Q: Hello we recently bought a home in middle Tennesse. The home is only 18 months old and has a circular peagravel and concrete driveway, our problem is it is cracking all over, some cracks all the way though. Our question is what may be causing this and is there any way to repair it. I've tried caulk but the cracks just open up again. A: Kelly Once concrete starts to crack there is really nothing that will completely repair this.
You can fill any voids with various commercial products that are designed for concrete repair, but this will not keep the crack from enlarging. The only total repair is to either remove the concrete completely and start over again with proper reinforcement, or to raise the level of the existing concrete with a cap of new reinforced concrete.
I recommend the use of fiberglass reinforcement strands in any fresh concrete. Q: I purchased a new townhouse here a year ago and am still having problems fixing small problems. My next door neighbor had a bad crack in her slab that cracked her sheet flooring.
Then my other neighbor had a problem with a hardwood floor in her entrance hallway, they lifted up a piece of the wood and she had a crack in the slab more than an eighth of an inch wide. We are all conserned that there might be other cracks throughout the townhouses. Is the builder responsible to lift the carpets to inspect for more cracks as the house is still under warranty. A: Kelly Your question is really a legal one, that we don't have the expertise to answer. I suggest that you take the text of the warranty to get legal counsel locally.
It is not unusual for concrete to crack some after it cures, but this should be controlled by proper reinforcement so that such cracks are only cosmetic, not structural. The cracking that you describe is obviously excessive and likely the result of poor planning or workmanship. Q: I have a cement foundation that is crumbling and I would like to replace it with real stone. I've had a lot of advice from everyone, but would like an expert opinion. A: Kelly Replacing a foundation is a major undertaking and requires a good deal of skill and planning to do it right.
Every situation is different, so only general precautions can be sent via the internet. I suggest that you find a local builder with experience in this sort of work to give some advice about your specific situation. The house needs to be adequately supported while the old cement is removed and the new foundation of stone is placed. This stone foundation will need to be seated below frost level. All of this can be done, but very carefully or you can jeopardize the integrity of the house, both immediately and over time.
Q: How can I figure out the depth of footings for house on piers or cinderblocks? Also, I am in south east Texas, so there is potential for flood or hurricane and I am not sure if that will make any difference to the depth. A: Kelly Usually the depth of footings is determined by the frost depth in the area where you live, which I doubt is very deep in south Texas.
I would suggest a "toe-in" of a good foot onto undisturbed soil for your piers. This should also give you ample flood and hurricane protection I forgot to mention that we are about ft from the ocean and the weather can be pretty extreme, and we catch our water from the roof to a 14,gal catchement so the treatment needs to be safe for us to at least bath in. Also the water tends to have a slight rootbear color to it.
A: Kelly Unfortunately I am not really familiar with either ironwood or coconut being used as shingles for a roof, so I can't speak from experience. All shingles bear a great deal of hard exposure to the elements and cannot be expected to last beyond a reasonable time about 35 years for cedar or redwood shingles. As for some product to apply that might extend their life, you might consider an oil like linseed oil that would soak in enough to replenish the natural oils.
I suggest that you consult some local roof experts who have experience with what you have. Q: I just want to know if you have any information on building a concrete slab, reinforced with straw? A: Kelly I have heard of using straw as reinforcement in concrete instead of steel mesh. There have been some experiments with this in Canada, but this is not common. A few handfuls of fiberglass reinforcement would likely be much more durable and stronger.
Q: We have an old 70s stucco home. We would like to apply a thin plaster smooth finish of some sort to get rid of the old bumpy stucco look. Can you recommend an application for this? We are on a budget of course so Portland cementing over it seems like a waste of money.
Thank you in advance for your advice. A: Kelly I suggest that you check with a local stucco company to see what they recommend to smooth this out. It needs to be something that will adhere well to the existing stucco and be be very durable.
I wouldn't rule out a cement-based product, since you would not be needing very much to do this job. I would imagine that just a smooth finish color coat is all that is needed. Q: I was wondering how you preserved wood that is in the ground without using chemicals or too much concrete? A: Kelly I don't think there really is a way to preserve wood in the ground, especially without chemicals. It is generally best to keep wood completely out of contact with the soil.
There are some species that naturally last quite a long time with ground contact such as cedar and redwood , but even these will decompose over time. I have heard of people charring the ends of buried logs to delay rot, but I don't know how well this really works. Q: We will be building our retirement home in southeast Arizona, with very mild winters and only inches of rain per year. We understand termites are an issue out there.
Stick construction is affordable but maybe not the best. A: Kelly I think that you are right that stick construction is not the best, especially when termites are a real concern. Earthen materials, such as adobe, rammed earth, cob and earthbags are good. And masonry materials, such as stone, brick, and concrete are not affected by termites. I would consider going underground in your environment. Local building material is brick or adobe but I question either material's longevity in such a wet environment.
