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Crawl Spaces in Old Houses – Canaries in a Coal Mine
By George W. Runkle III, MS, PE, SE Crawl spaces in old houses present unique challenges and considerations for homeowners and renovators alike. If you’re considering purchasing a very old house, particularly one in the range of 100 years old or more, it’s essential to understand what you might find in the crawl spaces in…
Read MoreContainer Buildings Not Made in USA? Go or No Go?
Periodically I get e-mails from companies in China about container structures fabricated offshore. I also get calls from people that want to fabricate in an offshore location for the US. I have also talked to people in other countries that successfully built container structures that were fabricated in China, so it’s not impossible. SeaCon –…
Read MoreFoundation Failure – The Nightmare of Your Dreamhouse on the Hill
In this video I talk about how that wonderful house on the hill can be your worst nightmare. That house that overlooks a nice wooded valley and has a wonderful walk out basement. However, can bring you a lot of problems in the future. To illustrate, I discuss a little bit of the geology concerned…
Read MoreLeveling Up and Stiffening a Sagging Floor
In this video, we are leveling up and stiffening a sagging floor. The floor sagged over time because the builder didn’t provide properly designed trusses. We stiffened the trusses and jacked up the floor to fix the problem, and this is how we did it. The contractor is David Moore with Structures, Inc. I found…
Read MorePressurized Waste Plumbing In A Container Building
Most of the time the waste lines in a container building work by gravity. Basically on the principle that water and…well other stuff go downhill. It presents a lot of challenges in shipping containers to keep all the waste pipes at a decent slope. In this earlier video I talk about the challenges. On this…
Read MoreI Really Hate Designing Plumbing in Container Buildings
In this video, I go over the issues with putting plumbing systems in a shipping container building. Of all the things I do in design, this is a task I absolutely hate. Doing a gravity sewage system can be especially tough becasue it’s difficut to route the pipe in a way that makes sense and…
Read MoreHow US Building Codes Work
In college professors never explained how building codes work. Supervisors never explained Codes to me anyplace I worked. I’m going to save you trouble and layout how Building Codes work here in the US. This is of crucial importance to us as designers. This should help if you are working from another country, or just…
Read MoreBetter Travel for the Road Warrior – Easing the Agony
In the past year, many of us have had to restrict our travel, but it still is a fact of life for many of us. It’s hard to accomplish everything over Zoom, so I found business travel to be a necessity. Even in the worst of the epidemic, I did have to make one trip…
Read MoreMy Recurring Nightmare in the House From Hell
I have this nightmare that repeats itself over and over again. It is slightly different, but the theme is the same for each one, and I wake up shaking. It’s not about my time in the Middle East, or any of the horrific things I’ve seen, it’s more mundane that makes it so terrifying. The dream is about an awful house that I can’t get out of, and the worst thing is it can really happen.
Read MoreWhen Cars Go Electric, What Happens?
This past week Governor Gavin Newsom stated that California would ban gas powered cars in 15 years. Also, an article appeared in Forbes magazine on September 26. It is predicting that Tesla’s proposed $25,000 electric car would mean “Game Over” for gas and oil. That made me think. What happens when cars go electric to the…
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