If you are pouring concrete in cold weather, weather where the average daily temperature does not exceed forty degrees farenheit, your concrete is considered “Cold Weather Concrete.” The American Concrete Institute has specific guidelines for how to pour cold weather concrete. Their document ACI 306 spells out the things that should be done. Warming the reinforcing steel, mixing the concrete with hot water, adding accelerating agents to the mix, covering the concrete with insulating blankets, and adding more cement to the mix to strengthen the concrete and speed up the curing time are all methods for overcoming the potential problems with pouring concrete in cold weather.

Concrete does not dry in order to get solid. This is a common misconception. Concrete hardens through a chemical reaction. And water is critical to this reaction.  The curing process is often referred to as hydration. Concrete that dries out too fast will be weak and prone to failure (excessive cracking). You may have seen contractors spraying water on concrete slabs when they pour them in hot weather. That’s because the water in the concrete mixture is drying out too fast due to evaporation. Without the right amount of water, the chemical reation will slow or stop. Concrete is actually more difficult to pour in hot weather than in cold due to this quick evaporation problem.

But when pouring concrete in cold weather, care must be taken to prevent ice crystals from forming in the concrete as it cures. And colder temperatures slow down the hydration (curing) process. That’s why “accelerating agents” are used to speed up the process. Once concrete has reached a strength of 500 psi, it is no longer significantly affected by cold temperatures. Most concrete used for house foundations and slabs is called 3000 psi concrete. That is the strength it will reach after about a month. So it only takes a few days to reach 500 psi. During that time it needs to be protected from the cold. Since concrete generates a lot of heat while it cures, simply insulating it is all that needs to be done. No additional heat source is needed.

Don’t be worried about pouring concrete in cold weather as long as your builder follows the guidelines in ACI 306. If he does not know about these guidelines, point them out to him and insist on compliance. Or find a builder who knows about the proper methods of pouring concrete in cold weather.

If you would like to read more articles about homebuilding and house design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

Gaps between boards, or cracks, if you will, are not the result of the wood floor failing or falling apart. They are the result of the wood planks shrinking as the relative humidity goes down and the wood floor loses moisture content. The air in the summer has a higher relative humidity than in the summer. This lets the wood flooring absorb moisture and swell. So usually gaps between boards go away in the summer. Then those gaps reappear in the winter as the humidity goes down again.

If your builder had installed the floors with too little moisture content at the time of installation, when the relative humitidy went up, the boards would have nowhere to swell or expand and they would push against each other causing the planks to cup and possibly rise. Flooring must be installed to allow this seasonal swelling and shrinking.

If you have standard, 2 1/4″ wide flooring, you should not have gaps wider than the thickness of a business card. However, sometimes two or three boards will stick together and move as a unit. This would produce one crack the width of the thickness of three business cards instead of three cracks, each the with the thickness of one business card. This would be considered normal. If you have cracks wider than that, chances are the floor was installed with too high a moisture content.

If your flooring consists of wider planks, your gaps will be proportionately wider. The wood will shrink the same percentage, but the actual dimension of the crack will necessarily be wider. Planks twice as wide will produce gaps that are twice as wide.

Engineered flooring shrinks less than solid wood flooring. This is because engineered floor has a solid wood surface, but the underlying wood is actually plywood. Plywood is dimensionally more stable because it is assembled with the wood grain of each layer running ninety degrees to the layer above and below. Wood shrinks across the grain and not much with the grain. So one layer reisist the shrinkage of the neighboring layer. If you want wide plank floors, take a hard look at engineered flooring. It will remain much more dimensionally stable than solid wood planks, yet the surface, the part you see and walk upon, will be identical to the solid plank.

Filling the gaps is merely a temporary cure. When the wood swells again as the season changes, chances are the filler will be squeezed out. My recommendation is to look around at older houses and observe the gaps in those floors. It’s likely you looked right past those blemishes and maybe even viewed them as part of the “patina of age” and thought they enhanced the charm of the house. Your house will develop it’s own patina and grow more charming every season if you let the nature of wood take its course. Your wood floors are a natural product that abides by the laws of nature. Swelling and contracting with moisture content is the natural behavior of wood.

