The Ceiling Is Falling

So,  I completed my past two hotels and they opened for business in May and June of 2013.  Of course if you have looked at any of my previous posts you know the construction quality left something to be desired.  So no surprise that a few weeks after opening the ceiling in the lobby of one of the hotels started to fall down.

There are many reasons for the ceiling to collapse first there were not enough hanging rods.  There were very few hanging rods at the leading edge of the drop which is really bad.  The rods that were their were not anchored properly.  But the silver lining in the whole scenario is that the contractor had failed to put in an access panel to a piece of air handling equipment that was up in the ceiling.  no body knew it was there until the ceiling started to fall and you could see it!

Power Outage

Hey you guys who think it is dumb to buy into conservation and that it is too expensive, how does it feel to take a cold shower and read by candle light.  Remember progress is always on the winning side, it is dumb to do things the same old way just because you know it works and your afraid of the future.  I work with jack asses who are all afraid of high efficiency water closets, oh they will clog, they don't work... Bull Shit the only W.C. in my parents house that doesn't clog is the tank-less pressure flush high efficiency model they bough when they first came out. more than a decade later it is still going still flushing.

When the power goes out, or the gas main breaks.  The PV panels keep you in the light and your electric car charged.  The solar collectors keep your shower steamy.  Its not just conservation its innovation and its better to move forward that get blasted to the past every so often.

Hurricane Sandy Teaches Us About Sandbars.

Urban planning has a lot to do with anthropology and anthropology has a lot to do with where we live.  Some of us chose to live on large sandbars often called barrier islands and Hurricane Sandy showed us how stupid it can be to do that.

There are two reasons to live on a barrier island or low lying coastal property. The first and original reason is it was close to work. You were a fisherman, factory or dock worker; commerce was centered around shipping and ports.  Most often these were not where you found wealthy people nobody wants to live in marshes or near the docks; you caught yellow fever and had your house washed away, these were the poor the workers. The captains lived up the shore on the hills with the view not in a place to be washed out of the view.  The Second reason is the newer reason which started in the late 1800s and that is for pleasure.  To play on the beach to "own" the beach the view and the "cleansing" sea air.  This new reason has taken over much of the waterfront building trend.

So a Barrier Island is just that an object in the path of the oncoming force of storms.  Just like the sand bars they are they shift and move with the tides.  Man has thought they could tame this by driving piles and moving sand and sticking jetties every so often.  Sandy showed us that these are mere temporal devices and that mother nature can easily overcome these obstacles.  The best way to fight nature is with nature, by building on these island we have destroyed most of the natural dunes, these are the best ways to keep the sand from moving as the plants slow the wind and water swept sand.  To do this it means we need more natural space and less built environment on the barrier island.

Sandy should teach us it is better to have a view of the barrier island than to live on it.  As we rebuild we should rebuild with the idea that nature cannot be tamed and nobody who puts a house up on a pile of sand should expect it to stand forever.

Clean Site Clean Work.

You can usually tell the quality of work being performed by a general contractor by the cleanliness of the site.  I have never seen good work on a messy site, you can find bad work on a clean site but it is guaranteed on a dirty site.

Piles of garbage make it hard to work.  Things lying around make for tripping hazards.  Tools and product get damaged and lost.  Below are pictures from a site I deal with.  The General Contractor or Construction Manager low lid the job and spend all day trying to find change orders.  The work performed is shoddy, and there is constant damage.

Garbage brings mice and rats.  This site has them frolicking on it!

Why Roofs Are Important

Roofs are important because they keep out the weather.  Often times contractors are slow to do the roof, they are hard and prone to damage.  Because you build from the ground up the bottom is further along than the top.  Some people make the mistake of proceeding with  weather sensitive items before the roof and this is what happens.

 

It's Not Finished Expect Rain Puddles It's Fine Here

But Please Hold Off On The Drywall

Reusing Equipment

When doing a renovation sometimes an owner decides to reuse existing equipment especially if it expensive and/or new.  This then requires the contractor to take care not to destroy it and to make sure it is kept in good working order.  Not dump garbage over it and let construction dust cover it.  Of course if your an idiot contractor you will use the room the equipment is in as the garbage storage!

Drywall, Gypsum Wall Board; Its Not All The Same!

So there are four large players in the North American Drywall market.  They are National Gypsum, Georgia Pacific, USG, and Lafarge.  Now you may be saying wait are you talking about Sheetrock?  Well yes but that is a trade mark name and there in lies the confusion.

National Gypsum calls their drywall Gold Bond NOT to be confused with "gold board" a misnomer for the yellow colored board produced under the name DensGlass by Georgia Pacific.

Georgia Pacific calls their drywall ToughRock.

USG produces drywall under the name Sheetrock

Lafarge calls their drywall.. wait for it.. drywall no special brand name must be because they are Canadian.

All these companies also produce FireRated Gypsum Board under special names.. Fire-shield, Fireguard, Firecode, and Firecheck.

They all also produce moisture/mold resistant panels, the paper on these is usually colored green, blue or purple depending on brand.

They all also produce a glass fiber mat covered board for exterior sheeting usually used as a backer for an EIFS or other veneer or weather barrier system.  Georgia Pacific originated the product under the Densglass name.  Nat Gyp calls it e2xp sor extended exposure. USG produces is under the sheetrock name as Securock it is bright green.  Lafarge call is Weather Defense and it is grey in color.  CertainTeed also makes exterior Gypsum sheeting under the names Proroc and Glasroc.

Okay now I had a contractor I had just paid an extra 4 grand to install Densglass.  instead I get a purple mold resistant drywall.  He insisted it was the same saying its Gold Bond its the same as Densglass.  Number one Gold Bond sounds nothing like Densglass and I paid for that specific product.  Number two I don't really care what the color or the name of the product is what I want is a glass fiber mat covered gypsum board.  He says well its better that what we were going to originally put.  So!  Its not as good as what I fucking paid for!  He still insisted it was the same quality the next day.. Un-fucking believable that a GC doesn't know the different kinds of Gypsum Board available.

NOT GLASS MAT FACED!!!  NOT DENSGLASS!!!

Needless to say he will be even more confused when it comes to to all the variants of cement board or tile backed board.