transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Titebond might be best known for their wood glues, but professionals also rely on their sealants to tackle the toughest parts of the home. One of the standouts is Titebond UA920 sealant. It's a premium hybrid sealant made to move with siding, windows, doors, and trim, whether you're working inside or out. It stays flexible over time and keeps joints sealed as the house shifts and settles. If you want to learn more about UA920, or check out the rest of Titebond's cogs and sealants, head over to titebond.com. Upgrade your home's exterior with Exceed Siding by Versitex. Engineered for unmatched durability and a sleek, modern aesthetic, Exceed provides a high-performance, weather-resistant shield that outlasts traditional materials. The ultimate low-maintenance choice, Exceed's advanced polymer construction resists rotting, cracking, peeling, pain and fading. Lightweight 16-foot boards, nail hem brackets for tight joints, and the VZD drop-lock system for solid straight lines make installation faster and easier. Plus, with a built-in color cap, there's no need for routine painting. For a premium finish that stands the test of time, choose Exceed Siding by Versitex. Ian, how do you prepare clients for imperfections, especially in an old house?

Speaker 2:
[01:20] Yeah, you have to have the conversation with them up front, and it's about looking at the rest of the house and talking about what your work is going to look like around the rest of the work that they have. The real job is communicating and setting those expectations.

Speaker 1:
[01:38] Welcome to The Fine Homebuilding Podcast, our weekly discussion of building, remodeling and design topics, aimed at anybody who cares deeply about the craft and science of working on houses. This is Senior Editor Patrick McComb. Today I'm joined by Fine Homebuilding Associate Editor Grant Baver.

Speaker 3:
[01:52] Hey!

Speaker 1:
[01:53] Fine Homebuilding Contributing Editor and Operations Manager for TDS Design Build, Ian Schwant.

Speaker 2:
[01:59] Howdy.

Speaker 1:
[02:00] And Producer Kerry DeLaHanty.

Speaker 3:
[02:02] Good morning.

Speaker 1:
[02:03] Please email your questions to fhbpodcast at finehomebuilding.com. You can find previous podcasts and check out the show notes at finehomebuilding.com/podcast. It is great to see you guys. Thanks so much for being here.

Speaker 2:
[02:15] Great to be here.

Speaker 1:
[02:17] Oh my gosh, Ian. So you sent us a couple of photos overnight. I heard it was yesterday showing a project you have going on in Madison, and it's not turning out exactly like you'd planned. Can you talk about that, please?

Speaker 2:
[02:28] Well, we haven't gotten out of the ground yet. We're still working on getting our helical piles in. It's for a porch. It's a quote historic project, but really, it's just that this particular street is in a historic district. It's mostly two flat homes that are two apartments, first floor, second floor, and it's a lot of rental properties and not super well taken care of. But this porch, we tore it down, and now we're rebuilding it, and there's some cool stonework that was part of the original porch that we have to put back exactly as it was, except the stone was just set on dirt. So now we have to do some kind of foundation under it, and because of some other reasons with the water lines in the sewer lines coming through that area, we opted to do helical piers with a grade beam, and we were all really excited about doing this. It's going to be our first crack at a grade beam on helical piers, and our helical pier installers, engineer did a lot of good work with our team to come up with the means and methods for doing this. We got the porch demoed, got the pad dug out, helical pier guy came in, and after he had hit 14 feet and still had like no more than 200 pounds of bearing capacity, he was like, yeah, I'm done for the day. We got to figure something else out. So we've had rain now for a couple of days, but I think he's going to come back with a much larger diameter pile.

Speaker 1:
[04:15] Which is in turn going to have a bigger helix on it, which should in turn provide more bearing capacity. Of course, one of the great things about helical piles is you do know the bearing capacity, which ahead of the show, Grant was pointing out that few residential projects have soil testing that would indicate what is there. And you learned, I'm guessing, shortly after this happened, that this is all fill in this neighborhood, right?

Speaker 2:
[04:43] Lots of fill. We have another project in a different part of town that is known for these conditions, where we are again using helical piers. But we had a bit more planning for that, because some of the people on the team have worked in this area before, and they know it's all loose fill sand and just kind of other refuse ground that's been filled in in that area. But we didn't expect it in this part of town.

Speaker 1:
[05:09] So I'm guessing this is going to require a bigger machine and a bigger check. What happens in an instance like this?

Speaker 2:
[05:16] You write a bigger check and you move on with your life. That's fixed price contracting for you. You accept all of the risk as the fixed price contractor.

Speaker 1:
[05:28] There are folks listening, myself included, like this seems like a reasonable change order. You know, the conditions were not what you expected. Why not go to the client for more dough?

Speaker 2:
[05:38] It really depends on what the actual cost is. I don't believe that the cost is going to be that exorbitant. And, you know, Grant, Grant's chuckling back there, but I'm sure Grant knows what it's like to hit somebody with that big change order about a week into the job.

Speaker 1:
[05:54] It is bad timing, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[05:56] You want to play your cards right when it comes to that.

Speaker 1:
[06:00] Grant, I'm sure you have all kinds of questions. Go ahead, man.

Speaker 3:
[06:03] I'm really happy I didn't look at these pictures last night, or I would have had nightmares all night about. I tell you what, I always used to worry a lot about bearing capacity in my area, in central PA. We don't have a lot of fill, a lot of spots, thankfully, but we also don't have a lot of geotechnical engineers running around. So, I always used to be like, oh my God, we have this deck design and is my footing actually correct? Or is this deck going to fall over? And I lost sleep over that many nights. And this is one of those, that's one of the reasons I do like helical piers, because you do know the bearing capacity. And like in this case, you knew it wasn't adequate, what was there, and that's...

Speaker 1:
[06:49] That's way better than failing later, right?

Speaker 3:
[06:52] Yeah, absolutely. So that's another benefit for those systems. I wish there was somebody more local here that did them. We have to have somebody come from a couple of hours away to drive piers around here, but...

Speaker 2:
[07:06] Yeah, I can't even think of the size of battered concrete form that you would have to use to put in a concrete pier in this soil.

Speaker 3:
[07:17] It would probably be like four foot by four foot or more.

