Housing Foundation Design

When you are looking for house builders, you need to know what you are dealing with. Therefore, it will be up to you to take the time to learn about different builders and how long the construction process will take. If you know what to expect, you will be better able to determine whether you are working with the right people for the job for your new home building project. Here is a sample of an outline of the home building process so that you know what to expect from your house builders.

Contracts and Planning – This is the first and most important part of the process. This is where you buy the land, finance the materials, and sort out all of the details of the land and home design that you are looking for. You will get the house plans, tell the builders what you want in your home, review plans, and approve everything before any building begins.

Bids and Permits – This is the process where the plans are copies, bids are taken for subcontractors, and permits are attained depending on which permits are required. Some construction companies will have an existing set of suppliers who they deal with.

Site Work – After all the details are handled and the permits are done, the builders will begin to clear the lot, stake it for excavation, grade the lot, and excavate to put in the foundation or basement.

Foundation – Next comes to building of the foundation so that the rest of the house can be built on top. This could be a poured slab foundation, block foundation, or even a basement.

Rough Carpentry – This part of the process includes framing, trusses, installing windows, doors, and other frame pieces. Anything that is the base of the house, such as decks, roof plywood, and other materials, will be put on at this time.

HVAC, Plumbing, Electric, Specialty Add-ins – All of these elements will be rough installed so that the drywall can be put up and the home can be finished. Continue Reading

When it comes to your waterproofing house foundation technique, it is important to note that special care needs to be taken as you work through the waterproofing process. Many people simply don’t know that concrete absorbs water and think that, as long as their foundation is solid concrete they won’t have to worry about water damage. Nothing could be farther from the truth! Even the smoothest concrete has pores that can hold moisture and, in turn, grow mold and mildew — both of which decay the concrete underneath it.

It is important that, when you are building your home, you learn all that you can about the waterproofing house foundation services that your contractor and building services offer. It isn’t enough to simply have someone tell you “oh yeah, we waterproofed your foundation.” You need to understand what goes into the process.

Between fifteen and twenty years ago, most builders thought that spreading asphalt onto a house’s foundation was a good enough method of providing waterproofing to the foundation and the home. Then, between ten and fifteen years ago, a person named Owens Corning added a rubber compound to the asphalt to give it more flexibility. Since then, other people have developed other rubber based compounds that hold a greater amount of elasticity than the original rubber and asphalt compounds.

Bentonite is a must when it comes to waterproofing house foundation. Bentonite is a special product made of natural clay that swells when it comes into contact with moisture. When water passes through bentonite on its way to foundation cracks, it breaks off bits of the bentonite clay as it flows which, when it reaches the foundation crack, causes the clay to “fall” into the crack and expand — plugging up the crack and keeping the rest of the moisture out!

When deciding which foundation building company to employ, you will want to make sure that they are properly educated on the use and installation of drain tile. Drain tile is essential to waterproofing house foundations and while there are plenty of contractors and builders who know what it is, few of them know how to properly install it with your foundation. Do your research and make sure that your company knows how to work with drain tile. Continue Reading