East of Seattle, beyond Lake Washington is the city of Bellevue, fast becoming the land of Microsoft. Building inspectors in this fast growing, software and coffee drinking city are on the cutting edge of enforcing the most stringent interpretation of building codes. It may be the caffeine but what we are seeing is a trend towards a very strict or onerous interpretation of the code throughout the U.S.
When
times are good, people become complacent. Riding in gas guzzling land-yachts
and dwelling in cavernous McMansions tends to dull the senses and lulls people
into a false sense of security. The scale that was once used to measure the
distance between wants and needs became dangerously off-kilter.
I was 14 years old and the tool I held uncomfortably in my hand had long ago been relegated to the bottom of a pick-up truck tool box; the dark and dusty graveyard where old trowels with rusted blades and popped rivets go to die. You see plasterers very rarely throw away their old trowels; they just put them out to pasture. A quality built trowel will serve its purpose for many years, even decades if cared for properly.
It is an unwritten rule among green building enthusiasts that no building can truly be sustainable without also being durable. Most readily agree with this basic principle, intuitive and straightforward as it seems but defining building durability has proven to be very challenging for the drafters of green building rating systems.
In cold climate areas it is normal to put a vapor barrier on the warm side of the wall so that the humid interior air cannot get into the wall and condense during the winter. But you may not be aware that this vapor flow can also occur in the opposite direction, namely humid summer outdoor air may allow vapor to move toward the interior, causing moisture build-up in the wall.
I
receive letters to the editor on a regular basis, some complimentary, some not.
In the first half of this year, EIFS and stucco were attacked by self-serving
groups, and fortunately the industry responded with its own “letter to the
editor.”
Are you like me? You go on a vacation and are accused of not leaving work behind. I don’t mean fretting about your business, and if all the little details have been handled. I mean spending too much time looking at construction details. Take heart, you are not alone, not by a long shot and I have proof. The following are the writings I have done on vacation.
I recently had the opportunity to revisit Chicago, the home of one of my personal heroes, Byron Dalton. To most in the industry today, the name Dalton has little or no significance. But to some of us older die-hard plastering fanatics, Dalton could be considered the American patriarch of the plastering trade.
It’s the eleventh hour and all the documentation has been gathered and is ready to be submitted to the USGBC for that LEED rating that the entire project team has worked long and hard toward. But what is this? One of the coatings used far exceeds the allowable VOC limit established in the low emitting materials credit for paints and coatings? Panic sets in with the realization that an entire point may be lost due to a simple mistake.
If our economy had been growing at a rate of 20 percent a year for the last decade or so, most of us would be luxuriating in hog heaven right now. That’s apparently where a lot of heavy equipment thieves reside, because that’s been the growth rate for heavy equipment thefts since 1996, according to the Insurance Services Office.
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