141–150 of 339 posts
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It is a little worse than that: some triple glazed windows are intentionally made more opaque/green tint for 2 reasons: 1. easier on the eye when sunny outside, and 2. block up to half of solar radiation, to prevent overheating indoors
does Norway worry about overheating indoors though?
I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
Don't hire friends or family.
Make sure the builder is registered and isn't a director of other companies that have defaulted.
Have a signed contract or agreement in place.
If doing payment in stages make sure that what you are paying for has been completed and has been signed off by your engineer.
Take as many photos and videos as you can as often as you can, use a drone to get to awkward unsafe areas and record video. Include all major structural and sealing work. Even good builders/window installers etc make genuine mistakes, photos of what was done make inside a wall make it easier to attribute liability if there is an issue.
These are some key points from two terrible cases, don't let them scare you and enjoy it.
I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
>Can I just throw more money at the problem so that I'm less stressed and offload more decisions to the builders? Yes you can. It requires two things: 1) you need to hire a builder who has experience with commercial and/or industrial construction. Hire the same type of builder that you wanted to build a small dental clinic. Tell them explicitly that you want everything to build built with the same standards as their…
I think this advice isn't just throwing money at the problem, your suggestion sinks time into creating a mini-bureaucracy to ensure quality decision making. That mini-bureaucracy may in itself may make it hard to source/retain the various contractors you're suggesting.
For example I imagine it would be quite hard to source a small dental clinic builder who does high quality work and is also willing to sign a 200-page city level government procurement contracts without significant negotiation or persuasion.
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Aren't most single- or few-family homes made of wood? I'm living in in the farming belt (i.e. not the actual forested parts of our country) and over 80% of these houses are wooden. It's mostly apartment buildings over three floors being built using cement.
Not in Europe, besides some old mountains huts. It's always a very strange feeling when I see how in the american home-reconstruction TV shows they're tearing the walls and it's all wood. Same case when I see the effects of hurricanes... it all feels very fragile comparing to what we have here.
According to our national agency 90% of all single family homes built in 2020 was with a wooden frame/core and about 5% masonry.
> Even the best windows and doors on the market perform much worse than even an average wall New windows here in Norway are often triple or quadruple glazed, and they have a pretty good R-value; so they are not that much worse than average walls at least.
I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
Invest 40-50 hours of your time, and do the following: 1) interview 5-6 contractors/builders; then, go look at 2-3 houses that they finished - you pick them, don't let them pick. Try to observe bad issues - here's a funny video about "snagging" [0]. 2) pick one. Ask a lawyer to draw a contract and have them sign it. The lawyer should be experienced in construction contracts. A good contractor/builder will be comforta…
Does this work in practice? How can you "pick them" without the builder telling you which houses they built? Do you expect people living in the houses to let you wander around their homes looking for contractor flaws?
I'm looking at building a home as a first time home owner in the next few years. One thing I'm wondering is how many headaches can I avoid if I just choose an expensive builder and not try to haggle or save a buck at every turn? I just want a 2-bedroom, 1,000 sq ft bungalow and am willing to pay 60-70% more than the average $/sqft in my city if they do a good job. I'd rather have a nice small place rather than a huge…
Ever deal with an IT contractor? Construction guys are worse. You need to watch everything. You want them always watching their back and being dissatisfied, but not enough to walk off the job. Happy contractors are usually trouble.
Ah yes, don't let the proles be happy. You sound horrible to work for. Of course, if your boss did this to you at work, there would be endless complaints.
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In triple and quadruple glazing, you frequently don't get three or four layers of actual glass. The two outer layers are still glass, but the inner layers are usually thin sheets of plastic, and the voids are frequently filled with noble gasses like Argon for improved insulation. Although I have seen in Alaska where they do double glazing windows on the outside as storm windows, then about six inches to a foot inside…
I'd expect the insulating properties of a gas at normal temperatures and pressures to depend only on the molecular mass. That's 40 for argon, and 28 for nitrogen. This web page ( https://www.pressglass.com/noble-gases-and-thermal-insulatio... ) says the thermal conductivities are 0,026 W/(mK) for air and 0,018 W/(mK) for argon. 26/18 is about 1.44; 40/28 is about 1.43. So perhaps the conductivity is inversely proport…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a little worse than that: some triple glazed windows are intentionally made more opaque/green tint for 2 reasons: 1. easier on the eye when sunny outside, and 2. block up to half of solar radiation, to prevent overheating indoors
does Norway worry about overheating indoors though?
*Some people enjoy having more hot days during the summer, of course.