Speaker 2:
[07:22] I mean, it would be like a large buried gas tank size.

Speaker 3:
[07:27] Yeah, when I was on one of my internships in college doing schools, it was a Cheston Elementary School in Easton, Pennsylvania, and we dug out there because it was all fill and who knows what, and they're just like, well, we're not going to deal with this, and it was going to be exorbitantly expensive to try to found a foundation that would work. I can't remember what we dug there, 15, 20 feet down. They compaction grout it to where they drill the big caissons in, and then they fill them up with grout. But then I think we dug 20 foot of soil out of there and took it up in six inch lifts of gravel of compacted backfill. I remember that the guy with a nuke gauge walking around checking compaction all the time. It was really cool process to see, but I have some pictures. I can send those to Patrick to link some of the old stuff we found. Like one time we dug up an old cistern and it was like filled with like old medicine bottles and stuff like that. It was pretty wild.

Speaker 1:
[08:21] Ian, just be thankful you didn't hit like a buried oil tank when you were putting in those helical piles, right? Like that, yeah, you're lucky.

Speaker 2:
[08:29] I made a joke to the lead carpenter on the job of like, well, how much further do you have to go before you hit groundwater and we fill up the street with water?

Speaker 1:
[08:39] I guess that's a concern, right? You could hit a mean of water, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[08:42] That's going to be the topic of next week's podcast. So we did actually hit water and it was like a geyser coming out of the helical pile.

Speaker 2:
[08:54] What's funny about this particular neighborhood is there's a small independent grocery store in it. And this particular grocery store has a pretty hilarious Facebook page. And the Facebook page is based on like, if the parking lot was a person, what would the parking lot's view of the neighborhood look like? So I can only imagine what kind of Facebook post we would get out of the Willy Street Market parking lot.

Speaker 3:
[09:25] Yeah. So I have a question. So was the old porch like sunk? Like, where's that old? Oh, yeah. So that old foundation was just just diving into the ground. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[09:37] And it was all just, it was all chunks of built up like granite block that had kind of a decorative cut face that our mason took down and is going to reinstall on the grade beam.

Speaker 1:
[09:49] What's amazing to me, though, is it did not fall down and it was there for what, 100 plus years? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[09:54] And it was one of those demo jobs where the carpenters on it were like, yeah, we cut two things and it fell down.

Speaker 3:
[10:03] There was the best kind of.

Speaker 1:
[10:03] I shouldn't be laughing, but no one got hurt. I guess it's okay.

Speaker 2:
[10:07] They're like, people were outside grilling on it the weekend before. Now it's gone.

Speaker 1:
[10:12] I see porches often in my travels and I'm just like, how is that staying up there or decks? Oh man.

Speaker 3:
[10:18] The one that always wigs me out too is hot tubs on decks. When you actually do the math of a hot tub on the deck, it's like 200 pounds per square foot or more load. People don't realize that. Unfortunately, a lot of deck builders don't even understand what tributary load is and things like that. It's actually not super complicated math in terms of footing sizes.

Speaker 1:
[10:43] But that's the job. That is the job you're supposed to be doing. I don't understand how you could not know that.

Speaker 2:
[10:49] It's like parking my Ford Maverick on the second floor deck of some house.

Speaker 3:
[10:53] It actually is like parking your Ford on the second floor. So, yeah. Crazy.

Speaker 1:
[11:00] I had a cool experience this week. I was hanging out with Matt Puntin, who's an engineer and a podcast listener. He's also designing a septic system for a client in Lee, Massachusetts. And I saw a perc test for the first time. Super interesting. Way more scientific than I would have ever imagined. You know, if you hear someone talking about this, you know, you imagine that they got a post hole digger, they dig a, you know, foot diameter, three foot deep, four foot deep hole or whatever, and fill it with water. But it is way more involved than that. And it was a delight to be out there in the field and learning all this stuff. But you'll get to learn more about it in an upcoming feature article that is going to discuss designing and installing, you know, pretty typical septic system. And I'm psyched about it because I think it's the first time the brand has tackled this subject in, you know, as a feature treatment.

Speaker 2:
[11:51] I can't believe you weren't out there with your dowsing rod looking for a good spot to put the well.

Speaker 1:
[11:55] So I had a question about that when you asked me in the email, like, so ordinarily, you know, dowsing rods dip, right? When you're looking for water, if you're trying to find a dry spot to put your leach field, does it go up? How does that work? How do you interpret it?

Speaker 2:
[12:08] Only if you move it up, like you move it down.

Speaker 1:
[12:13] Have you guys seen this done before? Have you ever been curious how it all works?

Speaker 3:
[12:18] A dowsing rod or a perc test?

Speaker 1:
[12:20] A perc test, a perc test.

Speaker 2:
[12:22] We're talking about real things right now, Grant.

Speaker 1:
[12:24] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[12:27] So one time I was on the very outskirts in terms of like, oh, they're doing a perc test over there. That was when I was really young, but it was for a larger commercial project for a very large commercial septic system. And it's like Patrick said, there's a lot more that goes into it than people realize. I think in general septic systems, there's way more that goes into them than people think of.

Speaker 1:
[12:52] And stuff that goes into them can ruin it. I was talking to these guys, it was four people on the site, all have familiarity with this stuff. One was a representative from the town's sanitation commission that regulates septic systems in their municipality. Another was the gentleman who's certified to do the actual perc test. Soil evaluator, I believe, is what he's called. And the excavator, whose family business is site work and stuff, had experience and there's lots of ways it can go wrong. Don't put grease in your septic system, it just don't.

Speaker 2:
[13:31] Was this for a conventional septic or a mound system?

Speaker 1:
[13:35] So, good question, they have both in the area because the soils are, you know, variable. This had great perking soil, it was just a layer of sand. And interestingly, it's along the Housatonic River Valley, also where I live in Connecticut, and we have similar sand all the way down here, interestingly, and perked great. So, it'll be a very conventional system, gravity, stone and pipe, with a distribution box to serve the laterals.

Speaker 2:
[14:02] Cool.

