Custom Garage

These New Hampshire homeowners are understandably proud of their beautiful property, and wanted a convenient equipment storage solution that fit well aesthetically with the house and land. The result was a 16 x 24 custom garage built just the way they wanted it.

 

Home Maintenance - New Hampshire Homeowner Tips

The weather is heating up. Just a few weeks ago, there was snow on the ground, and today we're all in shorts - or wishing we could be. With the ice dams and giant icicles of last winter a very recent memory, now we're looking summer in the face. Here are a few quick tips for helping your home or business building make the transition:

• Inspect the roof. A tough winter like we just had can really do a number on a house, if it wasn't built for the climate and kept in great condition. And, unfortunately, most houses and other buildings in New Hampshire weren't built for the climate. Go figure. Check the roof for leaks and missing or damaged shingles.
• Open and close all the doors and windows. If they bind or stick (and they didn't last summer), that could be a sign of structural damage.

• Look for any cracks or gaps around the edges of windows and doors, cracked paint on your interior walls, and screws poking out from the walls. Again, any of these could be a sign of structural damage.
• Check the foundation. Again, you're looking for cracks.
• Assess your insulation. Adequate insulation will do three things for you, even in the summer: save you money, keep you more comfortable, and help your house handle temperature changes with less stress.

If you find any damage, or anything you're not sure about, don't just sit on it. Make sure you know what you're doing, or find someone who does, and take care of the problem as soon as reasonably possible. Damage only gets worse the longer you wait.

Thanks,

New Hampshire Construction

Before Starting Renovations, New Hampshire Homeowners Need to Know This

When it comes to renovations, New Hampshire homeowners enjoy a lot of freedom to change their

houses as we see fit. But sometimes, things can go wrong.

From time to time, customers. hire us to fix renovation mistakes made by do-it-yourselfers or inexperienced contractors. One mistake in particular can do a lot of damage to your home or building and even make it dangerous to live or work in. To keep from suffering the same fate, you should know about load-bearing walls.

There are two kinds of interior walls in any building: load-bearing and non-load-bearing. Load-bearing walls are also called carrying partitions.They do more than just divide the space in your house into rooms: they form a necessary part of the structure of the building by carrying some of its weight.

The mistake you need to avoid, of course, is removing any load-bearing wall without first making sure it has an adequate replacement to take its share of the weight.

What to do instead: It is not enough to remove the wall first and then replace it with another one. You must make sure sufficient supports are in place before removing the wall. If you don't, one of two things could happen:

• If you're unlucky, part of your house could actually fall on you as soon as you remove the old wall.
• The structure of your house could shift, causing problems such as cracked walls, popped screws, windows and doors that work poorly or not at all, splintered studs, joists and rafters, and leaks in the roof.

Replacement options for your load-bearing wall include:

•  A load-bearing arch. Make sure your arch is strong enough and engineered to fully transfer the weight to the floor.
• A header and one or more posts. Again, make sure the header is strong enough, and you have enough posts.
• A beam. Usually, to be effective, this should be made of steel, but that depends on how much weight it needs to take and how long the span is.
• Another wall. Sometimes, you just need to replace the wall that's already there.

Of all the renovations New Hampshire homeowners like to do themselves, one of the worst ones to do wrong is removing or replacing a load-bearing wall. For this or any other project, make sure you do your homework first or hire a qualified contractor.

Thanks,

New Hampshire Construction

Facts About Insulation New Hampshire Homeowners Need to Know

Without sufficient insulation, New Hampshire houses are extremely expensive to live in. And since most homeowners know this, it's mind-boggling how many of our houses are still severely under-insulated.

Two weeks ago we talked about how to use the snow melt patterns on your roof to see if it's properly insulated or not. Basically, if the snow there has melted unevenly - and there's no other reason for it, such as sunshine partially blocked by trees - then it's being melted by heat escaping through your roof. Heat is supposed to be inside your house.

It's really quite alarming that in spite of a struggling economy, and in spite of growing public awareness of climate change and its causes, snow melt patterns show up on practically every street in our towns and dot our country roads.

And that's just the roofs. We can only guess how many basements, sills, walls, doors and windows have the same problems. But one thing is clear: when it comes to insulation, New Hampshire houses are generally in bad shape. Which means New Hampshire homeowners are pumping a lot of perfectly-useless carbon into the atmosphere, and paying a lot of money to do so.

How does the heat get out?

