BuilderFish Blog

A Nation of Old Homes

Todd Hawkins — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:05:51 +0000

Seen this house? Like me, you might’ve grown up in one, or come home to it daily. Did you know that more than half of our nations houses were built more than three decades ago? Review the data and graphs within The Current, and learn about our concept of building new within old walls.

Cable shows have romanticized fixing up old houses; but, assuming structural integrity, you’re pitching money if you don’t completely retrofit, modernize the systems and tighten the building envelop (i.e. proper air sealing and insulating).

There’s nothing wrong with renovating to a traditional STYLE of house, the problem, many owners focus only on fixtures and finishes and lose sight of the house as an integrated system. Brushed nickel looks spiffy but $400 electric bills aren’t warm and fuzzy. They’re pouring money into putting lipstick on a functionally and operationally, obsolete pig and will continue bleeding money monthly heating and cooling outdoors.

A new building code is now taking effect and best practices the last five years in green building science and universal design correct many design and construction mistakes of the past, so those inclined to renovate an older home can achieve a traditional look along with energy and social sustainability. Just remember when looking at these properties, we no longer build that way for a reason, not all oldies are goodies.

Are you Current about Convenience?

Todd Hawkins — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:31:01 +0000

Todd Hawkins, Director of Client Happiness

Most company newsletters are awful dreck. (Who knows German?) Most are pre-canned junk, but ours is original junk :>)

Click The Current, review a few and please subscribe. I write and release Friday mornings. I do my best to make them informative and entertaining (each edition includes something useful having absolutely nothing to do with our cause, or even our industry).

I post different things to each of our social media. This blog is tutorial (how to do things around your property), the fan page is for showing/goofing off, and the newsletter more of a thought piece along with some fun stuff.

I realize you’re bombarded with newsletters but I hope you’ll at least take a look and see for yourself that ours is better! Your life at home might just get easier learning how to make your house more convenient and comfortable.

Lifetime Home Survey UPDATED

Todd Hawkins — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:04:39 +0000

Recycle your house into a Lifetime Home

This is the first revision of the LTHS since I posted the original in October. (Click “What is a Lifetime Home?” if you have no idea what I’m talking about.)

Changes include:

new products we’ve discovered and/or are now using
replacing any mention of fluorescent with LED lighting
multiple embedded hyperlinks to source material, additional information or manufacturers/vendors

There are numerous active links (anything underlined blue, all dot-coms as well as the green title of the document) to make the surveys convenient and save you time Googling. Click the underlined text and you’ll be taken to that web site. If you rest your mouse pointer over blue underlined words, you should see the web address to which you’ll be re-directed when you click those words. Email me and I’ll forward as raw PDF attachments if it’s not working.

Remember, because I’ve added and deleted since the original, the line items have changed. Please reference the version date at the top and specific line item if you have a question so we’re on the same page.

Click the following links to download the respective PDFs:

Lifetime Home Survey BuilderFish 1-19-12

Lifetime Home mini-Survey BuilderFish 1-19-12

Questions?

Epic Fail at Zero Steps

Todd Hawkins — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:29:08 +0000

What a missed opportunity. Do you see it? Notice what might’ve been?

Instead there will be exterior steps to every entrance when, with only a dash of forethought and proactive design, there could’ve been zero steps and a flush threshold entrance at each entry point on the main level. Instead of step-free ease, residents and visitors will climb to a doorway on an essentially flat lot in a new neighborhood of mostly level parcels.

This is how inaccessibility becomes baked in from groundbreaking, due only to lazy design and construction. This sows the seeds of future ramps, which are the worst “cure” for correcting an at best inconvenient and at worst prohibitive entry into any home (i.e. imagine using a walker or wheelchair, and in bad weather).

Alternately, there could’ve been no steps and a wide, roll-in entrance for maximum convenience, safety and ease for anyone of any age or ability, carrying stuff, pushing a baby stroller, pulling luggage or lugging groceries. What would the movers prefer?

