A concrete foundation pier can be purchased at almost any lumber yard and home improvement center around the world. They are usually about 12 inches tall and their base is usually about 12 inches wide and works its way up, to a 6 inch square at the top and this usually has two metal brackets sticking straight up out of it. These metal brackets can be nailed onto the post that will be supporting the floor framing.

There are plenty of homeowners, handyman and even some contractors who set these concrete piers directly on the soil, with out any support from a concrete footing. Over time, if a concrete footing is used, the foundation pier could actually provide little support for the floor framing components.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about. You have a section of your floor that is sagging and you need to raise it and install additional support underneath these areas to fix the problem.

When you crawl under the house, with your jack and new concrete foundation piers, you notice the floor framing has a cracked support beam. Instead of replacing the beam, you simply jack up the floor and install two foundation pier supports underneath the damaged wood beam and set them directly on top of the soil.

There is a good chance, over time, that the weight of the house will push the concrete piers into the soil and you will now be back to square one.

Here’s the solution to your problem, most of the time. Pour a 12″ x 12″ wide and 12 inch deep concrete footing underneath the area where the new piers will be installed. This will provide you with the additional support necessary, most of the time.

To repair your home properly, you would need to contact a building professional or a structural engineer to provide you with the exact specifications of building materials and requirements for your new footing.

In other words, it’s not really a good idea to set a concrete foundation pier directly on top of the soil.

For those of you who don’t know what an anchor bolt is, it’s usually an L shaped bolt that goes into the concrete and is used to connect the bottom framing plates to the concrete slab, footing or building foundation. But here are some of the things that you might not know about your building foundation and metal bolts and how they can work more efficiently together.

Did you know that there are different lengths of anchor bolts? Do you know that there are different sizes of foundation bolts, for instance I’ve seen foundation bolts as small as 3/8 of an inch and as large as three quarters of an inch. It’s hard to imagine that we need so many different types of L bolts for our building foundation.

Now here’s something that even some builders have a problem with. It’s not a big problem, but I’ve seen contractors argue with structural engineers about which types of anchor bolts are actually going to be required for one particular project. Now remember, most builders don’t have the knowledge or the responsibility a structural engineer might have, about building foundation, especially if it ever failed.

The biggest problem with contractors and builders who think that they know more about building foundations and L bolts than the structural engineers or even the city engineers, should try to keep one thing in mind. They’re not responsible for any structural problems that were assembled according to the building plans, but the structural engineers are.

The next time that you’re looking at a set of blueprints and it calls out for a 7 inch minimum anchor bolt embedment, make sure that you purchase the right L bolt’s for that particular job. I’m not writing this article, because I’ve never seen this happen, I’m writing this article, because I know someone who installed the wrong anchor bolts on one of their projects. These L bolts were later removed as the city building inspector requested a correction for the change.

The building inspector found the problem and the contractor got the education. Even though the contractor knew better, he still got the education.

One of the biggest problems with construction today is knowledge. There are hundreds if not thousands of construction workers out there building projects, who really don’t have enough education, skill or years of experience behind them. Unsafe stairs create safety problems, along with liability issues.

It wasn’t very long ago when I was out and about that I noticed a wooden set of stairs that looked like it was built by an amateur. They used wooden stair tread brackets which were nailed to the stair stringers and sticking out, creating a safety hazard. This isn’t my idea of someone who knew what they were doing.

This set of stairs wasn’t going to last a long time and I knew it. It wasn’t any of my business and I doubt if the local building inspector would have ever said anything. This was obviously a safety issue and it wasn’t just the fact that an inexperienced stair builder built this set of stairs, it’s unsafe to walk up and down on.

If you don’t have the experience or the knowledge, how would you know any different? Most homeowners don’t even know what they’re looking at, when it comes to safety. Why would I expect an inexperienced construction worker to have this knowledge also?

