Safety Triangle: Three Things Your Soon-To-Be House Must Have

Published on: 19 July 2017 Last Updated on: 11 September 2024
image001

The house is the first shelter that makes up our first institution, the family. It is the witness of whatever first we have in life, from our very first step to probably our very first word. The house that we live in is the territory of our feelings and thoughts, both unheard and unspoken.

Since the house is the very place we dwell in as a place of comfort, homeowners should assure the sturdiness of the house from the very walls up to the heights of the roof. If the house is not sturdy enough to stand against the wrath of mother nature, it may not be a safe house after all.

People may say that it is close to impossible to stand against a storm or a tornado, most especially. However, what most people don’t know is that they can have a home that can stand against storms and hurricanes.

Methods for strengthening the structural frame of the house, from the foundations to the roofs, here are some helpful tips to help you have a sturdy house.

Super Foundation

image003

Source: http://bit.ly/2u5Af7R

Before you can even start building a house, you have to ensure a foundation first and foremost. It is a fundamental part of the house, and an inappropriate base can be the means of stand or break for your home.

There are different types of foundations ranging from, basements, crawlspaces, and concrete slab on grade. Basements are the most common type in many homes in America. Second to its popularity is the crawlspace which elevates the level of the house higher than average.

Read also: Different Types Of Conversions To Make The Most Of Spare Space In Your Homes

Last but not least is the concrete slab on grade which is a solid concrete pad from which the house stands on.

Basements are the most prevalent in the country because it is the strongest among the other foundations. Homeowners opting for basements are also most likely fond of having extra rooms in their house. A basement can accommodate space which can be enough for a playroom, storage room, or even a bedroom.

Crawlspaces, on the other hand, are lower than the basement but is higher than the concrete slab on grade. Though in most cases, crawlspaces are vulnerable to moist cases, you can ventilate it and fix it to control the moisture level.

Lastly, concrete slab on grade is the cheapest among the foundations. It is a pad of concrete planted on the ground where the house can stand. It is free from termites and also from the safety of vital water supply and drainage pipes.

When problems with the pipes occur, the person doing the job has to crack the concrete open to see the pipes. However, the cost of a concrete slab on grade is more affordable compared to basements and crawlspaces.

Connecting Walls

image005

Source: http://bit.ly/2tbjHIN

Walls are the frame of the house, the skeletal system of the building. Most homeowners ignore the needed quality of walls from which such mindset leads to the delicate structure of the wholesome of the house. A damaged or weak wall can trigger the destruction of your whole house.

Read also: Top Expert Tips For A Stunning Condo Interior!

There are many methods to consider when making strong walls, one of them is called the continuous load path. It is the way that connects every bit of the house, from the floor composition to the threshold of the roof. In this connection, the walls connect the roof and the foundation from which the “path” starts.

This method requires a focal point where the house meets its balance. Imposing balance in the home is acquiring connection in the building. This joint is with the bolts, metal connectors, nails and screws, and everything else that can add up to the inside of the walls.

If the house has this kind of connection, the frame of the house will be like a chain on the inside that will be able to stand against calamities.

Nowadays, home constructions follow the program of the continuous load path. However, not every firm in the country supports the national building standards. So as a homeowner, you should ask the construction team to use the continuous load path method, or ask them if they do.

Metal Roofing

image007

Source: http://bit.ly/2vxOQGW

The roof is the ozone layer of a building. It protects us from the sun, the snow, and the rain – most especially cyclones. Cyclones are the number one enemies of roofs. Cyclones can do so much to a roof and damage it a lot, but if you have the appropriate roof, you can survive them all.

Read also: Professional Roofing Services And Different Decorating Styles

The best shelter that can help you assure a safe house that your family can dwell in for the next 30 – 50 years is the metal roof. Metal roofing is the standard roof of Houston, especially since the city is vulnerable to cyclones due to its geographical location.

Using metal for your roof is a basic necessity as it is one of the safest roofing material that can withstand fear and some harsh climate conditions. Aside from being fireproof and stormproof, if we may say, metal also reflects the heat of the sun stopping most of it from entering your house. You can save yourself from humidity and save your electricity from using air conditioners.