Speaker 1:
[14:03] I'm psyched about it. And boy, it was one of those days where it was great to be outside, spring morning, no rain, beautiful day. Lovely. Well, I want to thank our folks who wrote into the podcast once again. Really appreciate your correspondence and thoughts. This comes from our friend David Whittner. Patrick and other assorted podmeisters finished listening to episode 727 and Ian's question about freestanding tubs and floor drains. Do you guys remember this? You do, I'm sure, Ian. Are you still working on that project or is it done?

Speaker 2:
[14:33] That project is stalled out. As some projects do.

Speaker 1:
[14:39] That's a topic for another podcast. In Japan and Taiwan, even when the tub is installed in a completely different room, which is often the case, it's not unusual for the tub to drain onto the floor. The bathrooms are wet rooms with tiled floor to ceiling and a couple of floor drains. Alternatively, the bathroom is molded from fiberglass or some plastic, also known as a unit bath. At our place in Taiwan, shower floor and bathroom floor are one and the same. Water gets everywhere and eventually finds its way to the nearest floor drain. In most cases, there is no shower door or curtain and it only deflects the water nearest the shower head. The toilet paper holder has a cover to keep it dry. When I lived and traveled in Japan, you washed slash showered sitting or standing in the tub room, water drained into the floor drain. When you drain the tub, water flowed from an open pipe under the tub toward the floor drain. Not sure if the US code gods would approve. That said, I once stayed in an old Victorian B&B in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC. The bathroom had a massive cloth with tub that almost served as a centerpiece. What had all the traditional cloth with tub and shower hardware, the tub drain was a short straight pipe aimed at an open floor drain directly beneath the tub. Nearly all the water went down the drain. Any remaining water sat in the filed floor and eventually evaporated. Not sure if that was code complying either. Thanks for all your efforts producing a great podcast and magazine. David Wittner, thanks David. I love hearing from you. David is a historical treasure as in he knows a lot about history and Asian history specifically.

Speaker 2:
[16:14] He brings up a good point about how we treat bathrooms very differently than the rest of the world does.

Speaker 1:
[16:21] Yeah. Why do you think that is? Why do we have a connected tub to a trap when this would work fine and allow you to clean under the tub and?

Speaker 2:
[16:31] I personally would blame my beloved platform framing system.

Speaker 1:
[16:36] Yeah, because you got to hide that stuff. Yeah. What do you think, Grant? Does this make sense to you?

Speaker 3:
[16:42] It does. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely does. I mean, and when you think about, I hate to say it like this, but when you think about how a lot of soaker tubs are set, it's just like a floor drain with a gasket and the tailpiece just sticks in it. So it's really not much different except it's not visible. I mean, it's basically the same thing. It's not a hard connection.

Speaker 1:
[17:04] And seemingly more unreliable.

Speaker 3:
[17:06] It's a pain. It's a total pain. And nobody has come up with this. I probably shouldn't even say this because somebody's going to come up with it and I'm not going to get credit for it and that's going to be sad. But I'm surprised some tile manufacturer, tile waterproofing manufacturer has not come up with one of these partnered with them that integrates their waterproofing system because that would make way too much sense. So instead, we got to either do whatever there. Yeah. Yeah. Schluter, if you bring that out to market, just remember Fine Homebuilding Podcast will take hats and rubber those rubber ducks.

Speaker 1:
[17:39] If you have them, I think it's a great solution and it makes so much sense.

Speaker 2:
[17:45] Just make the whole thing a wet room and don't worry about it.

Speaker 3:
[17:49] I was thinking about this and I should probably go and try to look in the code and see. But I wonder if you could even get away with that in the plumbing code. I think it would depend on where you are in the country probably.

Speaker 1:
[18:04] Inspectors have a lot of leeway to do things that they think makes sense, whether it's in the book or not, and I'm guessing that would apply, especially if they traveled, right?

Speaker 2:
[18:14] I was shocked to find out that they had toilet paper over there.

Speaker 3:
[18:17] Yeah. Isn't that a big bidet? Isn't that a big bidet area?

Speaker 1:
[18:21] Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[18:22] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[18:22] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[18:24] I want to know what the little protective cover looks like. That sounds cool.

Speaker 3:
[18:28] It's like one of those fire extinguisher cabinets break here in case of emergency.

Speaker 1:
[18:37] This involves another conversation we had a while back, but you know, I don't know why I didn't run this, but I wanted to talk a little bit about extension jams again. So Will Brown, our friend in the Champlain Valley of Vermont, his company Turnkey Builders, he writes to us with some regularity, and he had some thoughts on installing extension jams. He says, hey, Patrick, one trick I learned from my dad when trimming out windows with wood-flanged windows, and it also works to a certain extent with fiberglass windows like Anderson's 100 series. We typically purchase the windows without extension jams installed and then apply them in the field when we trim out the window. When we install the window following the framing stage, we nail or screw the flange and apply tapes to the sides and top of the flange to weather proof it. But we do not spray foam or seal the interior side yet. Once we're ready to trim out the windows, we follow these steps. We create a jig that mimics the depth of the extension jam by screwing a board to a face of this 6 by 12 inch long piece of extension jam. It's an L-shaped jig that mimics the extension jam and the casing. I put pocket holes on the end opposite the casing and create two to eight of these depending on the size of the window. And I go around the window and put these jigs on. It may meet the window perfectly. It may want to push the window out or you may need to use pocket screws to pull the window in. It works to make small, you know, one eighth inch or so changes to the window plane. You have this flex because you're slightly pushing or pulling out on the window flange. You can only do this if the window has not been spray foamed yet, which is why you wait to do this step. Once you have the window set, go ahead and spray foam the window and place around the perimeter. Once that is done, you should be able to hold the window and proceed with installing your extension jams. And I like this idea. Will's method is very precise. I've seen folks just give the window a giant shove from the inside or outside to get it to sit better. Because I can tell you, having worked in a lumberyard, extension jams or excuse me, the nailing flanges do get screwed up and depending on who puts in the window, you know, it can be even worse. What do you think, Grant? Good method?

Speaker 3:
[20:53] Yeah, it seems like it would definitely work. The only thing I'm thinking about is you'd have to watch. Like if you're trying to pull the window flange in with a fiberglass window, you'd have to somehow hook up some kind of like clamping system or something like that because I don't think you'd want to screw into that with a pocket screw. But I would think you probably could, like if it's a double hung window or something like that, you could probably open the window and clamp it backwards.