Just because you can walk up the set of stairs, doesn’t mean that you’re going to be walking up that same set of stairs within a few years. I only wrote this article to send a message to homeowners, contractors, real estate professionals, lending companies, property management companies and other people who are more concerned about money than safety.

If you’re planning on replacing a couple of boards around your house and using unqualified people for other projects around your house, it might be different. A set of stairs is something that people walk up and down, all day long. If the stairway is unsafe, people can get hurt and they often do, so leave stair building to the professionals and quit hiring the amateurs.

When I started working in construction in the late 1970s, safety never seem to be a big concern and as a result of that, I suffered an injury to my hands that I would have to live with for the rest of my life. Here are the top three building safety problems in the construction industry.

1. Ladders

Ladders are one of the number one building safety problems in the construction industry. The biggest problem being, the proper use of the ladders. I have seen ladders used for scaffolding and planks to walk on. I have seen ladders positioned on insecure or slippery surfaces. If you don’t know how to use a ladder properly, read the instructions that are provided with the ladder. If no instructions are provided with the latter, ask your construction foreman or building superintendent for information or help with ladder safety.

2. Protective Eyewear

There are plenty of different types of eye wear protection available today. They come in all different shapes sizes and colors and if you’re interested in looking cool, there’s a good chance that you will be able to find a wild pair of safety glasses to protect your precious eyes. You might not need to wear them all the time, but if you’re doing any repairs or construction that might create a problem for your eyes, you should always wear protective eyewear.

I don’t need to make this article any longer than it should be. There are hundreds of safety issues in the construction industry, however, if you could just focus on these two and get your fellow workers on the safety bandwagon, this article would be worth the time that I spent writing it.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a new building product like mold resistant drywall enter the construction market. It usually isn’t long, before everyone’s talking about it and shortly after that, a large community of believers is formed.

Everyone in this community starts to tell all of the other homeowners, contractors and other home building professionals about these wonderful products. Mold avoiding drywall isn’t any different. I’ve seen a lot of home building products come and go over my three decades in the business.

Here’s something that I would like to suggest to anyone who’s planning on purchasing and using mold resistant drywall in their homes or for any other building projects. Let’s put our thinking caps on for a moment and see what we can come up with.

Are there any other building products that will be involved in this process? If we have mold resistant drywall, do we have mold proof lumber, plaster, paper tape, joint compounds, toppings or even drywall textures?

If you’re not getting a clear picture yet, let me take it one step further. There’s a good chance that they wouldn’t be able to sell mold resistant drywall, if this product wasn’t actually mold resistant.

Now let’s talk about the word resistant. The word means offering resistance to something, but does not mean that mold will not grow on this product, otherwise it would be mold proof. Water resistant building products aren’t waterproof. Fire resistant products are not fireproof.

I’m not suggesting that mold resistant products don’t resist mold or will eliminate the possibility of mold, but I would like everyone who reads this article to start thinking about some of the construction products they use before purchasing them.

There was a company who guaranteed that their product would last for the lifetime of your home. I will not name the product manufacturer, but this company is not what I would consider to be 100% legitimate and gave many of their customers a false illusion of their warranty.

I recently worked on a house where this company painted the woods fascia board and a couple of the exterior beams. The homeowner contacted me to do the repairs and explained that the company was only responsible for the product, not the installation of the product.

In other words, the lifetime guarantee was only for the paint that was applied to the fascia board and wood beam, it wasn’t good for the labor that it would take to reapply another coat of paint to protect the house. I don’t really know how many homeowners would actually consider this to be an excellent home warranty.

If you’re thinking about having any exterior coatings applied to your home that have a limited or lifetime warranty attached to them, make sure that you find out as much information that you can about their warranties, especially if you’re planning on using their guarantees in the future.

If you’re really concerned about the warranty, have the salesperson explain it to you in detail and if they don’t understand the warranty or avoid answering your questions, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to find another company or product.

Be careful whenever you hear the words lifetime or limited lifetime warranty. Sometimes it’s just another way for someone to sell an inferior building product or a product that thoroughly hasn’t been tested properly.

