Home Building Tips

There are more and more prefab home builders in the market nowadays. These people would specialize in the work of construction of the modular homes. The modular house would consider of the house which would be mostly constructed offsite of the real home location. The house would be built with many quality elements. However, they … Read more

Efficient Floor Plans

Not every pre-designed or stock comes with “Green” features and Energy Savings. But, you can easily add features and products to the plan to make it “Green” and efficient. You can also incorporate “Green” ideas in the planning stages beginning with your site work. For example, the first thing to consider is how your new home … Read more

Architectural Styles

The following is an article written by Trish Stukbauer and published in the January/February 2009 issue of Today’s Custom Home magazine. Frank Snodgrass is known for creating timeless residences of enduring beauty. To create those residences, the architect borrows from the past. “If you’re building a home today, someone should be able to drive by … Read more

A Great House

A great house does not have to be big. I would rather see a small house with good architectural detailing than a huge house that has absolutely no charm. A great house needs to have good flow and traffic patterns and consideration given to how someone is going to live in it. A house needs … Read more

Building a Zero Energy Home

Zero energy consumption houses utilize their own energy and are not dependent on other energy resources. They produce the amount of energy required to be use, making it money saving on energy for its owners and eradicating all the energy bills. The zero energy building design can be as traditional or modern as demanded by … Read more

Self Sustaining Homes

For the last recent years, the projects and demands of self sustaining houses or zero houses has been increased. Such building contractors, professionals and experts have been handful, listening to the demands and desires of their clients. The architectural beauty and innovations also inspire them. It now seems very obvious for the interested readers to jump for … Read more

Septic System Alternatives

  Septic system is a small-scale sewage treatment scheme general in areas with no connection to main sewage pipes provided by local governments or private corporations. Septic systems are the type of On-Site Sewage Facility (OSSF). In North America, approximately 25% of the population relies on septic tanks; these include suburbs and small towns as well as rural areas. In Europe, they … Read more

Industrializing Construction Economics

  Integration and innovation   By definition, outsourcing implies that the firm has once produced with its own employees what it now buys over the market. Instead, the pattern found in construction is characterized by subcontracting of services that frequently lack a history of having been produced in-house (Costantino and Pietroforte 2002, 2004). On the … Read more

Uses of Prestressed Concrete

There are a huge number of uses: • Railway Sleepers; • Communications poles; • Pre-tensioned precast “hollowcore” slabs; • Pre-tensioned Precast Double T units – for very long spans (e.g., 16 m span for car parks); • Pre-tensioned precast inverted T beam for short-span bridges; • Pre-tensioned precast PSC piles; • Pre-tensioned precast portal frame … Read more

Methods of Prestressing

There are two methods of prestressing: • Pre-tensioning: Apply prestress to steel strands before casting concrete; • Post-tensioning: Apply prestress to steel tendons after casting concrete. Pre-tensioning This is the most common form for precast sections. In Stage 1 the wires or strands are stressed; in Stage 2 the concrete is cast around the stressed … Read more