Speaker 1:
[21:16] And pull it in with a quick grip clamp, right?

Speaker 3:
[21:20] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[21:21] What do you think, Ian?

Speaker 2:
[21:23] I agree with Grant, yeah. It seems like it's a good system and I've pulled plenty of windows in with quick grip clamps over the years to get the extension jams to line up and we typically cut ours on site as well. Rarely order them applied to the windows.

Speaker 1:
[21:43] I think there's a lot of good reasons to get extension jams applied to the windows, but they are super fragile. If you have a window and door shop setting up your windows, which is often the case, they have to take the window out of a box, which is well made and has foam corners and is super sturdy. And then you have to ship it loose with the extension jams attached and it doesn't always work out.

Speaker 2:
[22:05] A lot of times we'll get them shipped in just lineal sticks and then we'll cut them, but at least they get the same finish as the rest of the window gets at the factory that way.

Speaker 1:
[22:18] I think pre-finished windows and extension jams are the best thing to have ever come along to finish carpentry and expediting houses.

Speaker 2:
[22:25] Just even painting, windows are wicked expensive to paint.

Speaker 1:
[22:30] What do you think, Grant, extension jams applied to the window when you buy it or put them on later?

Speaker 3:
[22:36] Yeah, I almost never have them installed on the window. Actually, I don't think I've ever got them installed on the window. Depending on the brand of the window, sometimes we'll get them shipped loose from the manufacturer. But a lot of times, I actually just use my trim material, trim stock to make those extension jams. I found there's always discrepancies and it just is easier a lot of times to just make those in the field. It's easy work for a good carpenter. So that's what I've always done.

Speaker 1:
[23:06] Do you make a frame for your extension jams or do you put them in one at a time?

Speaker 3:
[23:12] So what I do is I use drywall screws to shim it out. So I make a block, mark my reveals on the window and then I use like a gauge and I put drywall screws in the jam into the rough framing jam as shims almost.

Speaker 1:
[23:34] And then you can turn those in and out to adjust the amount of shimming.

Speaker 3:
[23:38] And then I make my box and I test fit it and I adjust those screws as needed. And then once it's all good, sometimes I'll put the extension jam box in first, nail it, and then I'll apply my casing. But sometimes I also apply the casing and put it all in as one box.

Speaker 2:
[23:53] Cool. I like the screw idea on the rough opening.

Speaker 1:
[23:58] I want to say we've done that in fine homebuilding as a tip. I don't know if we've ever done it as a techniques piece, but yeah, there's a lot to like about it for sure. And you use a laser to set the screws, right, Grant?

Speaker 3:
[24:13] Yeah, I usually line up laser, but I also just a lot of times mark my reveals on my window, especially if I set the window because I usually use the laser to set the window straight. So then I know I can just go off of that. But yeah, I don't know exactly where I picked that up. Probably the YouTube School of Carpentry somewhere, but it works pretty well. Now on the cell area, I should say the stool area, that I usually shim with wood shims because that might get a little more pressure on it.

Speaker 1:
[24:43] Sarah is going to put 300 pounds of plants on every one of those.

Speaker 3:
[24:46] Exactly. I'm always worried about that four-year-old kid who jumps up on there thinking he's Superman. And I don't want that to...

Speaker 2:
[24:54] That's what my dogs do.

Speaker 3:
[24:56] Yeah. Yeah, but yeah.

Speaker 1:
[24:58] Any place that people could sit down, you have to put a lot more thought into how you build stuff for sure.

Speaker 3:
[25:03] Yeah. And then the other thing you got to watch if you do that screw method, the only thing is I have a tendency to do this is I'm not paying attention going fast. And I'll mark where the screws are, which the point is don't nail there, nail just above it or just below it. But a lot of times I'll just be going so fast. So now right, right. The extension hit the drywall screw right through the face. And then it backs up or deflects or shoots me in the finger or whatever. I'm always like, yeah, that's just, you know, good job. Genius.

Speaker 1:
[25:31] Those screws are pretty tough.

Speaker 3:
[25:34] Yeah. Especially when you're trying to shoot like a 16 gauge nail through the middle of it doesn't work very well.

Speaker 1:
[25:39] That's when you get bit, right? With a boomerang nail.

Speaker 3:
[25:44] Yeah. I mean, knock on wood. I shouldn't even say this. I say, knock on wood, most of my nail gun injuries have been deflections.

Speaker 1:
[25:53] Anyone who's done this work for any period of time has done it at least once. And boy, it's smart.

Speaker 3:
[25:58] One time I got, I was putting in a door, was nail on the bottom with a 15 gauge nailer and hit one of the framing nails in the rough jam and it fishhooked right around the side and it actually, my hand was stuck on the edge of the door frame with the nail sticking through it. That was pretty good.

Speaker 1:
[26:18] Could you read something to free yourself or did you have to get help?

Speaker 3:
[26:20] I just pulled it off. I just...

Speaker 1:
[26:23] People are cringing right now, turning off their device. Grant, stop it. If you want to write with your gory injuries, I don't know if we'll read them on the air, but we're all curious. You know, anytime I'm hanging out with a bunch of people who have done trade work for any period of time, this is always what the conversation devolves to.

Speaker 2:
[26:43] Tell us about all the stuff that you have stapled or nailed your hand to.

Speaker 3:
[26:50] In that case, I was lucky because it was only like the skin that was caught. It wasn't into the meat really or into the bones.

Speaker 1:
[26:57] It can really be bad. It can be really, really bad. For the record, you're supposed to go to the ER no matter what.

Speaker 3:
[27:04] Yeah, you are.

Speaker 1:
[27:05] You're not supposed to go right back to work.

Speaker 2:
[27:07] Just put some duct tape on it, back to work.

Speaker 3:
[27:11] I don't even think of blood very much. It just hurt.

Speaker 1:
[27:14] The worry is tetanus from an injury like that, right?