Controlling water around your home’s foundation is important, even in the desert where I live. Water control is the single most important factor in ensuring a dry basement. Water control helps prevent problems, even if your home has a slab foundation or a crawl space foundation.

Improper water control around your home’s foundation causes many problems. Water can damage foundations by exerting pressure on the foundation (hydrostatic pressure). Water can also damage foundations by causing unstable clay soils to exert pressure by swelling or by causing these soils to contract and remove support from under the foundation. Other problems caused by improper water control include damaging construction materials and providing moisture for mold and termites.

Direct foundation damage from water usually involves cracks and/or bulges in foundation walls and footings. This can in turn cause uplift or settling of framing materials that can cause problems such as uneven floors, cracks in interior and exterior wall coverings, and doors and windows that do not operate properly. In extreme cases, water damage can cause structural failure.

Indirect water damage includes damage to wood and other construction materials caused by liquid water infiltration and by water vapor that condenses in cool areas such as in basements and in crawl spaces. Many species of termites and all species of mold need moisture to survive. Controlling water around your home will reduce the chance of termite infestation and mold infestation.

Here are some steps you can take to help protect your home’s foundation from water damage.

1. Establish and maintain a downward slope away from your home. Current standards recommend a downward slope of at least six inches within the first ten feet from your home. This standard can be difficult to achieve where homes are close to each other. Use swales (ditches) and underground (French) drains when a proper downward slope is impractical.
2. Install gutters and divert the runoff away from your home. Gutters should slope toward a downspout at a rate of at least 1/32 inch per foot. Deposit the water from a downspout as far from the home as practical, but at least five away from the foundation. Use downspout extensions or splash blocks.
3. Install foundation plants at least twelve to eighteen inches away from the foundation. Add more distance if the mature plant will touch the home. Use plants that require little additional water (native, drought tolerant plants) in all parts of your yard and particularly for plants near the foundation. Keep tree trunks at least ten feet from the foundation. Add more distance if the mature tree limbs or roots will touch the home. Be aware that the roots of certain trees are more invasive than others.
4. Install irrigation systems so that they will not release water within twelve inches of the foundation. Inspect the system frequently to ensure that it is releasing water where and when you intend and to ensure that there no leaks.
5. Maintain at least four inches of visible foundation around homes with slab foundations, such as those found in the Phoenix area. This will help you see termite tubes. Inspect your foundation frequently so you can locate termites before they do significant damage.

Controlling water around your home’s foundation is simple and inexpensive compared to repairing foundation damage and wet basements. Examine your water control measures at least every year as part of your regular home maintenance. Doing so will help prevent serious problems

Despite a depressed housing situation, self building your own property is still a popular way to end up with a dream home. The self builder can either take the savings of not having a building contractor, or get a much better spec for the same money he would have paid a contractor to do the job. There is a great sense of satisfaction in seeing the finished project in all it’s glory and thinking ‘I have built this!’. Self building takes a great deal of time, effort, thought, blood, sweat, tears, and not a few lessons painfully learned along the way.

From my own experience I will indicate a few pitfalls to avoid, and a few pointers to provoke you to think seriously about the project before commencing, or if you have already commenced, to improve as you go along.

