work in the real world irrespective of what is technically required.