Reinventing the Nail November 28, 2006
Posted by Tim Raines in: business, construction, government, insurance, manufacturing, architecture , add a commentPopsci.com has an interesting article about how Ed Sutt, the son of an architect/contractor in suburban Connecticut, stumbled into an idea to redesign one of the most basic tools of construction: the nail.
Sutt, who now works for Stanley Bostitch, researched the problem of houses collapsing during hurricanes to help design a new nail, the HurriQuake.
Tests conducted by researchers at Florida International University and the International Code Council—the independent building-safety standards organization—confirmed that the HurriQuake has more than twice the “uplift capacity” of standard power-driven nails. Other independent tests showed that the HurriQuake can double a typical home’s resistance to high winds and add up to 50 percent more resistance to earthquakes.
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Big Dig Firms Sued Over Tunnel Accident
Posted by Tim Raines in: business, construction, government, insurance, manufacturing, transportation, architecture , add a commentMassachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly announced he will sue 15 companies that worked on the $15 billion “Big Dig” roadway project in Boston, alleging negligence that caused a ceiling panel to fall and crush a woman this past summer.
The civil suit claims project manager Bechtel/Parson Brinckerhoff was “grossly negligent” in building the tunnel, part of which collapsed less than four years after it was opened. The lawsuit also names the manufacturers and distributors of the epoxy used to hold bolts.
The family of Milena Del Valle, the 38-year-old woman killed on July 10th, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in August.
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Nonresidential Construction Still Growing November 16, 2006
Posted by Tim Raines in: business, construction, public utilities, real estate, retail, finance, architecture , add a commentDespite lackluster sales in the residential arena, nonresidential construction spending has risen for 15th consecutive month, leading to an overall construction spending increase of 6.6 percent in the first 9 months of 2006 over the same period last year.
From Architectural Record via BusinessWeek:
Hotels and resort-related construction spending saw a 48 percent gain over the first nine months of last year; retail stores, shopping centers and malls were up 37 percent; hospital spending grew 25 percent; and manufacturing increased by 23 percent. Multifamily construction, meanwhile, was up 18 percent year-to-date, as a surge in rental facilities is offsetting a dip in condominium building.
Highway and street construction, meanwhile, rose 16 percent year-to-date over 2005, while educational construction increased by 7 percent. Other positive growth areas include sewage and waste disposal and transportation facilities. Nearly all of these categories are expected to grow in 2007, due to a fundamentally strong economy.
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A New Spin on Housing November 2, 2006
Posted by Tim Raines in: business, construction, real estate, architecture , add a commentCan’t decide which way the house should face? Then feel free to change your mind. Every 30 minutes, this house, located in Australia, can rotate a full 360 degrees to take advantage of a different view or to be more energy-efficient by taking advantage of the sun’s rays. From the site:
The Rotating House™ rotates a full 360° around a central core of plumbing and electricals. Computer-controlled rotation gives you complete control over your view.
Want to build your own? The owner has been kind enough to provide instructions.
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World’s Tallest Building Rising in Dubai October 31, 2006
Posted by Tim Raines in: business, construction, real estate, finance, architecture , add a commentConstruction on what will be the world’s tallest building is moving along. Slated for completion at the end of 2008 with a cost of $1 billion, “Burj Dubai”, or Dubai Tower, already has 79 stories, with two stories being added every week.
The tower is to be the centerpiece of a new district, “Downtown Burj Dubai”, at a cost of $20 billion, which will have 30,000 apartments and the world’s largest shopping mall.
At the moment, 2,500 workers are laboring on the tower site alone, and the entire project is expected to employ some 20,000 workers when the downtown area construction begins.
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Homeowners Want Green October 30, 2006
Posted by Tim Raines in: business, construction, government, real estate, finance, architecture , add a commentNope…not money. More and more homeowners are looking at the environmental impact of their homes and choosing to do something about it.