1. Make all your major decisions with regard to the self build house at the start of the process and try not to change your mind about them. This will save you a lot of money, a lot of time and the tradesmen a lot of heartache. Changes are costly for this very reason: the tradesmen not only have to make the change, they generally have to amend whatever has been done previously before they start to change anything. Changes can also complicate the issue if tradesmen have already given a fixed price for the job.
2. Make sure your self build project is drawn by an architect that has his head screwed on and his feet on the ground. Some architects just think of a job as an opportunity to express themselves or increase their portfolio. Remember it is you who will have to live in the house, and if you do not intend to sell, think of eventualities like a bedroom on the ground floor for an elderly parent, or even an elderly you! Also use an architect that is not scared to visit the site and talk to the tradesmen. Conflict between the architect and tradesmen is not a situation you want to be in.
3. Use only tradesmen for your self build that have been recommended on a recent project. If you do not know them personally, go and see their last job, or at the least obtain references, ideally three, from people who had work done by them. In this way you will save yourself from having to look at- and live with- a poor job at the end of it. Good tradesmen may not always be the cheapest- sometimes they may be- but be careful that you do not assess them on price alone.
4. In these times of difficult trading conditions, the following is happening: some tradesmen will give a price below cost, then during the project will come to the self builder and say ‘I need x amount of pounds to finish the job’. Of course, if you say no, he will walk away. At that stage, with work done, any other tradesman coming behind will a) not want to do it and b) not be cheap.

Architecture is about building and constructions to solve problems. A house could be seen as a construction for a problem of security. Living in a house is much safer than living in an open space.

Likewise other constructions are sought for different problems. In such a light one could examine a new construction of the language Esperanto.

… Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887. The word esperanto means ‘one who hopes’ in the language itself. Zamenhof’s goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding.

Google Trends shows a continuous decline in the use of the word “Esperanto” since 2004, which is a first indication that the interest for the language is declining.

As a vehicle for change, the language is very interesting. One should immediately think about the project to build the tower of Babel that failed due to workers who didn’t understand each other. Would a new language solve such a problem?

To me Esperanto seems like those initiatives that people start with hoping that it will solve a problem. Another initiative is the foundation of a European Political party (Europe United) to support the idea of the European Union. It is a complete in-official and non-accepted construction, that could make a difference but without any guarantee.

Esperanto is a theoretical initiative that will never be used far what it has been designed for. Despite this it may serve as an experiment and may unite people like any other community which is very popular these days.

But Esperanto as a tool to solve a problem can never be successful. There for the problem is too extensive, too complex and too large to be solved by the introduction of a new language. For a change to be successful, the problem must be real and harmful. Current language cannot be attributed to have this in them; a language is never harmful. This is different for the people who use it.

I couldn’t believe it about 10 or 15 years ago they came out with another fabulous product that created problems for my home. Elastomeric paint is so good, that it can create problems because it seals what ever you paint with a rubber like coating. I wasn’t the only one to have problems with this product.

I built a two-story room addition onto our home and used this type of paint without any problems at all. I painted the fascia board before I installed it with a oil based alkaloid primer and then painted it with elastomeric paint. By painting the entire piece of wood, before installing it, I had sealed it correctly. This worked out in my favor and this is the only way that I installed new fascia board today.

It wasn’t until I painted the rest of the home with elastomeric paint that I started to have a problem. When I built the room addition, I installed the metal flashing and roofing materials properly, that wasn’t the case on the existing roof of our home, at the single-story level.

I didn’t realize it yet, but while I was painting the fascia board, the roof edge metal wasn’t installed properly in a couple of spots around the bottom of the roof. Which is where most of the water drains off of the roof, because the roof edge metal wasn’t installed properly and the top of the fascia board wasn’t painted at all. The top of the fascia board started to absorb water as it dripped off of the roof.

The elastomeric paint did an excellent job keeping the moisture inside of the wood, where some latex paints would have allowed the moisture to escape through it. Eventually the fascia board rotted away and needed to be replaced.

I never had any problems with the second-story fascia board that was installed and painted correctly. If you’re really looking for an excellent paint for your fascia board, you can use elastomeric paint if you want to. I doubt if I will ever use this type of paint again, because of the problems I had with it in the past.

I know some painting professionals who won’t use anything but elastomeric paint, but this stuff is truly too good of a painting product and I’ve seen other problems with it also. Most of the problems associated with this paint are due to incorrect application of the paint or poor construction methods from other contractors.

Elastomeric paint is truly a wonderful product, but it’s almost too good to use unless the home is built correctly in the paint is applied over the entire surface of the product with out leaving any small holes or cracks exposed.