Speaker 3:
[27:17] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[27:19] Anywho, this first question comes from Greg. Hi, podcast crew. I am, as always, enjoying the multitude of questions and discussions that the team gets into every week. It's really added to my knowledge and to my way of thinking about building science and house systems. My wife and I recently moved from coastal California to Madison, Wisconsin, partially to be near her family and friends, and also to be finally able to afford a house. We've closed on a multi-unit property in downtown Madison. The house is built in 1900 and somewhere along the way was divided into four apartments, two one-bedroom units upstairs and a one-bedroom and a three-bedroom downstairs. It was exactly what we were looking for, a multi-unit property that we could live in and rent out the other units to help with the mortgage. I'm excited to get into renovating some of the questionable choices that past owner of 52 years has put into the units, such as vinyl siding being used for the walls and ceiling in some of the units. We're going to talk about a little bit more about that because I was kind of gobsmacked with that description. This is my first time dealing with the variable weather conditions here as the climate where we were at in Sonoma County was mainly just hot and dry in the summer and cold and wet in the winter, but not freezing cold. This will be my first house in almost 20 years of my own. So I'm excited to do things right and take care of the house with all the knowledge I've gained over the years. I'm a general contractor, so I plan on doing all the work myself, which is always a little of a dangerous thing because I know so much from having learned all the intricate nuances of building science through fine home building, GBA, and BS and beer. I'm trying to stick to a pretty good house line of remodeling, both for my own sanity and for the budget and the amount of hours I will have to work on this while still working full time on everything else. I was just listening to the most recent podcast about dehumidification and wondering about putting in an HRV or ERV in the house. The divided units make air distribution more of a challenge since everyone's front door to their apartment is generally closed all the time. I'll be redoing some walls and ceilings so I can definitely try to bring some of the air into each unit that way. But I'm wondering about other ways I should be thinking about things as we go forward. The exterior has a mixture of siding materials, mostly vinyl, and I haven't done a blower door test driven by when I've had my IIR camera on me. But I'm sure that the insulation is suboptimal. I'm thinking the vital siding could get peeled off one wall at a time and at least one inch of exterior insulation added, which I know means the corners are going to have to wait to get properly detailed at some point along the line. I'm super excited to begin our second summer in Madison with a house of our own, and I'm sure I'll be sending a lot of questions your way. And I wonder what the chances are for bribing Ian to just swing by one day and walk the place with me and exchange her some brats on the barbecue outside. Thanks for all the knowledge so far, and I look forward to using what I've learned on our new space. Cheers, Greg, Madison, Wisconsin. Greg, thanks very much for writing. Greg has an awesome project here. I love the idea of generating income from your labors as a contractor. I think that is a very good way to build wealth. I'm questioning whether starting with ventilation is the right thing here. Ian and I saw the house on a Zillow listing. It's close to your workplace, right, Ian?

Speaker 2:
[30:32] Yeah, about five blocks. So at some point, I will walk over there and tour the place with Greg.

Speaker 1:
[30:40] I think someone's got to do a detailed look at this building from an energy perspective. It needs a blower door test. It should have IR imagery, especially when the temperatures are cold, which is easy in Madison. I would want to make sure that the combustion appliances were working correctly, as we've talked about in recent podcasts. All this stuff should be done first before we start worrying about interior air, I would say.

Speaker 2:
[31:02] It needs a full blown whole house audit, is what it needs. This is a little bit like somebody who gets a new doctor and doesn't want to do the physical. They just want to get right into the, tell me which specialist I need for this thing that I think is wrong with me. This is why you need the baseline physical. You got to get all the tests done. You got to find out what you're working with, before you start sinking money and time going in the wrong direction.

Speaker 1:
[31:32] What do you think, Grant?

Speaker 3:
[31:33] Yeah, I think he's got bigger, potentially bigger fish to fry than the ventilation aspect. And I think we're about to talk about this, but the vinyl siding inside the units has me a little, definitely a little more than concerned about.

Speaker 2:
[31:52] That's what got me looking for the Zillow listing and he said he just closed on it. And I did send it to Patrick and it, the photos looked an awful lot like, I mean, if it's vinyl, it would be a soffit material. And this isn't all that uncommon around college areas where you're renting college students. If you've got some plaster that's falling down, that's a pretty cheap and easy and quick finish material to throw up. It's not the first time I've seen it.

Speaker 1:
[32:25] I have so many questions. So like, one, why don't we see this more often? Because to me, it makes a lot of sense. But two, more importantly, I'm guessing it's not a fire approved material.

Speaker 3:
[32:35] I would think the fire would be the biggest issue with that, the flame spread. Like you light that up, it's going to be like same reason you don't just like put insulation, foam insulation over your wall and leave it exposed.

Speaker 2:
[32:48] That's kind of why I wonder if it's actually aluminum soffit.

Speaker 3:
[32:51] Yeah, if I could see aluminum, I could see aluminum.

Speaker 2:
[32:55] Aluminum is what I've seen done before, and that was in and around the University of Oshkosh.

Speaker 1:
[33:00] It's probably the same contractor putting this up everywhere.

Speaker 3:
[33:04] It might be. That's probably that guy's like, honestly, that's probably that guy's specialty.

Speaker 2:
[33:09] It's not a contractor, Patrick. It's a slum lord. Like let's call a spade a spade.

Speaker 1:
[33:16] You know they have their flying monkeys that are coming in to install the aluminum soffit anywhere that they can.

Speaker 2:
[33:22] It's already got a finished color on it. And you nail it up and it covers up the stuff that you didn't want to demo.

Speaker 1:
[33:30] Like I said, I'm curious why you don't see it more.

Speaker 3:
[33:33] The only problem is aluminum soffit will be so easy for the college kids to dent.

Speaker 1:
[33:37] Oh, it's fragile.

Speaker 3:
[33:38] Yeah. The steel, painted steel.

Speaker 2:
[33:41] Maybe. It's better than the plaster.

Speaker 1:
[33:45] It left me wondering a lot about it. So, are you going to go over there and check this place out, Ian?

Speaker 3:
[33:55] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[33:56] One of these Wednesdays, I'm going to go over there and check it out. Greg wanted me to come by Wednesday after work, and I've got a strict rule of I need to be headed out of town by 430. Otherwise, for every minute that I'm in town, it adds considerable time to my drive.

