Archive for November, 2008
The Street Discovers Wood Heat
Thursday, November 20th, 2008You know things are bad when Wall Street starts lauding the benefits of wood heat as cheap and effective. But that’s exactly what Zach Anchors of TheStreet.com reported a couple of days ago in his article Wood Heat Can Cut Fuel Bill in Half. The claims of savings Anchors makes are a bit ambitious. They’re also at odds with Big Brother® government, who a year ago held pro forma hearings to ban the use of wood stoves in the nine counties surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area. Enforcement started the first of November, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, who panned the unwanted regulatory change in the title of an article published today (November 20): Fireplace police on patrol; smoke can draw fine.
I, among many others, pointed out the silliness of this regulation when it was first proposed. Granted, there are 1.4 million wood burning appliances in the greater Bay Area. But if those 1.4 million homes aren’t burning wood, which is carbon neutral, then they’re going to be burning natural gas or propane or heating oil, which is not carbon neutral.
Had the Air Quality Control Board really been interested in air quality and the health of Bay Area residents, rather than job security, they would have mandated the use of high efficiency wood stoves, rather than just imposing a blanket ban. High efficiency wood stoves produce no more particulate matter than the average oil fired furnace — and the emissions are less complex. For every high efficiency wood stove heating a home in the Bay Area that’s one less fossil fuel driven furnace polluting the environment. For every home using a high efficiency wood stove in the Bay Area that’s one more home in America that has significantly reduced its carbon foot print.
For a supposedly progressive State, California can sometimes be very backwards.
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Soliciting Bids During The Recession
Thursday, November 13th, 2008Back a couple of years ago, during the housing bubble, I heard a lot of complaints about how hard it was to get a contractor to even return a phone call, never mind scheduling the work. And, with that much work around, there were also lots of complaints about the high prices.
During the boom, understanding the difference between (self) employment and running a business was optional. If you knew how to estimate materials correctly and had an idea of what “everyone else” was charging for “similar jobs”, you were golden. That’s really all it took. Demand kept prices high, so even the least business savvy contractor was almost guaranteed to make money.
And believe it or not, that helped you, the customer. The contractor was making enough money to pay all the bills associated with the job. So even if the contractor you hired was a terrible business person, the chance that you’d get slapped with a mechanics lien by some subcontractor or supplier because your contractor didn’t pay them was reasonably low.
Not so today. Now that the bubble has burst, jobs are not so plentiful. Competition for those that remain is much higher. And while you may think that’s a good thing because it means you’ll get your job done cheaper, keep in mind that beyond a certain point, “cheaper” also means riskier. Sometimes, much riskier.
Back in February I told the story of a career carpenter, now self-employed, who was working for the same hourly wage he’d been paid as an employee.
Now you might think: “Wow! I can get this job done really cheap with this guy.” And, if all goes well, you might be right. Or, you might find out the hard way just how expensive this guy really is — not because he doesn’t know his trade, and not because he’s dishonest. Rather, because not being a business person, and therefore not knowing how to correctly price himself and his job, he leaves both himself and you vulnerable.
For an example, let’s suppose Mr. Carpenter here owes some back child support he hasn’t been able to pay (probably because he’s not really making any money on these jobs he’s doing). So, while he’s working for you the State decides to exercise its right to drain his bank account to collect. Well, Mr. Carpenter owes the Home Depot money for the materials he’s bought for your job. And the State just took the money and gave it to his ex-wife! They not only took that money, they also took the money he needs to live for the next month.
So now he has no money to pay for installed materials, no money to by food, no money to put gas in his truck to get to work (your job), and no money to fix any of his tools that might break on the job.
But all of that’s his problem, right? Yup — until it becomes yours!
Because in most states, Home Depot has the legal right to place a mechanics lien on your house for the materials Mr. Carpenter bought and installed in your home — whether he was a licensed contractor or not; whether the job was finished or not.
Now, I’ll admit that this is an extreme example. But in this economic climate, as contractors (and their former employees) get more and more desperate for work, you’re going to see more and more bid that are not just low-ball, they’re down right ridiculous.
In my article on how to choose a remodeling bid I provide some common sense ideas on how to at least winnow down the bids to those that make sense. Those same techniques will also eliminate individuals and contractors like Mr. Carpenter. Because this information is so important, especially now, let me repeat it here:
- If you have a bid that’s disproportionately low, throw it out. “Low balling” is a bidding tactic that some contractors use to get jobs that is, in my opinion, dishonest. Basically the contractor deliberately under bids the real price of the job in the hope of being the lowest bidder. Then, after s/he’s gotten the job and the work has started, s/he finds reasons to get you to sign Change Orders that progressively raise the price up to what the bid should have been in the first place. In some states, I understand a contractor can be disciplined for using this type of bidding tactic.
Another reason a contractor might submit a low ball bid is because they have no intention of doing the work! They take your money and disappear with it. This year was a particularly nasty one for transient operators.
In either case, this isn’t the kind of person you want to hire.
- If you have a bid that’s disproportionately high, throw it out unless you can find a darned good reason for the high bid — or you and this person just really hit it off.