There are basically three ways that houses tend to lose heat:

1. Air exchange: Warm air can leak out of your house, and cold air can rush in. This happens when
   
   there are gaps in the foundation, around the sills, or at the windows and doors. It also happens if you don't have (and properly use) a double-door entry.
2. Convection: Since cold air is heavier than warm air, it falls to the bottom of its space and pushes the warm air up. That's why ceiling fans are such an important part of a home heating system. But even if you use ceiling fans, warm air is still going to collect under the roof. And a poorly-insulated roof will suck the heat right out of it.
3. Conduction: Heat is like water: it always tries to even itself out. If one side of a wall is warm and the other is cold, then the heat on the warm side will conduct through the wall to get to the cold side. Of course, that's a very unscientific way of putting it, but it helps us get a pretty accurate mental picture of what actually happens. The reason insulation works is that some materials conduct heat better than others. Air is a very poor conductor (but it has to be kept from flowing), and therefore most insulation is, essentially, encapsulated air.

So what can you do about it?

Here are some steps you can take to stop paying for the privilege of heating the sky:

1. Close up your drafts. Start in the basement and go all the way up to the attic. Make sure there are no cracks or gaps in your house. Make sure your roof or attic vents are right for the New Hampshire climate and working properly.
2. Use two doors. When you enter or exit your house in the winter, do so only through an enclosed (not screened) porch, mudroom or garage. Make sure one door is closed before you open the other. You may be surprised, but a lot of air is exchanged when you use only one door, even if there's no wind.
3. Insulate. Insulate your foundation, insulate your walls, insulate your roof.
4. Make sure all your windows and doors are thermal. And then insulate them with thermal drapes or window quilts. Yes, even thermal windows leak heat unless the sun is on them. Make it a habit to close your drapes every night - ideally, as soon as it gets dark out.
5. Stop thermal bridging. Thermal bridging is heat conducting out through solid building materials in between the pieces of insulation, such as through the rafters of a roof or the studs of a wall. Today's state-of-the-art building methods prevent thermal bridging, but most existing houses need to be retro-fitted to stop it.

With proper insulation, New Hampshire houses can be comfortably heated for a fraction of the 'normal' cost in fuel, money and pollution.

Thanks,

New Hampshire Construction

The Kinds of Roofing New Hampshire Homeowners Can Choose From

We put on this metal roof in Weare.

When it comes to roofing, New Hampshire homeowners have a lot of choices. While there are a few materials that don't stand up well to cold weather, such as terra cotta tile, most roofing materials are still an option. If it's time to replace your roof, or you're building a new house, here are some questions you can ask as you look at your roofing material options:

• Is it appropriate for the pitch (steepness) of your roof?
• How long it will last?
• How heavy is it?
• How well does it match the style of your house?
• How much does it cost to buy?
• How much does it cost to install?
• How much does it cost to maintain?

Some options to consider:

• Asphalt shingles
• Composite
• Wooden shingles
• Slate
• Rubber
• Ballast system
• Membrane
• Metal
• Green roof
• Solar shingles 

If you have any questions about roofing materials, fill out the form to the right, and we'll be happy to help. It's probably an issue we've run into before, because our family has been roofing New Hampshire houses for three generations. 

The asphalt shingle dormered gambrel roof on this shed matches

the roof on the customer's house. That's because we custom-built

the shed to look like a miniature version of the house.

Thanks,

New Hampshire Construction

New Hampshire Homewners, Is Your Roof Trying to Tell You Something?

Next time you're outside, take a look at your roof. Is there snow on it? If you can see where the rafters are by the snow melt pattern, then your house has a heat-loss problem. Or if the snow cover has obvious bare spots, that's a sign of trouble, too.


There are three common roof snow melt patterns:

1. Bare spots. A bare spot in an otherwise snow-covered roof means that heat is leaking out in that location. That probably means you have a hole in your insulation, or that your insulation in that place is compromised in some way. You may even have a family of squirrels living in your attic.
2. Melting between the rafters. If you can see lines of snow over your rafters, then your roof is under-insulated. It's okay if the snow slides off the roof, blows off or melts off with the heat of the sun. But if the snow is disappearing between the rafters and not on top of them, it's not the sun that's melting it. You're paying to heat the sky.
3. Melting on top of the rafters. If you see snow everywhere except on your rafters, then you have a problem called thermal bridging. Thermal bridging occurs when heat conducts out through solid material. Your roof may have plenty of insulation between the rafters, but if the rafters themselves are conducting enough heat to melt snow, your insulation's not doing you a lot of good.

If your roof shows any of these signs of heat loss, it's probably past time to call your contractor. Most homeowners find that the cost of the work is more than made up for in energy savings.

Thanks,

New Hampshire Construction