Speaker 1:
[34:14] Because of traffic, sure.

Speaker 3:
[34:16] Yeah. You have to give us a report. Let us know.

Speaker 1:
[34:20] I want to know, Grant, have you seen aluminum soffit material used in an interior application?

Speaker 3:
[34:28] Not residentially. I think I've seen something similar, like a bar one time. What do they call them? They make them real special. They call them architectural metal panels or whatever. And so commercial people, can they sound like an expensive finished material?

Speaker 1:
[34:46] But it's expensive.

Speaker 3:
[34:47] Architectural composite metal panels, wherever they are.

Speaker 2:
[34:52] Yeah, I think the biggest point, though, is that when you buy a house and your instinct is to get into it and start improving it and doing work, you really need to take a step back and get a base level view of what you're working with. Because to Grant's point, there may be bigger fish to fry, but those might also be really easy, low-hanging fruit that the time to tackle is now before you start doing additional work that might cover it up. I do think it's a good idea to have the ventilation in mind while you're doing this, but it's a bit early to start trying to think about specing.

Speaker 3:
[35:34] And I think you kind of said this, Ian, I would make a plan. I'd do an evaluation of everything and then make a plan, make a game plan and then execute that plan, not, oh, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this, then we're going to do this, maybe. Sit down, see what you have, think about it, make a plan, and then that should hopefully limit rework and things like that.

Speaker 2:
[35:58] One of the things that Greg brought up in the follow up email that I had with him was the idea of doing one apartment at a time, which I think is a good idea in practice, but I made the point that they're all still surrounded by the same building envelope. So you do need to think about, you need to have a plan for what you're going to do to that envelope before you just start remodeling individual apartments within the envelope.

Speaker 1:
[36:28] Yeah, and I'm guessing he wants to do them in apartment at a time to get the cash flow, right? To pay for the rest of the renovations. So I mean, I'm guessing you could do that, but you suggest you're going to have to work in a weird way to make that not be work you have to undo or whatever, doing the wrong thing.

Speaker 2:
[36:47] And oftentimes these rental properties like this in the city of Madison, they might have one electric panel. They might have one boiler servicing all the units. So that adds another layer of complication to it as you're upgrading mechanicals.

Speaker 3:
[37:04] Yeah. Complication. That's usually a nightmare when you have, especially because I've seen them where, especially when they're on the same distribution loop, the two apartments are on the same distribution loop, and then it's like, okay, now we have an issue here in terms of keeping heat on. It's doable. It just takes a lot more work.

Speaker 1:
[37:23] Greg, please keep us posted. I think this is a great project. I wish you great success and I think it's a good way for contractors to build wealth. I don't know that contracting is.

Speaker 2:
[37:35] Not really.

Speaker 1:
[37:37] It's hard, right?

Speaker 2:
[37:38] That's why Grant writes for the magazine.

Speaker 1:
[37:42] This comes from Jim. Hello, podcast. I'm installing new pre-hung interior doors in my not so well-built 70s home. While I've evaluated my door openings for plumbing level, I found that my floor is often not level from one side to the other, some off as much as a three-eighths inch difference. My question is with the door frame properly plumbing level, should I cut the door bottom square or should I scribe it to have a consistent gap at the floor when the door is in the closed position? I've searched the Fine Homebuilding site as well as the Internet in general, and there seems to be a lot of varied opinions on this. Does the Fine Homebuilding team have a consensus? As an FYI, we have natural oak hardwood floors, but the doors trim baseboard will be painted and off-white. Thanks for your help, Jim. All right, so when you have a sloping floor, should you cut the bottom of the door to match the slope, or should you make it level? Grant, you responded to Jim in an email. What did you say to Jim?

Speaker 3:
[38:38] Yeah, I said, I think it depends, and the biggest thing it depends on is your personal preference. Some people will really see that gap, and some people will never notice it. I consider myself a pretty picky carpenter, and I almost never look at the gap under the door. I look more at the reveals around the door. So, you know, what I would probably recommend for him to do is to cut it square to start, but leave it kind of lower to the floor than you might normally do, and see if it bothers you. If you notice it, then you can always scribe it a little, take a little more off and scribe it later, no big deal. But if it doesn't bother you, move on with your life and worry about other things in your renovation.

Speaker 1:
[39:18] I like that idea because you're not really doing an extra step. You want to hang it with a map so you could scribe it right in place. So you could skip the last step if you're not annoyed by the buried gap.

Speaker 2:
[39:31] How often do people actually keep their doors shut? You have to think about how much time does that door spend closed.

Speaker 1:
[39:38] You don't have kids, dude.

Speaker 2:
[39:41] That's fair.

Speaker 3:
[39:41] So one thing I did say to Jim is a lot of it actually might depend on where the door is and how it's viewed. So even if the door is shut or open, like even in a bedroom, if the door is shut, you're not looking at the bottom of the door normally. But like the one place that might get you is like if it's at the top of a set of stairs and you're walking up and that gap becomes eye level at some point, that might be noticeable. Other one is like, you know, if it's like a door like next to your TV, yeah, maybe you'll notice it from a from a distance. But like in a hallway, I don't I've never I can't remember a time where I've ever gone. Wow, that door is really crooked on the bottom. Unless it was like a reason because it wasn't operating right. Like, oh, this is dragging on something. I'm like, oh, that's crooked. But if it operated right, I don't think I would ever notice it.

Speaker 2:
[40:28] And I mean, that's the other point of consideration is, is your hinge on the high side of the floor or the low side of the floor? Because if it's on one or the other, you have to think about the plane and the sweep that that door makes as it goes across the floor. So you could try and cut it very neatly to the floor and then find out you can only open it halfway.

Speaker 1:
[40:53] Kind of drag on the hardwood, right? So as a union trained carpenter, Ian, what does the union say to do this? Are there hard and fast rules for how to make this work?

Speaker 2:
[41:06] You never cut the bottom or top of a door.

Speaker 1:
[41:10] Because of fire?

