Used Excavators

Posts Tagged ‘House’

Understanding New House Building Stages for Construction of a New House

1 Choose Your New House Building Site
When prospecting for a building site to build your new house choose the site with the assistance of a general contractor, real estate agent, architect, or engineer.

2 Have Your Designer Design Your House Plans
The architectural team will draw up your home plans to meet state and local regulations.

3 Review the House Plans
The architect reviews the home building plans and schedules with the clients.

4 Obtain Permits
The architect or home builder applies for the necessary building permits

5 Land Clearing
The excavator uses heavy equipment to clear the land of trees, shrubbery, and brush and a driveway access is created to your home building site.

6 House Layout
A general contractor or engineer layouts out the home location.

7 Installation of Septic, Well and other Utilities Begins
Utility installation often begins now although your project coordinator may leave these items toward the end of the home construction.

8 Excavation
Excavators and heavy equipment begin the excavation preparing the land for the footings.

9 House Footings
The general contractor or the mason contractor pours the footings. In heavy populated areas your footing contractor may be a subcontractor for the foundation wall contractor.

9 Foundation Walls
Two common foundation wall types are block foundation and poured concrete foundation walls. Your concrete floor is commonly poured after the forms are stripped for the foundation walls.

10 Back-fill
The excavator back-fills after the foundation walls are poured. Some contractors prefer to have the floor joists set prior to this back-fill to tie the walls together.

11 House Floor Framing
Carpenters or a framing crew frame the floor joists and apply decking material to the floor joists.

12 Wall Framing
Carpenters or framers build exterior walls. Interior walls are often constructed at this stage although the interior partition walls may also be built after the roof is framed.

13 Roof Framing
The carpenter now frames the roof complete with sheathing. The walls may also be sheathed at this point if they were not sheathed during the wall framing stage. Decorative rakes and fascia boards may be added at this stage if adding a little extra style to your home is desired.

14 Framing Inspection
Your building inspector inspects all phrases of construction at this point. Be sure to review the inspection schedule with your local building inspector as there may be many additional inspections required prior to this.

15 Roofing
When the home is ready for the roofing, the general contractor or the roofing contractor apply the shingles. Asphalt, fiberglass, cedar, and slate shingles are options with metal shingles and metal panels becoming increasingly popular.

16 Window and Exterior Door Installation
Carpenters now install your windows and exterior doors. If you choose to go with an exterior (rigid) insulation to increase the R-value of your home this will be installed after the window and exterior door installation.

17 Siding Installation
The builder or siding contractor now applies the siding for your new home. Popular options include vinyl, aluminum, and cedar siding. When incorporating vinyl and cedar siding adding a decorative shake style siding for the gables is becoming increasingly popular.

18 HVAC Work
HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) is now installed. In some areas the HVAC contractor may be the same as the plumbing contractor.

19 Plumbing Installation
At this point in the construction process the plumber installs the rough plumbing.

20 Electrical
The electrical contractor now installs the rough electrical work including the breaker panel, wiring and boxes.

21 Insulation
The insulation contractor or the general contractor insulates the walls. The ceiling is also insulated in vaulted areas if there is no attic access to this area. The ceiling is more commonly insulated after the drywall stage with blown in insulation.

22 Drywall Installation
A drywall contractor which may be your general contractor now installs your drywall. Drywall is also commonly referred to as Sheetrock or gypsum wall board.

23 Drywall Finishing
The drywallers tape the joints with drywall compound after the drywall is installed. They then apply up to 2 additional coats of drywall compound over the tape and corner beads.

24 Painting
Wall painting may be accomplished at this stage, or be completed after the finish trim installation.

25 Cabinet and Finish Trim Installation
The finish carpenter now installs the cabinets and trim boards including the baseboard and window casing. Decorative crown moldings remain popular in kitchen and dining rooms.

26 Flooring Installation
There are many popular flooring styles to choose from. Having a variety of finished floor styles is very common with the flooring styles including laminate, vinyl, hardwood, and tile flooring.

27 Finish Plumbing
The finish plumbing includes setting the sink, bath fixtures, showers, tubs, and toilets.

28 Finish Electrical
The electrician completes the finish electrical work at this time including installing the outlets, switches, and light fixtures.

29 Finish HVAC
The cover plates are now installed over the registers and air returns for the HVAC system. If a fireplace is desired in your home your HVAC contractor often installs fireplaces with the quote for the HVAC work.

30 Final Concrete Work
The driveway and final concrete work include the sidewalks, optional concrete front porch, garage floor, and pads for hot tubs.

31 Deck
Deck construction now takes place by the general contractor. Hot tubs are often incorporated into deck designs. Be sure to discuss the potential placement of a hot tub onto your deck with your contractor as the immense weight requires additional framing stipulations.

32 Landscaping
The landscapers plant shrubs and trees with the grass or sod for your new lawn to add a finishing touch.

Life works incredibly well when our houses are clean and organized. When we’re organized, we can think more clearly, we’re more efficient, and we can take on projects that have lain dormant for months or even years. I even have a lot more energy when I

I love having a clean garage. It makes the rest of the house run smoothly and provides an excellent place for storing things that I can’t get rid of immediately. Also, as I continually clean out the house, I can immediately clear it away without having to excavate the garage in hopes of finding a suitable place to put things before I get around to disposing of them.

