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Is there better wood to frame your house with? In many areas of our lives, there are varying degrees of quality for the things we use. You can find high-quality coffee, cars, clothes, and more. But what about the wood in your house's frame? Can you get better stuff? Do the fancier homes in town have better wood in their bones? Let's look for starters just at regular old dimensional lumber. That's the term used for lumber off the shelf at the big box stores and lumber yards. In our region, it mainly comes in [...]

The "bigger" problem causers. We have talked about how insects, mold, and fungus can harm the wood in our homes. Now we need to look at the bigger sources, people. Although larger and more capable, they usually cause less damage, usually unintentionally. There are many ways people can damage the framing of a house. The most common ways are cutting holes or taking chunks out of it. Not to point fingers at any trade, stuff happens, and it happens all the time. The perfect layout upstairs in the house rarely takes into account what’s going [...]

Microbial Pests We previously discussed the creepy crawly pests. Now let's look at the even smaller ones, the microbial pests like mold and fungus. The most common and biggest culprit here is Dry rot The term is a bit misleading because this issue requires moisture to occur. However, in more severe cases, it does make the wood appear very dry. It also thrives at a moisture content that is dryer than your finer and won't feel wet to the touch. Dry rot is a type of wood-eating fungus. It only eats the celous fibers that [...]

Don't eat that.   For our next few posts, we're going to take a look at wood damage, particularly in the crawlspace. For the first post, we will focus on damage to the wood that happens due to pests, that is, things that eat the wood.   There are many things that eat wood. Two big categories and a few major culprits exist in the areas we work on today's post we will start with inesects.   Termites Termites are the largest culprit that we see in this category.   In the Upstate area, termites [...]

And here you thought you were walking on sunshine. The joist is the last part of our series on house framing terms. There are both floor joists and ceiling joists. In the absence of flooring and drywall, they will look similar. Joists make up the bulk of the framing in the floors and ceilings. They transfer the load from the floors or ceiling to the walls, girders, and bands. Floor joists are what the subfloor and flooring attach to. They are what hold up the floors and what we walk around on. In the ceiling, [...]

In our quest to cover all the major framing members under the house, we have come to the girder. In wooden framing, the girders are larger framing members that support the joists. Masonry piers, steel columns, or the foundation wall will support the girder. The girder should have a sill between it and any supporting masonry. The girders support the weight of the flooring or walls and transfer it to the ground using piers/columns. A girder is usually made of several boards or an engineered product for longer spans or heavier loads. The girder works [...]

What is a band? Another term with many meanings. Today, we are most interested in the band in your crawlspace. Usually, there is also a second band between the floors in a two-story home. This band is, usually, two boards that run the perimeter of the house and support the exterior walls of the home. This part of the framing is crucial. The floor joists connect to it, supporting the floors. The walls sit on it, meaning all the exterior walls, doors and windows, depend on the band for support. Sometimes, people call the band [...]

One word for many things. Some words get applied to many things, which can create confusion. Take the word sill, for instance; almost all the meanings relate to something in your home. There is the sill of a door or window. A stool is the little wooden shelf at the bottom of the window that you see in your house; this is not it. The sill is the framing that is under the window that the window sits on. There is also a piece of trim on the window called the sill, but it's on [...]

What is all this stuff? Every trade and profession has its own unique jargon and inside language. This makes communicating within that group more precise and quicker. But it generally has the effect of making things more confusing for those outside the group. Construction is no different. Even within the broad construction field, the various trades can struggle to understand each other. On top of unique terms for each trade, there are also regional differences in the terms that get used as well. Today, we are going to try to make sense of the structural [...]

Structure vs. Foundation Out of sight, out of mind. This phrase applies well to the foundation and structure of our homes. It can be a big unknown and confusing area for most of us who are outside the trades. All this makes them even easier to ignore. Until there's a problem, that is.   Today's topic is trying to make sense of what is down there on the most elementary level possible. Or, put more simply, what part is my foundation, and what part is the structure?   While this easy rule of thumb does [...]