I always welcome comments. Please feel free to post a comment and share your experience with the rest of us.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

I’m having a townhouse built in Philadelphia, Pa and think the contractor is giving me a line when it comes to the steps going from floor to floor.
This is the problem as I see it. The contractor is telling me it’s OK for the steps to be open on the left side as you go up. He installed a hand rail on the right side (going up) but nothing on the left. There is nothing there until you reach the ceiling height of the next floor.
I have searched the codes and can’t seem to find anything about what I think is a No….No. I think there should a rail to keep people from falling off the steps on the left hand side as you go up. Who is right? Me or the contractor. Can you point me to the code so I can print it?

 I feel bad for this fellow. He needs an architect to speak up for him and provide an unbiased opinion so the house gets built right. Here’s how I answered him:

He’s feeding you a line. The International Building Code requires a railing in this situation. It’s under the section entitled “Guards”,(Section R312), since it is considered a guard rail. Open sides of stairs require a railing if the rise is more than 30″. It sounds like you have a lot more than that. Your builder would get caught on this when he had his final inspection. No building inspector would ever let this slip by. It’s a glaring error. Go Phillies!

He wrote back:

Thanks for the fast reply. I found the code, I think, I was looking for.

GUARDS R312.1 Guards. Porches, balconies, ramps or raised floor surfaces located more than 30 inches (762 mm) above the floor or grade belowshall have guards not less than 36 inches (914 mm) in height. Open sides of stairs with a total rise of more than 30 inches (762 mm) above the floor or grade below shall have guards not less than 34 inches (864 mm) in height measured vertically from the nosing of the treads. Porches and decks which are enclosed with insect screening shall be equipped with guards where the walking surface is located more than 30 inches (762 mm) above the floor or grade

Is this a national code?

I’m having a house built for resale in Philadelphia and have a builder who is driving me nuts. Somehow he has won the builder of the year award from Philadelphia Magazine in 2008 – 09. I think I know how he is doing it. He builds for himself to sell and I’ll bet BIG BUCKS he only shows the houses that belong to him. That is the only way he could pull that off. Every time I would go to the house it would be something new. Most of the people he has working shouldn’t be allowed to push a broom on a job.

Oh how I hate to hear stories like this. It gives the good builders black eyes. I answered again:

Every jurisdiction adopts whatever Code they like. They are written by national organizations and then adopted, with local provisions and alterations, for the local jurisdiction. But all of the Codes are really similar. And, most places are now using the International Building Code. I’d bet you a couple of World Series tickets Philadelphia uses the International Code.

Did you builder pull a building permit for this project? I would expect so. He sounds like a complete rookie if he doesn’t even know the guard rail provision.

Yes, of course you can usually count on your builder to know the Building Code. And you can usually count on him being honest and hard working. But many times during the building process, it’s valuable to have someone knowledgeable who is completely on your side. I would venture a guess that this builder would respond to this issue very differently if the owner had an architect there to speak up for him. The builder would know he couldn’t get through a problem with smoke and mirrors.

Did I mention, “Go Phillies!”

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

Metal roofs, now often referred to as “cool roofs,” can act like your light colored, open weave shirt and keep your house cooler in hot weather. They do this “passively”, that is they use no electricity in the process. Here’s why they work. In an article posted at Classic Metal Roofing Systems website, they list four energy benefits you’ll get with a metal roof.

1. Thermal Mass. Mass is the “weight” of a material. Stone has more mass than wood because a chunk of stone weighs a lot more than a the same-sized chunk of wood. Heavy asphalt roofs have a lot more mass than metal roofs. The higher the mass, the more heat a material can absorb. Although metal can get quite hot to the touch, it does not store heat in its mass and it will give up it’s heat more quickly soon as the sun goes down, or behind a cloud, or even when a breeze blows. So just like your open weave shirt, the material will cool down easily. Aluminum is even better than steel in this regard.

2. Color. Just like your light colored shirt, a light colored roof will absorb less radiant heat. I wrote a blog post about how I use passive solar principles to help clear snow and ice from my driveway. And color was the key. Here’s a link to that article, if you’re interested: http://www.designingyourperfecthouse.com/blog/2009/01/passive-solar-design-on-my-driveway/

3. Reflective Pigment. In the Classic Metal Roof Systems article, they say “Many dark-colored metal roofs now have reflective pigments so that good reflectivity is achieved even in dark colors.” This means that you are not limited to a silver or white roof to enjoy the benefits of an energy efficient, highly-reflective roof.

