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Mon, Aug 13 2007 This will be the last of the PATH Concept Home missives, fresh from the front lines. Thank you for reading this (Mom) and thank you to Taunton for taking an interest in this singular project. Why singular? Because every year all kinds of demonstration homes are built showcasing the fanciest finishes in the costliest settings, like the Harrod’s catalog: a gawker’s dream of things you can covet but never attain.
You can attain the PATH House. We built it in an inner city neighborhood and a working-girl bought it. This was homebuilding at its best—not at its costliest—but at its highest level of quality.
So what? Well, it gives guys like you and me, who build because we care about it, a new standard for quality and comfort. What are the big takeaways for me, a production builder of well-built, affordable houses?
Based on my work on the PATH house, here are my top ten favorite technologies, what I consider the biggest takeaways:
1. The Cosella-Dörken waterproofing membrane for basements: It’s one of my favorites, despite miserable follow up from the company, who haven’t gotten back to me yet on where I can buy their product for future projects. If you can find it, or something similar, use it.
2. DAP caulking: the all-too-familiar sealant company really knows its products and understands how to make great caulk that flows in cold weather and lasts as long as your extended warranty.
3. DuPont’s Tyvek DrainWrap® weather resistive barriers: I’ve seen the research and although it’s not the only good product, it’s the best all around weather- resistant barrier for walls (they push the attic, but I’d stick with walls unless you’re willing to pay extra).
4. It’s hard not to mention Follansbee Roofing and the Metal Roofing Alliance. If you have the money, there’s no better roof on the market. My future homebuyers will have to settle for fiberglass shingles.
5. Masco is a major conglomerate with a heart. My experience with their products including Merillat Cabinets, BrassCraft fittings and Delta faucets has shown me they value quality and innovation—for me, this is the magic formula. Although I will probably never use it again, I appreciate and admire the company’s vision in introducing the Pontos grey water recycling system to the United States. I hope I eat my words and end up installing a Pontos unit in every home I build… some day.
6. Radon Protection Technologies showed me how easy it is to mitigate this consumer hazard that I will probably never use their services again, but I will always remember the lesson. I now regret how many houses I built without an easy-to-install radon mitigation system, including my own.
7. The Studor air admittance valve is a money-saving air quality device that should be in every house. I regret that so many municipalities prohibit its use.
8. Viega PEX Pipe has become a staple in the houses I build; it comes in at about 80-percent of copper’s cost and one-third less labor for a higher quality product. What else can I say?
9. DensArmor Plus™ paperless interior drywall from G-P Gypsum is a new generation of paperless drywall designed for building interiors. If you want a failsafe installation, thumb your nose at the mold-litigation lawyers in your neighborhood.
10. From a production builder’s standpoint, it’s rare that you can obtain higher quality at a faster pace, this is why I am now a devout (yes, I use this word knowing what it means) user of the iLevel system from Weyerhaeuser. Lest you think this is a commercial endorsement, they are, to date, the only ones I know of who make this product. I hope the competition comes along quickly. iLevel represents an integrated residential wall- and floor-fabrication software that helps produce panelized framing, trusses and flooring systems. Pre-assembled walls, trusses and floors provide a tight and efficient frame package, reducing job-site waste and construction time. The Concept Home was constructed faster and more efficiently using a panelized wall and floor system… and now all the houses I build will be built the same way.
I would suggest that anyone who wants to build a better, technologically-updated house should refer to PATH’s Web site and consult what the group’s engineers call their PATH Tech Sets. Tech Sets are construction technologies that work especially well together. I hope you follow this good advice, although I am happy that my competitors probably won’t. This is a great business for the few builders who care about quality and value—we usually have no competition. Mon, Aug 6 2007 The tours continue unabated; many people even come to see the PATH Concept Home from surrounding states. Nebraska is not exactly a tourist Mecca, so I assume their interest in housing technology must run very deep.
The biggest surprise is how many visitors are not actually involved in the building trades, but represent curious consumers who want to see what a truly well-built, economical-to-run house looks like. They don’t walk away disappointed. While the Concept Home does not boast the best in wow-interior design, it represents the Toyota principle of high mileage, reliable construction.
Like many builders, I always assumed that the only things consumers really understood were price, location and luxury. I have since changed my mind. The buyers who tour this house are especially impressed with technical innovations that contribute to the home’s durability more than the cool features like movable walls, automatic faucets and grey water recycling. Turns out, today’s consumers are concerned about their home’s upkeep and how long their house will retain its value. Nobody wants to buy a new house and then sell it as a fixer-upper, not even 25 years later.