According to a survey released today by Wells Fargo, environmentally friendly changes are the top choice among homeowners thinking of making home improvement. From Reuters:
Given $50,000, some 24 percent of those surveyed “dream green” and would purchase insulation, double-paned windows, solar panels and energy-efficient appliances, according to the bank’s third annual U.S. homeowners study.
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Worlds Oldest Company Closing Its Doors October 23, 2006
Posted by Tim Raines in: business, construction, real estate, finance, management, architecture , add a commentFounded in 578 in Japan by Koreans from the ancient kingdom of Baekje, the oldest company in the world, Kongo Gumi, will go into liquidation in January. The company dates its foundation from the year when carpenter Shigemitsu Kongo built Shitennoji (the temple pictured at right).
The firm’s 40th president, Masakazu Kongo, will end 1,400 years of history as a family-run compan when the operation is handed over to a subsidiary of the Takamatsu Corporation.
Kongo Gumi had purchased land in the 1980s whose price nosedived. The firm chose to liquidate due to heavy debt.
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The Next High-End Amenity: A Treehouse? October 19, 2006
Posted by Tim Raines in: business, construction, real estate, finance, forestry, architecture , add a commentWith some of them going for upwards of six figures, these are not the treehouses Spanky, Alfalfa and the rest of Our Gang would build. And while these upscale treehouses have been around for years, BusinessWeek reports they are more and more becoming a luxury item homeowners are hungry for—at seemingly any price.
Given a good amount of creative freedom by one of his clients in McLean, Va., home designer Anthony Wilder built an elaborate tree-house office in 1997 that connected to the raised back door of the house by way of a cable bridge. Because it blended well with the style of the house and added an isolated space for working as well as entertaining, the addition was one of the prime buying motivators for Bob and Patty Finch, who scooped up the property when it went on the market a few years later.
Wilder built the tree house and bridge for about $250,000, and says his client probably recouped most of that investment.
For those unwilling or unable to make such an investment, there’s always a stay at the famous Treetops Hotel in Kenya or a visit to the $6 million Treehouse at Alnwick Gardens.
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Housing Starts Jump Unexpectedly October 18, 2006
Posted by Tim Raines in: business, construction, real estate, architecture , add a commentProving once again that the construction marketplace is no slave to predictions and prognosticators, housing starts rose 5.9% to give the industry something to crow about. Recent months showed plenty of bad news.
From Bloomberg.com:
“The housing-sector freefall may be abating,'’ James Shugg, a senior economist at Westpac Banking Corp. in London, said before the report. “We don’t think it’s going to derail the U.S. economy, but it’s going to slow it for a while.'’
Economists polled by Bloomberg News forecast starts to fall to a 1.64 million unit pace from an originally reported 1.665 million rate in August, according to the median of 61 projections, which ranged from 1.58 million to 1.74 million.
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Google Plans Green Offices October 17, 2006
Posted by Tim Raines in: business, construction, public utilities, real estate, architecture , add a commentAccording to Reuters, Google plans to construct the largest U.S. solar-powered corporate office complex. The rooftop solar-powered system will be installed at its Mountain View, California, headquarters and will be able to generate 1.6 megawatts of electricity—enough to power 1,000 homes.
A Google executive said the company will rely on solar power to supply nearly a third of the electricity consumed by office workers at its roughly one-million-square-foot headquarters. This excludes power consumed by data centers that power many of Google’s Web services worldwide, he said.
“We are going to be producing roughly 30 percent of the power that we use,” David Radcliffe, vice president of real estate at Google, told Reuters in an interview. “This is for our corporate-office people center,” he said.
Radcliffe declined to comment on the cost of the project or whether the solar generation equipment might pay for itself over time. “We wanted to dispel the myth that you can’t be both Green and profitable,” he said.
While most of the solar panels will sit on rooftops in the Googleplex (Google’s name for their corporate campus), some of them will be solar canopies, providing shade for parking lots.
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