Archive for August, 2007
The Alternative Building Center
Friday, August 31st, 2007I had the distinct pleasure of meeting the lovely Anna Lee today at Humboldt County’s new Alternative Building Center on 4th Street in Eureka.
She and Hector have done a grand job of making available a broad spectrum of green building products. From Ice Stone counter tops (a product with which I’m familiar) and Ultratouch Cotton Fiber insulation (another product with which I’m familiar), to Paperstone, a counter top manufacturer whose product I’ve never heard of before.
They’ve got interior and exterior coatings, YOLO ColorHouse and AFM Safecoat respectively for you do-it-yourself painters, American Clay Earth Plaster (a wonderful alternative to sheet rock, though sheet rock is a recyclable and natural product), Eco-Timber Flooring and Forbo Marmoleum natural linoleum, and a whole lot more stuff than I can list here.
For several years I have been amazed at the lack of a green building infrastructure in Humboldt County. It’s finally beginning to happen! Anna Lee and her partner Hector have taken the first steps in offering the do-it-yourselfer a green building hardware store. A one stop shop where you can buy all the green building supplies you need for your project — or to examine a decent selection of products you’d like your contractor to use on your new home or remodeling project.
I hope you’ll visit the Alternative Building Center soon.
Technorati Tags: green building, flooring, insulation, counter tops, do-it-yourself
California CSLB Sting!
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007This just in:
Sacramento — Illegal operators who showed up at a sting house in Jackson this week were swept up by the Contractors State License Board (CSLB) and arrested for contracting without a license. Members of the CSLB’s Statewide Investigative Fraud Team (SWIFT) posed as homeowners and invited suspected phony contractors to a duplex to bid on various home improvement projects, including landscaping, painting, concrete work and fencing. The enforcement action was conducted on Wednesday, May 30 in cooperation with the Amador County District Attorney’s Office and investigators from the California Department of Insurance, Fraud Division and the Jackson Police Department.
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By law, all contractors who perform work that totals $500 or more (labor and materials) must be licensed by the CSLB. “Unlicensed operators often have a lot of other legal problems,” said CSLB Registrar Steve Sands. “Homeowners may think they are saving money by hiring someone who is unlicensed. But you never know what kind of individuals you are inviting into your home and what their real motives are. You also don’t know if they even know how to do the job.”
For the rest of the article please visit, [the CSLB website].
That last is important: “Homeowners may think they are saving money by hiring someone who is unlicensed. But you never know what kind of individuals you are inviting into your home and what their real motives are. You also don’t know if they even know how to do the job.”
Yes, the handyman has his place. I was one for years. But a legitimate handyman knows when it’s in the home owner’s best interests to call in a contractor, and s/he will (usually) advise you to do so!
And yes, it is also true that contractors cost more than a handyman. That said, in truth, even the most honest handyman will often “graft on a heart” and help out a customer in need — a customer they know can’t afford a contractor, but who needs work done for their safety and/or protection. And yes, I’ve done that too!
Contractors cost more because they have to! The price of legitimacy means that, unlike a handyman, a contractor is not (and cannot) just charge you for the work you’re hiring him (or her) to perform. Like every other regulated business, the contractor must also charge you for the protection you receive from those regulations that make them a legal contractor. The simple truth is, just like the airlines, just like the health care industry, just like every other heavily regulated industry, a contractor has to to recover the cost of those regulations to stay in business.
The “free” estimates, the (sometimes) thousands of dollars of work that must be performed before even a progress payment can be received (and all the while payroll must be made, bookkeepers must be paid, vendors must be paid, vehicles and equipment must be fueled and repaired, and so on), the “retentions” that can be with-held, the — payment, performance, and even bid — bonds that you might require in security, etc. They all increase the price of doing business; all raise the price of giving you, the home owner, the peace of mind you desire when you hire a building professional. All are “back end expenses” that make bona fide, legal contractors more expensive than their illegal counterparts who, honest and skilled or not, do not have to play by those regulatory rules.