The durability of metal roofing is also 2 – 3 times stronger than average roofs. This length can equate to 30 – 50 years lifespan, by which we can say that metal roofing can witness the adulthood transition of your kid by the least.

In the maintenance of the roof, many companies do metal roof repair in Houston. As one of the advantages of metal roofing, it is quick and easy to install and can also be customizable according to the uniqueness of the house.

Takeaway

From the foundation to the walls to the roof, the house itself should be able to withstand any problems the homeowners can think of for the sake of the people that will live in it. It pays to be knowledgeable of the structure of the house to ensure prior safety.

Home as a basic shelter is also the first institution where things for families begin. Building a house with healthy bones is protecting the family itself.

A homeowner should ensure that the house is in good maintenance. Regularly clean your basements, check the walls and don’t be afraid to dial up some companies of metal roofing Houston for your roof. Any bills for maintenance or necessary improvements are better than hospital bills.

Precautions are always better than a cure. Know the quick knicks and knacks of your house and address them efficiently. More so, it pays if you know the fundamentals of your home.

Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.

View all posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related

5 Tips to Add more Zen to your Home

5 Tips to Add more Zen to your Home

Life bombards us from almost every direction. Phones, commutes, stress in and out of the workplace. We all need a place to relax. Call it Zen, Feng Shui, or merely carving out your personal space. Here are 5 tips to help make your home a haven. Get Organized and Eliminate Clutter: Where do you store items in your home? If the answer is any flat surface, you're not alone.  Design experts say this is the most critical place to start in bringing more serenity to your life. Everything should have a home. For items, you no longer use or want, get rid of them. Buy storage bins for that pile of papers you will probably never get to. Take a hard look at your counters, desk, and tables. These are usually the first surfaces to get covered in junk. Toss it, and then keep it clear. Create balance and Texture: Furniture and décor should calm or energize you, depending on what you’re seeking. Designers suggest adding texture with wood and fabrics. Feel good pieces such as sports rugs for an office or entertainment area add interest and help create a mood. Think about how furniture is arranged. Experts suggest, for example, having only the headboard of your bed against a wall so that energy can travel over, under, and around you while you sleep. Consider adding scents. Smell is a tremendous memory trigger that can also create calm. Cool off with Cool Colors: Earth and water tones such as browns, grays, blues, and greens also help to create an aura of calm in our homes. If you don’t want to achieve this through painting walls, add it with furnishings from cool, colorful throws, to window treatments. Make Nature Your Friend: Consider interior landscaping. Plenty of evidence exists about the benefits of having plants indoors. They reduce carbon dioxide, help clean the air, and increase humidity, to name just a few. Picking the right plants, or getting an expert to help you with it, ensures you won't increase your stress worrying about caring for those plants. Philodendron, succulents such as a jade plant, aloe, or peace lilies are all relatively low maintenance. You might also think about herbs, which have added benefits of adding aroma and edibility to your indoor landscape. Keep Lighting Low: Harsh, overhead lighting raises stress levels. Bright lights create energy rather than relaxation. So the key here to bring more Zen into your home is to keep it low—both in brightness and in height. Ditch those traditional ceiling lights in favor of lamps. Newer, warm LED lights and incandescent light tend to be more relaxing than fluorescents. Besides, consider adding dimmer switches to your lighting so you can adjust just how much brightness you really want. Conclusion: Bringing calm into your home and eliminating stress may have added health benefits by helping to improve your sleep and preventing weight gain. Best of all, these tips are easy and inexpensive to implement. Read Also: Upgrading Your Home To A Smart Home Leading A Stressful Life? – 5 Strategies For Stress Reduction Las Vegas Electricians Share Fun Lighting Ideas For Your Home