Protection is Important

Todd Hawkins — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 14:33:02 +0000

We take extra care to ensure your home, whether new construction or remodel, is spiffy clean at the end of the project. The point of this post isn’t to brag, it’s to inform that you should expect, even demand, extra attention and cleanliness from any contractor working on your house.

The technical term for limiting mess and damaging mishaps is “protection”, essentially covering things until you’re ready to use them. Any home improvement project typically involves some form of DEstruction (demolition or “demo”) before CONstruction improves the house. We believe strongly in taking extra time to protect the entire property inside and outside, including your lawn. For example, we use Ram Board with Spill Guard to cover flooring, thick plastic and paper for steps and other surfaces as well as silt fences, hay and plywood to control mud and prevent splatters on driveways, sidewalks, patios and walls. When we leave, ideally it’ll be as if a new home dropped from the sky.

Why bother? Because every project requires clean-up. Someone must clean. Make a big mess, cleaning takes even longer and often the homeowner inherits the chore after the trades bolt for the next job.

We feel that’s just plain wrong, wouldn’t do that to our mothers, so doesn’t meet our standard doing unto others what we’d do at our own home. Plus who wants to see their brand new stuff dinged, scuffed or scratched?

Our Resolution is a Revolution

Todd Hawkins — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:34:22 +0000

As unlikely as it seems, housing is beginning a renaissance because of the Great Recession and blow up of the housing market. Companies are innovating all aspects of design, construction and product manufacture, trying to stand out, thrive or simply survive.

BuilderFish’s mission is teaching and helping people improve their houses into Lifetime Homes, that your house should seamlessly adapt to you as life progresses and changes.

What we do can be applied to any style of house in any area of the country whether building new or retrofitting, and includes proactive attention to every detail from the door knobs to home automation. There’s a new dawn for all of it, and your home should include if you want to live comfortably and conveniently no matter what happens to you and your family (even pets!).

Our residential housing stock is old, nearly obsolete with a median year built of 1974, and there’s a glut of beat up foreclosures (shadow inventory of well over a million units) not yet on the market. While some perceive housing is newer following our recent construction boom, the demographic fact is most of our nation’s houses were built

in the decades immediately following WWII. So the picture below is typical of the vast majority of our homes. Imagine inside the lay-out, user friendliness and efficiency of that house.

The good news, a bulldozer isn’t the cure. What’s required is modernization, improved air sealing/quality, water proofing, energy efficient systems and interior redesign accentuating ease. We describe as “custom new within old walls” emphasizing BOTH energy and personal effort efficiency. “Green” building gets all the attention but accessibility and easiness are just as important and apply to every area of the property including the yard.

As we head into 2012, think about your home and what you could do to make it livable for a lifetime, or where you plan to go if you don’t.

Wishing for Wind (Power) in 2012

Todd Hawkins — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:27:28 +0000

Next year one of our clients hopes to generate electricity from prevailing winds at their property so we’re currently determining the quality of their seemingly constant, blustery conditions. One misconception, just because it’s always windy, doesn’t mean you have enough to practically and/or cost effectively generate power.

One resource we’ll lean upon is nearby. Did you know that James Madison University is a leader in wind power research and development?

JMU’s Virginia Center for Wind Energy hosts information and resources, including a state wind map and wind energy calculator, for anyone interested in learning about the potential for wind power at their property.

This is a fun part of our job and I’ll share what we’re learning and doing.

Green Baloney

Todd Hawkins — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:16:43 +0000

All you need to remember: build a tight house and mechanically draw in fresh air. And I don’t mean “fresh” from an attic, crawl space or garage, bring in from the Great Outdoors. Think airplane, but NOT a tight house without fresh air circulation, that would be like living in a coal mine. If you live in a tight house without fresh air, you’re farming dust and allergens.

Old school builders espouse that you don’t want to make a house too tight. My favorite rebuttal is from an architect teammate, Charles Hendricks who typically replies, “Which window do you want me to leave out?” (By the way, Charles is an expert in indoor air quality.)

