We are building a house and I have been learning a bit more about concrete lately. You may know the old saying ‘there is only one sure thing with concrete, it WILL crack’. 😉 Of course the trick is getting it to crack where you want to 🙂 ‘Control joints’ are cuts made in the concrete so that hopefully when the slab cracks it will follow the pre-made cut. This is the control joint layout that I came up with:
We are planning on building a new house next Spring 🙂 As such, I have been trying to get a feel for cost per finished square ft. So far, after talking to other people that have built homes in the area and a number of builders, it looks like our area is generally $75-$125 per finished square foot. We live in an aera with bountiful timber and fairly low wages, quite ideal for house construction. So, that figure it likely
[please scroll down for the video] Samantha and I are considering shipping container (ISBU) construction for our garage and possibly our new house. We currently have an 8’x20′ container that we mounted our solar (PV) panels on top of and inside we have our batteries, inverter, etc. We also use it as a simple storage container. But when taking the container concept beyond storage/utility into a more advanced structure, there are some issues. One problem with building with ISBUs is
Image source: OnyxSolar, please visit their site below… My long time buddy, and most excellent architect, John Odom forwarded me an interesting email about PV skylights. He tries to keep me abreast of the latest architectural trends and while “BIPV” or Building-integrated photovoltaics has been around for a while, it is DEFINITELY a popular topic today! Here’s a brief intro to the subject of BIPV and its components: Skylights – an integral feature of modern architecture We are probably all familiar with skylights
“There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.” -Henry David Thoreau