READ MOREDetails
PVC

Top myths about PVC

Impact of PVC vs non-PVC towards the environment: Polyvinyl chloride, also known as PVC or simply as vinyl, is a plastic composed of carbon, chlorine, and hydrogen. It’s a common material found frequently in packaging, wire coatings, furnishing, construction materials, pipes, electrical wires, and also in the graphics industry. The reason that PVC is such a popular material is that it’s incredibly versatile. It’s also resistant to UV rays, chemicals, weathering, and flame resistant. Many people, however, believe that PVC has a negative impact on the environment and avoid using any products that contain this material. It’s true that there are many complaints about PVC and its effect both on people and the environment, so let’s take a look at the main issues, both for and against. 1. The manufacturing process releases highly toxic carcinogenic dioxins into the environment: There are two main pieces of evidence that debunk this belief. First is that over the past 30 years, the production of PVCs has increased 300%, whilst at the same time the amount of dioxins in the environment has reduced. Therefore, if the manufacturing process was the major cause of dioxins in the environment, you would expect that the number of dioxins would have increased accordingly. In fact, if we stopped producing PVC, the levels of dioxins in the environment wouldn’t noticeably diminish. Second, that the main cause of dioxins in the environment is not the inefficient combustion of PVC, it’s mainly due to landfill fires and to a lesser degree, the inefficient combustion of medical and urban waste. 2. When incinerated or burnt in house fires, PVC releases dioxins, chlorine, and other carcinogenic chemicals into the air: First of all, PVC doesn’t burn very well, in fact, if the source of fire is removed, PVC doesn’t continue to burn, because it contains a fire-resistant polymer. Also, many PVC products are treated with additional flame retardants after the manufacturing process and release less smoke and less heat when combusted, compared to other plastics. Second, when PVC is correctly combusted the number of toxins released into the environment is insignificant. In fact, the most harm derives from the release of carbon monoxide, which is released from numerous other materials when burnt. 3. PVC can’t be recycled therefore it accumulates as plastic waste: In most scenarios, PVC is actually highly recyclable and can be recycled many times over without degrading. In fact, many plastic products in use today contain components of recycled vinyl; some proponents believe that due to its high recyclability, PVC is actually a zero-waste material. Also, since PVC lasts longer than other materials, it doesn’t need to be replaced as often and hence, appears in landfills less often than comparable materials. In addition, the durability of PVC has led to it being used to line landfills with no evidence that the vinyl breaks down and releases toxins into the groundwater. In the graphics industry, however, PVC is currently difficult to recycle due to contamination from adhesives, additives, and print. Avery Dennison is looking to overcome this with innovative technology to separate products into raw materials, through their Liner Recycling Program. 4. PVC is expensive to manufacture: PVC is made from chlorine and ethylene, both of which are inexpensive to a source (chlorine comes from salt and ethylene from natural gas), resulting in a very inexpensive manufacturing process. In fact, when you consider that PVC products are very cheap to buy, between the retail cost of the product and the profits made by the manufacturer and reseller, the actual production costs are minimal. The result is that vinyl products consume less energy, generate fewer emissions, and save more energy during the manufacturing process than many other products. Why is PVC popular in the graphics industry? All the benefits of using PVC in the graphics industry have been stated above however, more specifically, PVC is extremely cost-effective when compared to alternative polymers. Its long life, durability, resistance to the elements and flame retardance are also major factors, but for our customers, the lower costs are a huge benefit. One of the most popular applications is for car wraps, where the vinyl provides maximum versatility.  Vehicles can look like a work of art after being wrapped with a vinyl film. The fact that PVC is readily available is another factor that cuts down costs, as well as its versatility because we can manufacture numerous products using the same materials. PVC is also an ideal material for use across all print platforms, both porous and heat stable. In summary, PVC is not the villain that it has been made out to be. Many companies manufacturing it are not only committed to sustainability but focused on using innovative techniques combined with the responsible sourcing of materials, to reduce the impact of their operations and supply chain on the environment. Read Also: Replacement Windows – Benefits Of Vinyl Windows Five Ways To Improve The Air Quality Inside Your Home