4. Integral Airspace. Metal roofs do not lay tightly against the roof sheathing. This means that a gap of air is created that insulates the roof sheathing from conducted heat coming from the metal. This airspace acts like a trivet or a pad you might place beneath a hot pan to keep from burning the countertop or table in your kitchen. Asphalt roofs lay tightly against the sheathing and continually conduct heat into your attic or rooms below, adding to your air-conditioning expense.

No matter what roof material you choose, be sure to provide sufficient attic ventilation. Metal roofs do not replace this essential design feature. But metal roofs will keep your attic and house much cooler and keep your air-conditioning electrical costs down significantly.

Metal roofs tend to cost more, initially, than shingle roofs. I’m researching this and looking for ways to control the added costs. I’ll report on this in future posts. If you have any experiences with metal roofing and the energy benefits, please post a comment. I would love to hear from you.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

My husband and I just bought a house built in the early 60′s and it has the original white oak floors that have the aged yellow/orange look. I’m getting used to them, I think!  I don’t know what color to paint the walls that will compliment the floors.  I plan to invest in traditional wool area rugs with golds, greens, navy, and rusts colors.  I prefer lighter colors for walls but can’t seem to select one that doesn’t look so yellow.  Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

Here’s my answer:

The yellow/orange color you see in the white oak floors is probably not the wood that has turned this color. It is probably the polyurethane finish. Oil-based polyurethanes yellow considerably over time. If you wish to get rid of the yellow, you could simply have them refinished. When the polyurethane is sanded off, the underlying wood will look like new and be the original white oak color. We did this in a house we bought in Wilmington, Delaware many years ago. The house had been built in 1918 and the floors were very yellow and had black spots, too. Once they were refinished, they looked brand new and wonderful.

A new oil-based poly will yellow a little, but not nearly as yellow as one that is many, many years old. And newer polyurethanes tend to be more color stable than those from some years ago. If you want to totally avoid yellowing in the future, you could use a water-based polyurethane finish. The water based finish will not yellow and is a little more durable than even the tough oil-base polyurethane, but some people feel it leaves the floor looking flat and a bit lifeless.

For the wall colors, you might want to consider picking up the other colors in the rugs, but in pale tones. A very pale green, with even a slight grey cast and not yellowish, can be a very handsome color and is in style these days.

To learn more about polyurethane finishes, you might want to visit www.minwax.com. they are a long-time manufacturer of high quality floor finishes of all types. Their website is full of tips, advice, and product information.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

I refer to siding, brick, stone, stucco, and other sidings as the “weatherproofing” of the house. These materials keep the bulk of the wind and water out, but even perfectly installed siding material will still let in small, but significant, amounts of moisture. There is no effective way to stop this and it does not indicate the house is poorly built.

Do you remember the old black tar paper that used to be installed around a house before the siding was installed? That layer is the actual barrier against water infiltration. It is the true waterproofing of a house. These days, tar paper has been replaced with several high-tech House Wraps, like Tyvek and Typar by DuPont, Weathermate by Dow, and PinkWrap by Owens Corning.

Materials such as these have revolutionized house waterproofing. Much more resistant to moisture infiltration than old fashioned tar paper, these materials substantially improve the energy performance of the house, as well. By reducing the air infiltration in exterior frame walls, particularly on windy days, these high-tech house wraps help the building insulation remain effective. All insulation works on the principle of dead air being the actual insulator. The insulation simply keeps the air still so it can insulate. You can imagine that if air is moving around in the wall cavity, the “R” value (insulating value) is going to be lost. The house wraps keep wind from penetrating the walls and compromising the insulation’s effectiveness. House wraps will save you a lot of money in heating and cooling costs.

When the windows and doors of a house are installed, the house wrap is taped to the window and door frames with special tape to insure a tight seal. When this is done and the roof has been installed on the house, the house is watertight, regardless of whether any of the siding has been installed. The siding material is there to protect the house wrap, deflect the heavy weather, and for looks.