Speaker 2:
[41:11] Well, you just don't cut them. So for one case, most of the commercial doors are fire doors. And you cannot alter a fire rated door as a carpenter. So they beat that into you pretty good. But also you want to think about how you're hanging it in relation to the space and you want to make sure that you're hanging it in a way that operates. So you're ideally hanging it in a way that the door fits in the opening and you shouldn't ever have to cut the top or the bottom.

Speaker 1:
[41:44] That makes a lot of sense. What about clients? Grant was alluding to folks have different tolerance for odd gaps, inconsistent gaps. Like how do you, you're working on old houses, where often things are wacky. How do you prepare them for that?

Speaker 3:
[42:03] For me, that's usually an upfront conversation. Like at the time of the project being signed on, or even in the project development, budget development phase, is, hey, you know, this is, there's gonna be potentially conditions in this house where we have to do things that aren't plumb, aren't level, aren't square. Ultimately, and yeah, there's certain, definitely things in construction that this does not apply to, but finished carpentry is one it normally does, which is if it looks good, it is good, typically. So, you know, at the end, it has to look right. And a lot of times something has to be crooked and it has to look right with the thing that's crooked next to it.

Speaker 2:
[42:43] I think you've got to look around and take in the rest of the work around you, especially in a remodeling scenario, and you want to try and match what that work looks like. It always catches my eye when I walk into an older home and there's like a perfectly set brand new kitchen and just how out of place that that looks in an older or even antique home.

Speaker 3:
[43:08] Yeah, especially when the floor, the toe kick on the floor, scribes like four inches of difference from then.

Speaker 2:
[43:16] Yeah, it looks like a Hot Wheels track.

Speaker 3:
[43:18] Yeah. I had a guy one time, he took my level one night and showed me a picture like this is on set. I can't remember what it was. It was like a door. I can't remember. It was something stupid. He's like, oh, this isn't level. And I'm like, yeah, but did it look right? Well, yeah. I'm like, why did you? I was just checking your stuff. I'm like, OK. So I'm like, well, I'll fix it if you want me to. So I fixed it. And then the next day he goes, well, that looks crooked now. I said, yeah, but it's level. So I'm like, what do you want? And then then he paid me to make it back to crooked.

Speaker 1:
[43:53] Ian, how do you prepare clients for, you know, imperfections, especially in an old house?

Speaker 2:
[43:59] Yeah, you have to have the conversation with them up front. And it's it's about looking at the rest of the house and talking about what your work is going to look like around the rest of the work that they have. It's communication, which is what is one of the most difficult parts of any construction professional's job. Most people just want to they want to get the tools out and work. And the real job is communicating and setting those expectations.

Speaker 1:
[44:28] I was talking to a contractor friend recently, and part of his pre-qualifying process is to gauge people's tolerance for, you know, perfection. People who say things like, even if it's not literally this, I demand perfection. They try and steer clear of, because he's like, our experience has taught us that we're not going to make those people happy. We're going to lose money trying to make them happy. And if they're not happy and I'm not happy, why do the project? And I think that's a very good point.

Speaker 3:
[44:58] Yeah, I always say, champagne dreams with beer budgets, too. That's usually, they go hand in hand. You want a certain fit and finish on something, but that's fine if you're willing. In some cases, a high fit and finish is fine if you're willing to pay for it, understand it. Could potentially take, and Ian can talk about this, but a lot of times, especially with some finished carpentry stuff, it's not hard to take something from like 80% perfect to 90% perfect or 90, 95, but that last little bit to get it like, you'll never get it. You'll chase that forever.

Speaker 2:
[45:35] Can take two to three times the amount of time the first 95% took.

Speaker 3:
[45:40] Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[45:41] Well, I would argue that folks have different tolerances for what is perfect. So you brought up the point, Grant, that you hung the door to make it look correct, and then the guy puts a level on it, and he's like, it's not level, I want it level. Okay, well, he didn't really want that. So, I mean, this is the kind of scenario you might find yourself in, right?

Speaker 3:
[45:58] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[46:00] I'd love to know how our listeners deal with this subject, because if you're doing remodeling work, you have to accommodate stuff oftentimes.

Speaker 3:
[46:07] Yep. And a lot of it, you know, it's, again, it's a, in this case, if you're hanging a door and you notice this issue with a floor, you know, it's worth the conversation. Say here, and here's how I plan to treat it. You know, is that okay? But you got, that can be a double edged sword because some clients, if you tell them, hey, this might be a little crooked, but I want to see if you notice it. Well, they're definitely going to notice it because you pointed it out to them.

Speaker 2:
[46:30] I don't know if this is actually true, but a guy that I worked with doing finished carpentry liked to say that the untrained human eye can pick up one eighth of deviation and plumb in an eight foot line. I don't know if that's true, but he used to tell us that all the time when we would be setting doors and setting windows and things like that.

Speaker 1:
[46:52] I know humans with their eye can discern very small changes in dimensions. I think door reveals, I don't think anyone could tell an eighth inch or a quarter inch out of plumb, unless the reveal between the jam and the door is different. I think if you can compare something, which is why carpenters often have to make stuff look right.

Speaker 3:
[47:11] Yeah, and that's the other one that gets you is, like, okay, the door, it might not even be plumb looking at difference in the door, but it's like the door compared to the drywall corner bead next to it. And then it's like, well, the drywall corner bead isn't plumb. So your door might be perfectly plumb, but if the drywall corner bead isn't, I think the human eye can pick up the variation and where lines diverge way easier than...

Speaker 2:
[47:39] And that's exactly where this guy would pull that out on us, was setting a bedroom door at the end of a long hallway. So if you come up the stairs and you turn left and you look down a long hallway and you've got the door at the end of it, that casing needs to be parallel to the wall on each side of it, not plumb or whatever. It needs to be parallel. Otherwise, you're going to pick that up.

Speaker 1:
[48:05] I fully agree.

Speaker 2:
[48:06] I don't know if I completely agree with that. That's a hard and fast rule, but I think in the style of subdivision homework that we were doing at the time, it made sense.

Speaker 1:
[48:19] Great conversation. As a way of research this morning, I asked Google AI what the NAHB's Residential Construction Performance Guidelines acceptable tolerance is for a floor out of level. And they say a half inch over 20 feet. So that's not very much. I don't know if you could pick that up, but what do you guys think? Is that a reasonable expectation?