Any suggestions for limited available material. A: Kelly The main feature to be concerned about in a swampy environment is the foundation. It needs to be substantial enough to protect the walls from any moisture problems, and to eliminate any possible subsidence or shifting over time. The most common foundation here in Mexico is made with mortared stone dug down about a meter into the ground. On such a foundation you can build with adobes or bricks.
The other main feature to protect walls from moisture is a good roof that has a substantial eave. This is actually not so common in Mexico, with the boxy building styles and methods used there. A good eave is more important for adobe than for bricks which are minimally fired here. A whole other route to go would be using earthbags, and these can become part of the foundation as well as the wall. You can start with a shallow rubble trench foundation and then lay a few courses of gravel-filled earthbags before starting courses of bags filled with other materials, such as local soil or crushed volcanic stone.
See www. I'm thinking I better get it done soon because I don't know how long I can go before it won't adhere to the previous layer. I know the mix is gray cement and one of the two sands outside on the street. I also don't know if lime is in it or not. Do you know the formula and how specific it needs to be? This mix has to be the last coating over the rocks to just fill in around them, keeping them in.
The mix needs to not have much in the way of rocks and be pretty smooth. A: Kelly Concrete never really adheres very well to other concrete unless it is it still "wet" so there is no hurry on that project. Of the two kinds of sand, you want the river sand, not the yellower, powdery variety, and you want to screen it with at least a quarter-inch mesh. You don't want any lime, just straight sand and cement, in a ratio of about 8 to 1.
In order to make this stick better, I suggest that you also add what they call sellador sealer which is actually a liquid latex that is water-soluble. You only need about one liter per full sack of cement, so it doesn't take very much Q: I am replacing my cedar fence, which is falling down. I would like to avoid using pressure-treated fence posts, but can find next-to-no alternatives on the web.
Would metal brackets embedded in concrete hold up a 6-foot tall post? A: Kelly If you can find cedar posts, these can last up to fifty years in the ground. Your idea of using concrete with metal brackets is also possible, if the brackets are tall enough to be able to bolt them in two places, one above the other by about 6" minimum.
There are commercial brackets that are made to support posts resting on concrete piers, and these often raise the post up above the concrete so that moisture does not tend to rot the bottom. Comment : The roof is the most important system in any building. It seems to my simple way of thinking that the sustainability and quality of any building is directly related to the quality of the roofing system. As someone who has been on a building site every day for 30 years I cannot help but observe that members of the lower classes social economic class usually are the ones installing what ever roofing system that has been specified.
Your web site has huge amounts of information on obscure wall systems, but almost nothing about roofing systems. As a builder I have the usual prejudicet about the architecture profession, however I do not think the sustainable-building movement can afford to ignore the important lessons of thousands of years of architecture.
Response Kelly : I agree with you about the importance of roofs, and can see your point about making a separate study of the sustainability of various roof systems. When I chose how to build my last house, I decided to make it with earthbag domes, which completely eliminated the need for conventional roof materials.
I would not consider most normal roofing materials particularly ecological, except that some are more durable than others. I often suggest metal roofs because much of the metal used these days is recycled, but there is still a lot of embodied energy there. Those pictures you sent of standing seam roofs are beautiful I suspect that these are your work , but beyond durability, can you justify these as ecological choices?
It has often confounded me how to get around the need for large amounts of wood, steel, or other industrial materials in fabricating adequate roofs. One possibility that has recently been brought to my attention is yet another industrial material, magnesium cement, but it has the potential for making durable roofs with very little support structure. See this article. Q: My husband and I purchased a year old home that is on a small brick flagstone foundation.
We only have a very small crawl space under the house, and want to build a second story on top of our house. The city will not allow us to do so unless we reinforce the foundation. I need to know what kind of reinforcements can be done, and what type of worker does this kind of work. A: You're asking in the wrong place. If the city has imposed structural requirements then you should be asking the city's code enforcement official.
Very likely, you'll have to get a licensed engineer to inspect your foundation and draw up a plan for appropriate reinforcement. This typically means digging under the existing foundation to install a spread footing and possibly re-mortaring existing stone or brick joints though I don't know what you mean by a brick flagstone foundation. Q: We have a brick wall about 2 feet high around the patio edges that is chipping badly. The wall itself mortar, soundness is still very sturdy structurally.
I would like to know what kinds of materials I could cover this brick with to make it nice. Would you have any suggestions? A: Kelly Probably the easiest thing to do is cover the brickwork with a cement-based stucco.
