Posts Tagged ‘convenient living’

Lifetime Home Survey UPDATED

Todd Hawkins

 

Jan 19 |09:04

 

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 this link or see the Lifetime Home Survey tabs on the home page of this blog or main site to download the mini- and full version PDFs.

Questions or comments?

 

Epic Fail at Zero Steps

Todd Hawkins

 

Jan 11 |11:29
Wexford_graded_lot

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?

 

Our Resolution is a Revolution

Todd Hawkins

 

Dec 29 |09:34
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.
 

Erasing Steps

Todd Hawkins

 

Dec 14 |15:40
Ud_lot_prep_sloping

 

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.

 

Inset_rim_for_floor_joists

 

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

 

Dec 9 |15:35
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?

 

Unnecessary_steps

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.