Speaker 2:
[48:46] I don't think it is for my tile guy.

Speaker 3:
[48:48] Yeah, yeah, it seems.

Speaker 1:
[48:51] I would tell you nothing out of level would be appropriate. What do you think, Grant? Could you build a house to have a floor within 20 feet, half inch?

Speaker 3:
[49:01] I would think you could. I mean, I think most people would say that the tolerance on your floor should be what the tolerance of your rotary laser is to measure it, you know, an eighth inch and 33 feet or whatever it is.

Speaker 1:
[49:12] Like, but I would say it's not fair because of the dimensional variation of lumber is going to be your challenge with making a floor perfectly level.

Speaker 2:
[49:22] Yeah, I know my tile guy would say, well, where's the variation? Is it end to end? Is the half inch in the middle? Like what are we talking about?

Speaker 3:
[49:30] Yeah, because especially tile, you know, it's flat over level. So you know, if you're if you're flat tapering a half inch that whole way, no problem, you'll never notice it. If you're half inch in the middle of a belly, that's going to be, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[49:45] And I immediately think of the great room in my house, which is 18 feet wide by 43 feet long. So, you know, if I'm am I an inch then across the length of that room plus a half inch across the width, like thinking from the tile guy perspective, that has to intersect somewhere. Right. What do you what are you doing where that intersects?

Speaker 1:
[50:13] You're going to be mixing like 100 bags of floor level, like we were talking about last week.

Speaker 3:
[50:19] Yep. Yep. This is why, like, I don't know, like, I think, I don't know how, how common this is. I one time ran across the guy. This is years ago, but they used to, like, pour their slabs two inches low just and then just plan to bring in, like, the jibgreet to level the floor like perfectly for the finished floor, which I thought was a little weird at the time. But I don't know. I guess, like, he said, he's like, well, you know, my guys do the jibgreet and they can get it more accurate. And I couldn't get a price for the concrete guys to get that level. So he just didn't. He just took it out of their hands to get it level.

Speaker 2:
[50:56] I've heard of that a lot in the commercial space.

Speaker 1:
[51:00] Well, I mean, that makes sense if you're like pouring a hospital or a warehouse, but that's where I've heard it before. Yeah, the house isn't that big. I mean, your concrete contract should be able to get a flat slab if you're just back in it.

Speaker 3:
[51:13] I don't know, Patrick. I don't know how often you've been around concrete guys recently.

Speaker 2:
[51:18] It's the cost on that last 5%, Patrick. That's what it is. You're asking for that last 5%.

Speaker 1:
[51:26] Michael Byrne, who is a renowned tile center, and I think he had a Taunton book and probably in the 80s or 90s on tile setting. But he used to say that if you want to get good concrete work, you have to go to South America because that's where that work is artisan level. He says American contractors don't have the same degree of precision that these folks do down south, which I found interesting. Which is weird to me because we built concrete buildings in terrazzo and all these other you know, sentacious products for you know, centuries now seem like we could have it right.

Speaker 2:
[52:01] You grind terrazzo flat, don't you?

Speaker 1:
[52:03] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[52:05] There we go.

Speaker 2:
[52:06] You've taken the finishing end of it and made it a specialty trade.

Speaker 1:
[52:11] Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3:
[52:12] I'll be honest, if I won the lottery, you know, a couple billion dollars tomorrow, I would put terrazzo floors in my house. Absolutely. That would be dope.

Speaker 2:
[52:21] I'm right behind you on that one, man.

Speaker 1:
[52:23] Yeah, that might be the only thing we've all ever agreed on.

Speaker 2:
[52:28] I've never ever been around trades people more proud of their work than terrazzo guys.

Speaker 3:
[52:34] It's beautiful.

Speaker 1:
[52:35] Who could argue?

Speaker 3:
[52:36] Yeah. And like at least around here, you know, they're generally the terrazzo guys are actually mostly European guys and they are like, it's funny to watch them work.

Speaker 2:
[52:48] Portuguese and Italian, I believe, are the two big ones.

Speaker 3:
[52:52] But like it is like art, like the guy's like sitting there, he's like listening to the grinder. You know, he's like, he's like, you know, he's one with the floor grinder. You know, he knows.

Speaker 1:
[53:01] People who are really skilled at something use a lot of senses that we don't think about to know how to do the work. And I'm guessing it's not even conscious sometimes. But you know, chefs can tell by the sizzle of a pan or a teraza.

Speaker 2:
[53:15] Or can pick up a steak with tongs and squeeze it, know whether or not it's medium rare.

Speaker 3:
[53:21] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[53:22] Pretty cool. Well, speaking of pretty cool, I want to remind you all about Casey Knipps, door installation e-learning class, which was launched recently. Casey shows how to install double doors, concealed doors and pocket doors. And Casey has agreed to be on the show. Casey is one of the finest Finnish carpenters I've ever seen do work like that. So I would hope you will write in with your questions for him on your complicated Finnish carpentry and we'll get some good answers for you. And it should be a lot of fun to have Casey on the show.

Speaker 2:
[53:55] Casey is a master of that last 5%.

Speaker 1:
[53:59] Seriously. Seriously.

Speaker 3:
[54:00] Yeah. He's very talented. It'd be interesting to see what his opinion is. Cut the door off to the floor, or cut it square, or fix the floor.

Speaker 2:
[54:09] I would be really interested in that because he does so much work that disappears and blends into its surroundings. So how do you tackle that on a door that needs to look just like the wall?

Speaker 3:
[54:21] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[54:22] Right. Yeah. I was going to shoot for him and say, I'm guessing you'd say you make it look right. But if you're using these European style hardware, there's no tolerance for things that are out of perfect. Well, thanks everyone for joining us today. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have. Thanks to Ian, Grant and Kerry for joining me. I appreciate all of you listening. Please remember to send us your comments, questions, and suggestions to fhbpodcast at finehomebuilding.com. Please like, comment, or review us however you're listening. It helps other folks find the podcast. Stay safe, everybody. Keep craft alive. Happy building.