- That leaves you with a pile of middle bids that are all worth your consideration. All other factor’s being equal, I recommend picking the contractor you get along with best, not the lowest bidder — though the two may be the same. Because remember, this individual and his or her crew is going to be around five or six days a week for months on end! You don’t want the industrial version of your mother-in-law!
Good luck evaluating the bids for your project!
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Small Kithen Repair/Remodel
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
Like so many things, this kitchen repair morphed into a minor kitchen remodel out of necessity. Quite simply, what needed repaired was underneath the kitchen cabinets you see on the left in the photo at right. In fact, the visible part of the problem was right in front of the open dishwasher door, but it also went beneath the cabinet and extended clear to the doorway you see there at the far end, and from there across the kitchen to beneath the refrigerator (which is out of the shot, but just to the right of the door).
That meant, simply to get at the problem, that long cabinet you see there had to go. It was 14 feet long!
Now, this house was built in the 1950s, and the linoleum on the floor looked like it probably dated to the 1970s. In the foyer (through that door you see there) was a beautiful slate floor. Out of the picture (in fact, where I was standing to take the picture) was an equally gorgeous long-board oak floor that was original to the house. So, to line things up, the flooring installer had installed ¾ inch particle board, also called “underlayment”.
For generations particle board was the product of choice for flooring installers. It’s basically sawdust that’s held together by glues called “binders”. Formica® is made the same way. The difference between the two is that the binder used in Formica® is both waterproof and very, very hard! The binder used in particle board is neither waterproof nor as hard as Formica®. So when particle board gets wet it soaks up water like a sponge. And if it stays wet long enough, it reverts back to its original state: Sawdust!
That’s what had happened here. According to the home owner, there had been a pinhole water leak beneath the sink that had gone undiscovered for nobody knows how long. Then, even after the leak had been stopped, walking on the wet particle board compressed the particle board (now sawdust), in front of the high traffic areas in front of the dishwasher and sink.
The leak had apparently gone undetected for some time, because not only was the particle board degraded, but some of the planks that made up the sub-floor were as well. You can see from the photo at left where I’ve replaced a length of sub-flooring plank right in front of the door. Out of the picture at the bottom were two other planks that had to be replaced as well. One was completely rotted away, the others were so far gone there was nothing left to nail to.
On the left hand side of the picture you can see the sink plumbing hanging there, and a new piece of underlayment has already been laid.
Rather than replacing the old particle board with new, which would leave the new floor vulnerable to the same fate as the old, I used AC exterior plywood. It’s a slightly different thickness than particle board. But we knew going in that there was going to be a lot of prep work to ready the new floor for covering.
That gray compound you see in the two photos is “floor leveling compound”. It fills the gaps between pieces of underlayment and raises any low spots there might be so that the floor is level for the new covering.
Because the client chose marmoleum® for the new floor covering, we knew that this floor was going to be difficult. Marmoleum® is a difficult product to install to begin with, and it doesn’t like floors that flex. Because the girders in this house were spaced at 4 feet O.C., there’s a lot of flex! Yet another reason to use plywood underlayment. The to make sure the whole floor worked as one big unit, I glued the underlayment to the subfloor and screwed it down.
These next two pictures show the kitchen with the marmoleum® down. (I took two pictures, one from each end of the kitchen. The color is “cardinal”.) The space you see there at the left in the first picture (that would be on the right in the second) is where the new kitchen cabinet will go. The width of the flooring was just perfect. The amount cut from under the cabinet filled in where the stove and fridge will go with almost no waste.
In fact, that little piece you see on the floor there is all that’s left! How’s that for a tight fit. The only complication to the whole business was the door into the laundry room (not pictured). The client bought extra flooring to put in the laundry room. But the two widths together don’t work as well together as just the kitchen alone. To complicate matters further, the laundry room floor is to be done later — meaning something temporary had to be done in the doorway. In the end, we tacked a bar down over the edge of the new marmoleum® flooring to protect it until the two can be seamed together.
In this last picture you can see we’re almost done. The client decided to have her plumber install the sink rather than us. The chap in the background there is from the cabinet shop. He’s removing the counter tops from the old cabinets. They look so nice the client decided to go ahead and change out all the old ones — including the breakfast bar. And, she wants to paint and do the other finish work herself as well.
All in all it came out rather nice and we were able to keep the cost down to within the client’s budget. Not an easy task at times on older houses. Often times opening things up is like opening a can of worms. One thing leads to another, and another, and another until you’re way over budget projections and nobody (including us contractors) are happy.
Preventing that from happening is something of an art!
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VIDEO: The Cost/Benefit of a Green Roof
Saturday, November 1st, 2008Green Roofs. It’s an old technology that is becoming new again as cities and municipalities look for methods of reducing the operating costs of buildings and controlling rainwater runoff. The question is: Does it work, and it it worth it?
It can cost an enormous amount of money to install a green roof! In an existing building it is doubtful the roof system will support the weight of the soil, plants, and the water the roof will absorb. The entire structure would have to be reinforced before a green roof can be installed. Meaning that, as stated in the video below, installing a green roof on an existing high rise apartment building can cost as much as $100,000!
But, as the Wall Street Journal reports, the cost may be worth it.
Technorati Tags: green roof, green building, roofing, roofing systems