If your house is being built in a cold climate and you are worried about brick, stone, or stucco being installed in freezing conditions, you don’t have to delay the start of construction. You can begin the house, provided weather permits the foundation to be built, and let the builder frame everything. He can install the roofing, install the windows, and wrap the house up with one of the house wraps. The house will be watertight and the interior construction can continue. The masonry on the exterior can wait until warmer weather without delaying the rest of the construction.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

Tiles on shower ceilings are somewhat optional these days. They add cost, so often they are not done. But tiles on the ceiling are a step up in quality and make the ceiling easier to maintain. If you do not tile the ceiling, be sure to use moisture resistant drywall, sometimes called green board. It’s designed for use in damp locations. As you would imagine, steam will tend to cling to the shower ceiling, especially in the corners. If you have a nice gap at the top of the shower door to let the steam vent out, a drywall ceiling, properly painted should work fine.

If you are adding a steam unit to the shower, you will definitely need tiles on the ceiling. Otherwise you will grow mildew quickly and you will find yourself repairing the ceiling frequently. Steam showers need to be completely enclosed with no gaps around or at the top of the glass doors. If not, the shower will never steam up enough to do what you want it to do. One good tip for building a steam shower is to give the ceiling a bit of a slant. This will keep droplets of condensed steam from dripping on you. Although the steam was hot when it condensed on the ceiling, it will feel icy cold when it drips on you. Slightly sloping the ceiling will let the water run to the walls and down the walls without dropping on you.

Another tip on shower ceilings is to not make them too high. If your house has ten foot ceilings, consider dropping the shower ceiling to eight foot. This will help the shower warm up when you use it. If the ceiling is too high, it might create an uncomfortable cool draft.

Check the comment bar to tell us your story.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

There are two reasons for that. First is the cost. Traditional, all masonry fireplaces are very expensive to build. The entire chimney must be built of masonry and the tall column of cement blocks, bricks, and terra cotta flue liner is very expensive. Plus, a true masonry fireplace requires a foundation to carry the weight. That adds more cost. Pre-fab metal units have taken over the marketplace for cost alone. Some pre-fab fireplace companies are Heatilator, Majestic, and Heat-n-Glo. These fireplaces have some limitations on the size of the firebox opening. If I need a particularly large opening, I turn to Isokern. This is a fireplace that is made of a special type of concrete block system, but it does not require the full masonry flue. So it is a compromise between the design freedom of the traditional masonry fireplace and the cost benefits of the pre-fab units.

Wood-burning models of pre-fab fireplaces are readily available, but in spite of that, most of my clients choose to set these fireplaces up with gas logs for the sheer convenience of starting and stopping a fire whenever they want. Many people have grown tired of chopping and carrying wood, cleaning up the mess and bringing bugs into the house and give up the ambiance of a real wood fire in favor of the convenience of a gas log fire. These days, there are many very good choices of gas log sets that provide a realistic wood fire look. Because most of the heat goes up the flue, fireplaces are not energy efficient. They can actually draw more heat out of a house than they can provide. Fireplaces should be viewed as decorative elements in a house.

Some gas fireplaces require a vent pipe and others do not. The vented gas fireplaces give the most traditional look since they do not have to have glass doors on the firebox. But vented gas fireplaces must have the damper held open permanently according to the building code. This allows heated air from the house to continually escape up the flue twenty four hours a day. This is obviously an energy loss. Open fronted, vented fireplaces also use the air inside the house for combustion and can allow combusted air to return back into the house. People who have allergies or sensitivities to petroleum products could react negatively to this. For those people, a direct vent fireplace might be a better solution.

Direct vent fireplaces take outside air for the combustion and vent the combusted air back outside. No indoor air is used. No pollution is added to the indoor air. No heated house air escapes the house. They cost less initially because no chimney is required. A direct vent fireplace can add heat to the house, but not as efficiently as a gas furnace. The major objection to direct vent fireplaces is that a fixed glass panel covers the firebox. Sometimes people describe this as an aquarium look because of the glass. But there are decorative frames for the glass that make it look like a set of good glass doors.

All in all I would say that most of the fireplaces I design are gas log types with the exception of outdoor fireplaces. For those, wood-burning is still the preference. Of the indoor fireplaces, most are the vented variety primarily because of the appearance. People prefer the traditional open faced firebox. But in some situations, the direct vent type is the best choice, especially if finding a location for the flue and chimney is difficult or cost is a priority.