So the next time you find yourself wondering why your plumber just charged you $100/hr to unstop your toilet when a handyman might have only charged you $40, give a thought to the power you have over that plumber if s/he screws up the job. Power that you’re paying for with that extra $60; power that you don’t have if the $40/hr handyman screws up the job.
Then ask yourself whether that peace of mind is worth the extra $60. If you think not, then you need to be complaining to your State Representative and State Senator. It is they who make the rules (and so set the cost of regulation).
Technorati Tags: illegal contracting, contracting with out a license, CSLB
Engineered Lumber
Sunday, August 26th, 2007One of the inevitable consequences of our legal system is a reluctance to adopt technologies and building systems that are perceived as “new”. Most of the new technologies being deployed today are perceived as new not because they are, but because it has taken decades for them to begin to be accepted by builders.
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Ten years ago, for example, less that 30% of homes used engineer lumber in their flooring systems. As of 2004, almost 50% have I-joists installed rather then sawn timber girders. GluLam beams have also been around for over a decade, yet they’re still typically deployed only in special situations that require support over a long span.
That said, the use of engineered lumber is becoming more common. The quality of sawn lumber continues to fall, causing more and more problems for builders. Changing building systems completely requires a learning curve and level of risk that make most builders uncomfortable. So in the hunt for alternatives that use construction methods with which they are familiar, more and more contractors are turning to engineered alternatives. As contractor John Spier put it in Building with Engineered Lumber, “Today I use engineered beams, roofs, walls, and headers as well. My wife and partner maintains that most customers are oblivious to anything but the bottom line, but we leave the jobs knowing that they got a better result.”
To say the least!
Types of Engineered Lumber
By now, I-joists and GluLam beams are engineered products that most customers are familiar with. But when it comes to the array of engineered wood products that your designer, architect, or contractor can bring to bear on your project,it’s less than half the picture — and shrinking.
LVL stands for “laminated veneer lumber”.
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A GluLam beam is LVL. But LVL dimensional framing lumber is also available. Like the beams, LVL framing material is much stronger than its sawn counter part. One builder observed that when a framing plan for a three story apartment building called for 3×4 frames on the first floor, he got approval to use LVL 2×4s instead because of their superior strength. By doing so he felt he had saved the developer considerable money, and had provided a superior product.
And in many ways it’s true. Sawn lumber has many drawbacks that many people don’t really think about:
First, unless a special order is placed for air dried lumber (which costs significantly more), virtually all framing material is “kiln dried”. Which means it’s usually so wet it “weeps” with sap when a nail is driven into it. As it dries, it shrinks. As virtually every frame in the building shrinks, the shape of the building changes, with predictable results. Doors no longer close properly. Dry wall cracks. Walls pull away from tiles or showers or cabinets. Corners are no longer square.
Second, as the quality of framing lumber continues to fall, problems with rot and termite damage climb proportionally. It’s now not uncommon to have a significant rot problem in a twenty year old home. That was unheard of as little as thirty years ago!
Third, as the quality of framing lumber continues to fall, the number of “culls” (rejects) increase, and the number of actually straight pieces falls. This increases many of the problems identified above.
The use of engineered lumber addresses all of these problems.
LSL stands for “laminated strand lumber”.
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In an engineered wood structure LVL is the common choice for bearing walls and LSL for the interior walls. In a non-engineered wood structure LSL is often used on walls that the contractor wants to make sure are perfectly straight: Kitchen walls on which cabinets will be hung, and bathroom walls that will be tiled, for instance.
LSL has the interesting characteristic of being so sharp edged that you can cut yourself on the corners! It also has the obnoxious habit of absorbing moisture right out of the air. When it arrives on a job site, LSL has a moisture content of only 5%. If left unwrapped and not installed, LSL can actually swell and warp as it sits on the ground. Therefore, a delivery schedule is usually worked out with the supplier so that only the quantity of lumber than can be framed each day is delivered to the job site.