Green building is the “in” thing right now and we’re all for energy (and social!) sustainability and maximum efficiency. Folks, this is simply smart construction with newer, better products and all soon to be code.

(graphic courtesy TerraChoice)

However, there are plenty of dubious designations, certifications and unsubstantiated claims (even by the government! Imagine that?) resulting in “green washing” (i.e. all that’s “green” is not gold). Attorneys call it something else, making their cash register ring with LEED-igation (lawsuits over unsubstantiated performance claims). I’m not damning any particular designation or measurement, I’m not a scientist, but undeniably there’s Bovine Scatology in unverifiable claims of utility savings and conservation, the modern day snake oil within the housing industry.

Martin Holladay of Green Building Advisor wrote one of my favorite posts weeding some of the green junk claims by our government and others in A Plague of Bad Energy-Saving Tips. One example, running ceiling fans during the winter (which I admit I believed). Does ZIP to lower your heating bill, actually raises your electricity bill if you’re unnecessarily running fans, only reason to do it is circulating air so you’re not dust farming.

So ’tis indeed a good thing that owners and housing professionals are concerned about energy efficiency and sustainability. But back to my main point, tighten your house, suck in fresh air from outside the walls and skip the green baloney.

Erasing Steps

Todd Hawkins — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:40:50 +0000

How do you eliminate exterior steps to an entrance? Shortest answer assuming new construction, site work in combination with moving the house up or down. For retrofits, you’re limited mostly to moving dirt or finding an alternative entrance (like through a garage, carport, etc).

The lay of the land determines your options and, in either case, you simply need to plan. If you’re dealing with more than a three foot rise, then it’s going to be tough but not necessarily impossible.

Otherwise, you grade for a gentle slope to the door, which might include a switch-back and/or retaining wall (think pavers for landscaping), not less than a 1:20 ratio (i.e. maximum slope of 1 inch rise per 20 inches) over the pathway, known as a “walking ramp” or earth berm because it doesn’t require railing or curbs. (The slope of literal ramps shouldn’t be less than a 1:12 ratio.) But higher the ratio the better assuming the lot isn’t ideally flat.

Sometimes it’s instructive to describe what’s typically done and visualize the opposite. So let’s pretend a house built atop a full basement. Typically the builder digs a hole, pours a basement, plunks the floor joists atop the basement walls, constructs the house and builds steps up to the front door.

Same scenario except plan for a zero step and flush threshold entry, we gently grade, flatter the better, to the door. One method of “lowering the house” is using an inset rim atop the foundation walls, which only amounts to pouring an extra course of concrete, and placing the floor joists WITHIN the basement walls atop the inset rim.

Finally, every situation has its own problems to solve but we’re not talking rocket science. Simply slapping up steps everywhere is lazy design and construction and can be avoided in support of maximum convenience and safety if the designer and contractor merely pull on their thinking caps.

Why Steps to Most Doorways?

Todd Hawkins — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:35:18 +0000

Look at this new house. Notice the flat lot? I’ll add the entire lot to the street is flat, and the house is built on a slab. So why that ONE step to the front door?

Ever wonder why steps are necessary on a flat or gently sloping lot? Maybe it’s necessary when a house is built atop a crawl space or basement? Nope. For water or bug proofing? Nope. Expense? Nope (Should it cost MORE to build LESS? Actually might if your builder is headstrong.)

The answer? Ta-Da….Exterior steps to many entrances are unnecessary. Architects design and contractors build out of habit, speed to completion, or it’s just the way it’s always been done, no real reason.

Certainly is NOT because steps are convenient! Who prefers carrying groceries, boxes or furniture up steps? Or pulling a baby stroller backwards or, back hunched, lowering one step at a time? Or lugging golf clubs and luggage up/down (especially after a family “vacation”)?

Steps are unavoidable only if there’s a steep grade that cannot be overcome, otherwise there are alternatives which require only proactive thought and standard construction skills but nothing fancy. Any architect or builder who insists otherwise is preach’in Bovine Scatology.

Here’s how you can nix unnecessary steps.