Posts Tagged ‘modernize’

A Nation of Old Homes

Todd Hawkins

 

Feb 4 |07:05
70s_house

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.

 

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?

 

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.
 

Green Baloney

Todd Hawkins

 

Dec 20 |09:16
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.

 

Greenwashing_grinch

(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

 

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.