This can be done in a variety of colors and should provide a durable finish that will keep the bricks from chipping any more. It will be bricked within the next 2 weeks. I would like to brush on some type of natural, mold resistant paste before the brick is put up.
I have a few things in mind but don't know if they will damage the wood over time from humidity. I would like to apply something like salt, borax, or lime. Would these be safe for my health and would they damage the wafer board? Most of the contractors I've asked about this suggest paints or plastic wraps, or they think I'm crazy.
A: Salt attracts water, borax is water-soluble, but lime-wash white wash is highly mold-resistant. However, the goal should be to prevent the moisture accumulation that would allow mold growth and rot. There must be a vapor-permeable but water-resistant barrier covering the "wafer board", such as 15 felt or grade D building paper, which also serves as a drainage plane. And there must be an air gap between the brick facade and the sheathing, with weep holes at the bottom of the brick facing.
Q: I have a house built in , sitting on a stone foundation, which was covered and spread flat with mortar or cement. Although the basement in general is pretty straight, there are two portions of the basement that are deviating inward in the middle, about inches, even though there is still good mortar completely covering the stone.
Someday this will need to be fixed. Looking for a contractor that would be interested in bracing the existing foundation. Seems like no one wants to deal with that issue anymore; most contractors just want to put a new foundation under the house, which is what I am avoiding. Was looking at the possibility of some type of pony wall, possibly placing rebar around the inside perimeter of the basement, putting up wood forms, and then pouring concrete over the existing stone walls, creating a inch covering of concrete reinforced by rebar.
Is this or another method of reinforcing the existing stone foundation possible? I am looking for a permanent solution that will require little or no maintenance. A: What you propose is to pour a steel-reinforced concrete wall to stabilize an inadequate and shifting stone foundation, probably with no footing. If you want a "permanent solution that will require little or no maintenance", then you need to follow the advice of the contractors and replace the existing foundation with a reinforced concrete wall on an appropriately-sized footing.
It's not just a matter of what the contractors want to do, it's a matter of what the building code requires. Depending on your jurisdiction, you may be required to use an engineer to determine an approved replacement or repair. Q: We are building a house out of CLT cross laminated timber. The house must be insulated and clad on the outside, and, because of the incredible tightness of the building envelope, they don't breathe well.
Which means that there are some added breathability concerns within the exterior wall assembly, as any water or water vapor that becomes trapped inside the siding will not escape, and is in fact likely to condense against the wood and start to mold.
I have attached a document which shows the suggested detail for the external wall, but I am having an issue with it. The issue is that the insulation suggested is rigid boards of mineral wool, which for a variety of reasons are hellaciously expensive in Atlanta.
So we have been exploring some alternative insulation types. The siding we are putting on is smooth HardiePanel, and will be put up in 4x8 sheets. So one proposed solution was to fix furring to the CLT, then fill the void between the CLT and the siding with perlite or vermiculite loose fill. This would add to the thermal mass of the wall, and is very economical, but there doesn't seem to be data on anything like the vapor permeability of aggregate insulation like husks or vermiliculite pellets?
Then of course there is hygroscopicity. We also considered cellulose, but I was concerned about it absorbing too much moisture in our fairly humid climate. I was wondering if you would be willing to venture an opinion about what the most breathable insulation options are, and which might perform best when they need to fill the dual role off adding r-value and allowing water vapor to escape the exterior wall cavity easily. A: First, I would have to ask why you want to build with such a non-conventional system as cross-laminated lumber rather than conventional stud-wall construction, and thus create these insulation challenges and probably others.
The advantage of insulating on the exterior is that it can provide an uninterrupted thermal boundary no thermal bridging , but that advantage is lost by applying vertical furring directly to the CLT shell. Vermiculite about R They would both create a breathable layer, since their granular nature would create air spaces, but in a hot, humid climate you want a vapor impermeable layer near the outside, with breatheability toward the inside, since the primary vapor drive is outside to in.
Isocyanurate board has a much smaller global warming impact than polystyrene or polyurethane, as well as higher R per inch about 7. This would require a vented rainscreen cladding system with vertical furring strips attached to the CLT through the insulation with long screws. And the foam insulation board wouldn't compress like mineral wool as the furring is screwed in place. The alternative is to go with conventional studwall construction with a cavity insulation like cellulose, air-tight non-permeable sheathing like Huber Zipwall, furring and cladding, and keep the interior wall surfaces breatheable for drying to the interior.
Q: I have read about the life span of shipping containers. Most say between 15 to 20 years, is this correct? I thought they would last longer since they are made of steel. Wouldn't you say that they are better than wood for housing? Create a free website or blog at WordPress. Follow Following. Turning the Tide Join other followers. Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. Log in now. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account.
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