Building Science: Understanding Air Flow
As reported in the January 2005 issue of PB, building science is a systems approach to home building that considers relationships between a home's components and its environment. The goal of building science: to optimize occupant health, comfort and safety; maximize energy efficiency and structural durability and reduce builder and contractor callbacks.
Wood University Attend Online
Wood University, the free online education portal of the APA-The Engineered Wood Association, now offers a course on building structurally sound wood-framed structures. WU 201: Design of Wood Connections is broken down into four successive/progressive/consecutive units: Each unit focuses on a specific area of wood joinery and can be completed in one hour.
Gone Fishin'
It's a busy Saturday afternoon and one of your sales associates has just finished working with a customer. By chance you overhear the customer whispering to her friend, "I don't care how much it costs, I want it anyway." Stunned, you step back and think, "I can't believe it. Did that customer just say what I think she said?" Go ahead and believe it, it's entirely possible.
Steeling Home
Many a builder has faced the quandary of building homes with steel, which can be costly but more consistent or building with wood, which can warp and be labor intensive. One company has brought an innovative solution to the marketplace. FrameMax, a company specializing in steel framing technology, provides a viable solution to the wood versus steel dilemma.
Reinventing Tradition
Accustomed to building a handful of homes each year topping out at about $350,000, David DeBord was ready for a new challenge that would become his first New Urbanist outing, his first plan drawn by an architect rather than a designer and his first attempt at a significantly more upscale home. President of DeBord Custom Homes, based in Virginia Beach, Va.
Fun with designing a door
Architectural Traditions — designers and manufacturers of crafted doors, windows and hardware — created a program on its website where builders and consumers alike can design doors specific to the house being built. Visitors to the site first select an interior or exterior door. The process then guides visitors through a series of options, allowing them to choose the door type, door...
2004 Housing GIANTS Rising Tide
If you're searching for melancholy, look up one of the Giant 400 home builders who sold his company two or three years ago. Unquestionably, he'll tell you he had reason to believe the market was at its peak — the very best time to cash out. But now he's looking at the recent performance of his peers and realizing, if he stayed in the business, he'd have the same money and he'd...
Top 10 Things to Ask in Interviews
The Sharrow Group, a Rochester, N.Y.-based executive search firm specializing in the housing industry, has created a quick checklist of questions a builder should ask prospective management hires during interviews:
Desert Beauty
West of the Agua Fria River, in part of Phoenix's West Valley, Vistancia stands quietly, respecting the land and natural history of the desert around it. In Terracina, a gated T.W. Lewis community, and one of the 11 neighborhoods in Vistancia, lies Triana. Triana became the best-selling model for Tempe, Ariz.
Home Ownership Gaps Signal Untapped Minority Market
Recent research at the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California shows persistent racial gaps in U.S. home ownership rates. However, that bad news has a good side: there's an untapped market, especially in America's cities, for new housing targeted to minorities. The research also shows these prospective buyers have not only the will to purchase homes, but the money, ...
