As rainscreen cladding took hold in the US design market, Z girts have proven to be challenging to seal for water/airtightness and are very inefficient thermally. Although commonly utilized due largely to budgetary constraints, the structural and load challenges, thermal inefficiencies, unnecessary breaches to the weather barrier, and fundamental installation inefficiencies of the Z girt approach are increasingly dating and disproving this approach for long-term rainscreen assembly performance.