I-Joists are becoming the favorite of many contractors for girders and floor joists.
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They’re lighter, they use considerably less wood for the strength and span they can cover, and they come in configurations that make the job of plumbing and wiring beneath the building easier.
MDF stands for “medium density fiberboard”, which lead many people to think immediately of “flake board”.
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But the two are not the same. MDF comes in thicknesses not available in any other product. It also comes in many “flavors” (though some are hard to come by in some areas). Unlike flake board, MDF is (or can be) sufficiently water resistant for use in cabinets. (Yes, I know that flake board is used in cabinets too, and if you know that, you’ve probably seen the icky long term result).
Other types of engineered lumber are Oriented Strand Board (OSB), which is now so common it’s hardly worth mentioning, and finger-jointed lumber. Finger-jointed lumber is made by gluing short pieces of wood that would normally be scrap into usable lengths. It’s useful in non-critical, non-load bearing interior walls.
Cost
Not surprisingly, when compared linear foot to linear foot, engineered lumber costs more than sawn lumber. But, as the Sustainable Building Sourcebook observes: “When labor savings and reduced job site waste are considered, the cost is highly competitive.” In fact, it’s pretty much equal. And finger-jointed lumber is equal to the cost of sawn lumber, even on a per foot basis.
Is it Really Green?
Opinions vary. For certain, the resins used to make engineered lumber typically don’t use formaldehyde binders, but that doesn’t mean they don’t give off VOCs (though it does produces less VOCs), and it also doesn’t mean those binders are made from environmentally friendly compounds.
BuildingGreen.com put it this way: “While not free from ecological concerns, engineered lumber products can provide a significant environmental advantage over solid wood by efficiently utilizing fast-growing, small-diameter trees.” In other words, engineered lumber is (usually) produced from “farmed” trees.
In the end, there are probably better alternatives than engineered lumber if you’re open to more modern building methods than studs and joists. But if you want a stud built home, or if you need to use some framing in your ICF or SIP built home, engineered lumber is a much better alternative than sawn lumber all the way around.
Technorati Tags: engineered lumber, sustainable building, LVL, LSL, GluLam, MDF, building green, studs, lumber
Tippett Hall
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007If you like architecture and history, then there are some potential jobs that just make you drool. The possibilities represented by the recent gutting of Tippett Hall as reported on August 17, 2007 by the San Diego Union-Tribune is one of those things.
The story reports the sad fact that: “The 1937 Colonial-style mansion with 10,000 square feet, nine bedrooms, 7½ bathrooms, leaded glass, chandeliers, a sweeping staircase and inlaid floors installed by Swedish craftsmen has been gutted.” And now, the property is back on the market. The asking price? A cool $76 million dollars.
While nobody will comment as to just why the house was gutted, San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Roger Showley discovered that “owners sometimes hope that by erasing historic value, they can increase the value of their property. Retaining key portions of the structure also can sometimes preserve previous nonconforming conditions for future construction, such as height, setback and lot coverage.”
All that aside, wouldn’t it be just a glorious job to restore the old mansion to its former glory for a new, loving and appreciative owner? I think so!
The opportunity present given the mansion’s current state means that new, energy efficient technologies could be blended with restoration techniques to produce an accurate, but much more efficient building for the new home owners, and the residents of Del-Mar, to enjoy for decades to come.
Also exciting: “Bruce Coons, executive director of the Save Our Heritage Organization, said he accidentally found items salvaged from the Tippett home at a Barrio Logan junkyard. He marveled at the old-wood doors, leaded glass panels and other luxurious appointments built into the home 70 years ago.”
That leads one to wonder: What would we find if we really put out the call for artifacts from Tippett Hall to be returned?
What a delicious project!
Technorati Tags: Tippett Hall, mansion, property value, restoration, colonial-style, energy efficiency