But garage organization is tricky. The garage holds a lot of varied things in it, which can make it a challenge for organization. And remember, lasting organization doesn’t happen overnight. It is crucial to start smart because decluttering takes a lot of effort at the beginning. I strongly recommend getting expert advice in order to see results quickly and avoid getting bogged down in too much “stuff”. You’ll save yourself hours and hours of work if you listen to the right people.

When I decided to get my garage organized, I followed these simple steps to get started:

Step 1. Get Rid of Everything You Can – This is not always the first step in organizing a room. But for the garage, it is essential. This is because garages are catch-alls. They fill up with random things that we have no plan for. When doing this step, it’s time to be very disciplined. If you know you’re going to have a problem with this, ask a friend for support. Other people will look at our mess with no emotional attachment and they can help us see how ridiculous it is to save some of the things that we’re holding on to. A good tip for this step is recycling household waste which, in my town, includes paint, batteries, electronic equipment (cords etc.), and old cleaners that I no longer use. Call your trash company to find out if anyone in your town provides this service.

Step 2. Get Rid of More – This seems silly, but it really works. Do a massive cleanout of your garage. Then don’t do anything else to the garage for several days. After that, go back into the garage and you’ll automatically see more things that you can get rid of. The key to decluttering garages is to get yourself into the mindset of having a useful, functional garage. Once you have this idea in mind, it will be easier and easier to clear it out. Repeat Step 2 as many times as you need until you have less and less in your garage.

Step 3. Train Yourself to Think “Appropriate” – When I set out to get my garage organized, I had to train myself to ask: Is this an appropriate thing to be in the garage? If not, then it had to go. Dress-up clothes, Christmas decorations, and furniture all had to find new homes. I put some of this up in the attic, and other things I had to get rid of. Don’t use your garage and a dumping site—it won’t prove to be useful space.

It’s possible to achieve a great house design with a low budget. To achieve this, one must invest keenly on the architectural design.

A good example is Allan Donovan’s House in Kitengela which is designed with a West African concept in mind-flat roof with pigeon holes on the parapet wall. See http://www.africanheritage.net/ for images.

Another example is the Hacienda Eco City Development in Mombasa which is also coincidentally designed with a West African/Islamic architectural concept with a flat roof and pigeon holes on the parapet walling. See pictures on http://www.haciendakenya.com/gallery.htm

The presidential State Lodge in Sagana, Nyeri is also a magnificent piece of architecture that has utilized architectural design to achieve greatness without necessarily using very expensive materials. It’s a plain rectangular house with hipped roofs and low aluminum casement windows.

Technological uses also affect budget. New lighter roofing materials such as stone-coated steel roofing tiles save on the amount of timber trusses used to support the roof.

The choice of foundation type will also affect the costs. Estates such as Jericho in Eastlands area were built on a raft type of foundation which is very cheap to put up. The ground floor slab rests on small sized beams which are laid on top of the ground so no excavations and foundation walling is done.

On superstructure walling, within Nairobi area, masonry stone is readily available hence not expensive. A cost-effective way to achieve elegance is to have the stones hand-dressed to a pattern of your liking. Hand-dressed stones bring out character to your house and will save you in terms of maintenance since they virtually require no maintenance at all.

Prefabricated houses are slowly coming into the Kenyan market. These houses are the solution to affordable housing in the developed economies such as USA, China and Europe and it’s a matter of time till they find their niche in Kenya.

In conclusion, architectural design and use of appropriate technology can greatly reduce the cost of construction of your house.

Tel Arad (Hebrew: תל ערד‎) or ‘old’ Arad is located west of the Dead Sea, about 10km west of modern Arad in an area surrounded by mountain ridges which is known as the Arad Becken. The site is divided into a lower city and an upper hill which holds the only ever discovered ‘House of Yahweh’ in the land of Israel. It was identified as so from artifacts found that refer to the citadel as the ‘House of Yahweh’.

The House of Yahweh was uncovered by archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni in 1962 who spent the rest of his life considering its mysteries but sadly passed away there in the mid-70s. Thus, the site remained for 30 years larger un-excavated until 2005 – 2007 when archaeologist Yehuda Goverin was give permission from the Nature and Park Authority in Israel and began new excavations upon the upper hill and within the sanctuary. Mr. Goverin (an Israeli archaeologist) is in search of the water channels that lead from the sanctuary and out westward down to the lower city.

For 30 years scholars were under the believe that inhabitants of the site carried water from the lower city well up to the sanctuary or perhaps used some form of semi-vertical irregation to get water into the upper hill of the citadel. From his excavations in 2005 he proved that water came from the citadel in a downward direction toward the lower city. A fact that before then was only stated by a Yisraelite Research Team from the Tabernacle Congregation of Prayer organization that have been doing investigation on the location because of its collations with the biblical Tabernacle (or Citadel) of David and mount Zion (Click for more).

Mr. Goverin recently in the summer of 2007 began a new session of excavations underneath the citadal to explore the paths of channels that go out from the House of Yahweh. Presently of the items found there are a number to pottery and remains from animal sacrifices that took place within the sanctuary over the centuries of its existance. Both Mr. Goverin and the T.C.O.P research team believe that site holds great mysteries and answers to Israelite history. And presently the T.C.O.P and other groups are preparing to keep the 2008 Passover festival there.