READ MOREDetails
Bathroom Remodeling

Bathroom Remodeling Tips and Ideas

From a fresh coat of paint to stained glass shower doors, bathroom renovation ideas can change the way you think of one of the most important rooms in the house. A quick glance through the pages of a home design catalog can give you a clue of how bathrooms can be renovated into great places of relaxation and beauty. Bathroom makeover ideas are no longer limited to hardware or basic color coordination. The renovations now include a wide array of designs that can take revamping this room beyond its conventional limits. Take a look at Keystone Bathrooms for design ideas. Though bathrooms are normally the smallest rooms in a home, thinking outside the proverbial box helps in uncovering bathroom remodeling ideas that are highly innovative and unique. Here are some of the most common bathroom remodeling ideas: 1. Cabinets: You may be limited in space for cabinetry depending on the size of your bathroom. Therefore, it would be a great idea to move the cabinetry towards the side as well as the corner to take full advantage of the space you have. In this case, the most important thing is to make optimal use of the available space. Take some tips from the Bribie Island bathroom renovations company or hire experts. 2. Vanity: The bathroom vanity is an ideal mark of any modern-day bathroom. Ensure that you shop around as prices tend to differ from one supplier to another. For just a few bucks you should be able to find a stylish vanity. Please don't try to save money by using low-priced plumbing material as it can cause a leak in the future and will cost you much more to fix the problem. Make sure you are going for high-quality vanity if you want real value for your money. 3. Bathroom Lighting Fixtures: Lighting is an important feature and most modern-day bathrooms use lights that are fixed to the wall or pot lights or a combination of both. Keep in mind that the costly part of bathroom remodeling is labor, not materials. So, if you’re working on a tight budget, it would be a brilliant idea to replace existing lighting fixtures rather than paying an electrician to run new wires to different locations. This is a smart move if you want to add elegance to your bathroom. 4. Mirror: Bathroom remodeling doesn’t always mean removing floors and tearing down walls. A sizeable elegant bathroom mirror can significantly increase the overall image of your bathroom. The best part about bathroom mirrors is that they are affordable and you can even hang them yourself without much difficulty. 5. Bathtub Sliding Glass Screen: A Bathtub sliding screen brings a lot of charm to your bathroom. It is also easier to maintain and more durable than shower curtains. You can easily install it yourself by following the manufacturer's instructions. 6. Faucets: Shiny and modern bathroom faucets are another must when it comes to giving your bathroom a face-lift. Faucets are frequently used whenever somebody uses the bathroom and this means that they are highly noticeable. You don't have to invest a fortune in faucets. Many elegant faucets are reasonably priced and have a lifetime warranty. 7. Toilets and Drainage Pipes: Relocating toilets calls for a major bathroom remodel. Replacing it, on the other hand, is an easy task, and can quickly update an old bathroom. Drainage Pipes that are improperly installed or old can cause several problems in the long run. Consequently, they need to be fixed and replaced. Replacing the toilet drainage pipe in your bathroom can be tricky. To correctly set the pipe, you'll have to go into the wall behind the toilet or even under the ground to find the end of the drain, which can be a rather nasty job. These bathroom-remodeling projects may require a contractor. It's not one of the jobs that you can do on your own especially if you don’t have the required skills. You need to understand that one of the most critical elements or parts of a bathroom is drainage. This means that just like you are investing in the various parts and fixtures, you also need to invest in getting the best plumber or company on board. According to experts at 5 Star Plumbing, unless your bathroom’s pipes, water supplies, and drainage features do not check out, you will not have a functional set-up. 8. Floors: If you don't have a ceramic floor in your home or the floor is terrible and old, you can improve the look of your bathroom by installing ceramic tiles. Also, consider a heated floor as part of your bathroom renovation project. Your whole family and friends will appreciate this new appearance that they find in the bathroom. From this discussion, it is clear that it’s not that difficult to renovate your bathroom.  The most important thing is to remember these bathroom remodeling ideas and tips if you will be going to remodel your bathroom. Read Also : Bathroom Upgrades You Should Consider Mirror Decorating Ideas To Style Your Bathroom Using Feng Shui In Your Bathroom Design

READ MOREDetails