Click on the comment bar to tell us your story.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

    I talked yesterday about the value of painting out larger samples of your wall and trim paint selections to verify that the colors were right. The same principles applies to the other materials you plan to use. Don’t pick bricks from a photo or even from a brick sample card with several thin bricks on it. Without mortar, the bricks will look different than they will on your house. Stone is even tougher. I can’t imagine being confident in a stone selection from a handful of loose stones. Stones come in a very wide range of colors, textures, and sizes. And there is no good way to describe stone in words. Photos of other walls help, but you need to be sure your builder can reproduce the wall you want.

    Insist that your builder construct a sample wall where you can see the “real” finished product.

Homebuilding Stone Samples

    In this photo, the stone mason has laid up three sample panels with several mortar joint options. You cans see two of them in this closer view.

Mortar Joints in a Stone Wall

    The top joint is called a “raked” joint. The mortar has been scraped back to let the edges of the stones show more. The lower joint is a brushed joint where the mortar is flush with the face of the stone and brushed somewhat smooth with a bristle brush. You can see that the effects are remarkably different.

    Simply picking the brick or stone for your house is not enough information for you to give your builder. It leaves too much to the imagination. You need to decide upon the color of the mortar, the way the mortar is “struck” or “tooled,” and you need to be sure you, your architect, the builder, and the mason all have the same image in mind for the final wall. The only sure-fire way to do this is to lay up a sample wall and create a physical sample. If the first samples don’t capture the look you want, pull it down and try again. The small cost of doing this will save you thousands in unnecessary cost, not to mention the aggravation and angst of getting the wall wrong.

Click on the comment bar to tell us your story.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

    If you don’t believe me, try this little test. Go to the paint store, or your local Home Depot, and pick up a few color chips of paint. Be sure to get two of each color. When you get home, cut out the colors so that no white edges show. All you should have left is is small piece of paper with the color on it. Then place one of the chips on a white piece of paper and the other chip on some other color paper. Stand back and look at them. Do the colors look the same? I’ll bet they don’t.

    Color is influenced by its context. If you try to make your color selections standing in the paint store and you only look at the color as it’s shown on the sample card, which likely will have a white background, you may miss the subtle hues, only to notice them later when the entire house is painted and changing the color will cost you plenty.

    And speaking of hues, there is really no such thing as white. There are many colors of white. I know that sounds silly. After all, white is a color we can all identify. But actually there are many whites, each with its own unique underlying tone. A true white would be something along the lines of “copy paper” white, but even that may have a bluish cast when held up against a white with an underlying hint of yellow. There are “pinkish” whites, “greyish” whites, very, very pale yellows, and many more.

    You will have trouble seeing these nuances in a tiny paint chip. It is necessary to paint a larger sample wall to really see what subtle hues each white contains. So buy a can of the white you are considering and paint it on a wall. Let the paint dry before evaluating it and look at it on a sunny day, a cloudy day, and under artificial light. Chances are it will appear somewhat different in each condition.

    Most paint manufacturers group their paints in a way that will give you clues as to which “white” will go with which wall color. Let’s suppose you selected a Sherwin Williams color for the siding of your new house and it was “SW 6003, Proper Gray.” Then you were looking for the right white for the trim. How would you know which of the twenty-some whites they offer would go best with your siding color? In this case, you should select “SW 6000, Snowfall.” That’s because it is in the same color family as the siding color you already selected. In fact, all of the colors from SW 6000 through SW 6006, Black Bean, are in the same family. They all contain the same colors, but in varying intensities. So you can be certain they will go together. Another white, like SW 6049 Gorgeous White, might look just fine in a small sample. But when the trim was painted, it’s underlying brownish hue would show through and it would clash with the cooler gray of your SW 6003 siding.

    Dark colors can be just as tricky. Suppose you wanted a dark Green or a dark Burgundy for your shutters. You might be inclined to pick a color that looks nice and dark in the small chip. But I’ll warn you that when your shutters are painted and you stand back from them, your dark green will mysteriously morph into Kelly Green and your very ark Burgundy will look a lot more like a Red Zinfandel. Dark colors will look lighter in larger areas and when placed on darker backgrounds. So to get the truly dark Green or Burgundy, select one that looks nearly black in the paint chip. Then, paint out a larger area just to be sure.

    For the cost of a few cans of paint, you can avoid the costly mistake of having to repaint your entire house after the color gremlins change what you thought picked into something you never intended.

Click on the comment bar to tell us your story.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.