This realization causes me to rethink my concepts as a homebuilder. I wrote about the production benefits of panelized ICF basement walls, but consumers focused on the insulation value and the importance of a leak-proof wall. I thought the DensArmor Plus® paperless drywall donated to the project by Georgia Pacific was a neat idea, but something consumers wouldn’t pay any attention to. I was wrong; with one visitor after another, I find myself standing next to the wall cutaway (a.k.a. "the truth window") answering questions about this new-fangled drywall that resists mold and will not break down when exposed to water. It didn’t hurt that Georgia Pacific paid for a level 5 finish (the Ferrari of drywall finishes).
All in all, I learned from building the Concept Home that consumers care a lot more about quality construction than I had realized. Products like DensArmor Plus® that I have resisted adopting on a cost basis, now seem like cheap advertising to demonstrate how my houses rank head-and-shoulders above the competition.
I guess Toyota was on to something when they built little cars that lasted 350,000 miles. The PATH House should give its owner a good 50-75 years of trouble-free living. Thu, Jul 19 2007 Today we hold a big open house at the PATH Concept Home, where at least 150 people will come through for green building info, tours, gawking and talking. Newport Partners, the project manager, will receive a United States Green Building Council award presented by the USGBC’s Flatwater chapter.
The Concept House not only obtained LEED for Homes Certification, but achieved several other green building standards. This is a source of pride, but like any bureaucratic, political process, the LEED Certification comes with a few highly impractical caveats.
In politics, the loudest voices typically come from the extremes. The compromises required to bring the various parties into agreement are left for those of us in the field to work out (not an uncommon theme running through my blog).
The issue that puzzled me most while working to comply with the LEED Certification requirements has to do with the first thing visitors notice when they arrive: our lawn. It looks horrible.
It’s mid-summer in Omaha and the lawn has no source for irrigation. Imagine trying to start a dry-land seeded yard here. The lawn is in the state it’s in despite having a grey-water system that could have provided essentially free rain.
The grey-water system includes two cisterns that collect 75 gallons of water each. By eliminating the irrigation, the only grey water we can use goes to feed three super-efficient, low-volume toilets and a super-duper-efficient washing machine.
We will never use the system near its capacity. The grey water, which could fuel the growth of a lush, albeit highly drought-intolerant lawn, will simply overflow down the drain. It’s a wasted opportunity only a certifying agency could come with.
Why? The weeds that now grow on the yard, sans irrigation, do fit our cultural esthetic. Whoever moves into the house will probably install a conventional lawn and sprinkler system.
Rules too strict to make common sense yield very little benefit. A practical approach might result in many more homes built to LEED standards, which is more important for the environment than one or two certifications and awards. Instead of a perfect house, we could focus on millions of better homes. Mon, Jul 16 2007 An added bonus for writing this blog comes when old friends stumble across it and write to say hello. One such fellow is Michael Blend, one of my first building partners. We obtained our constructor’s licenses together so many years ago that it’s painful to admit.
Michael has become an accomplished affordable-home builder in Montana and we traded stories about our lives back then and now. The conversation turned to shop talk, and that’s when it got interesting. Michael discovered the benefits of panelized-insulated-concrete basement-wall construction before I did.
“We use PolySteel ICF's a lot,” Michael said. “Because of the post-and-beam design they use 25% less concrete (have to go to a 5-1/2 sack pea gravel mix) but the savings in concrete can offset the added cost of the forms.” He added, “we have put them on a gravel footing too, which eliminates having two pours and saves concrete.”
His is the sort of thinking that allows one builder to save money and compete in the razor-thin edge of affordable housing, while other builders make up for inefficiency with sloppy budgets.
Until I built the PATH Concept House, I did not subscribe to the ICF. The technology seemed slow, clunky and expensive. You could add insulation using easier and cheaper methods. But panelization, which means the components are assembled in a factory rather than constructed on site, changed my mind. It speeds the time from ground-break to delivery and yields a level of quality unachievable on site.
You can find a more detailed description of the PolySteel ICF panel product in my second blog entry. Suffice to repeat, we built the foundation for a somewhat complex house (more complex than this simple box builder is used to) in one morning. The forms were poured on Friday, and the crew began framing on Monday (I’m too cheap to pay for overtime weekend work).
Am I sold on ICFs? I think they’re okay. Am I sold on panelized products? You bet!
As my favorite PATH House technologies go, factory-framed components win the blue ribbon. Rarely does a new technology or product line achieve the big three: lower price, quicker installation and higher quality. After the one-day foundation set, we moved onto a floor system that installed in about an hour. Then we installed the factory-framed walls and a truss roof.
Back to my old buddy Michael, who remains ahead of the curve. His approach is worth quoting:
“I use the board and batt look on the upper floor so my structural sheathing also serves as siding. The framers set the windows, side the walls and put all the battons on before they lift the wall. I like this because it keeps the guys off scaffolding too, which keeps us OSHA-compliant. On our last project we built 23'x45' roof sections on the ground and craned them in place. It took a bigger and more expensive crane, but they were easier and safer to build on the ground. We also used the frost-protected shallow foundation, which I like as well.”
Me too, old friend. |
