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editor
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 Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 6:59 pm Post subject: |
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Vancouver Magazine
Rough Housing
The next big shelter crisis hits the 'burbs. Is it as bad as the Leaky Condo debacle?
Or worse?
By Frank O'Brien
March, 2004
| Quote: | | But when pricey licensing and mandatory warranty rules kicked in for contractors, the suburbs appeared to be filled with an inordinate number of handymen. The number of owner-built houses soared, according to Maling, a former Ontario warranty provider and now acting chief executive officer of the HPO. This year, he said, they will represent at least 35 per cent of the 12,000 new houses built in the province. In parts of Surrey, it is closer to 50 percent; the bulk of the worst examples are in the Fraser Valley and the Lower Mainland, according to HPO officials. (-- p. 26) |
| Quote: | | So much for the CBC Radio Early Edition not-so-smart 'Get Smart' series of March, 2006, which includes a report by Salma Nurmohamed asserting that Valley homes are now in the clear of leaky condo issues. |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 11:13 am Post subject: |
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Was it wind or another example of design and construction B.C. 'BILLY-style?
It was a little hard to tell from the front-page headline Nov. 16/06 in Vancouver 24 Hours, which ran:
| Quote: | Close call
Wind storm linked to building collapse:
Full story, p. 3. |
Here's an excerpt from the story:
| Quote: | Emergency crews are lucky no one was injured after a four-storey building frame collapsed yesterday, sending steel beams smashing into parked cars and damaging power lines.
...WorkSafe BC is conducting an investigation into how the building collapsed. (From Steel building collapses by Matt Kieltyka, p. 3). |
More construction horror stories at WorkSafe BC.
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 11:26 am Post subject: |
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Sell Now!
The End of the Housing Bubble
Paperback
By John R. Talbot
| Quote: | Housing's stimulating impact on the economy is much easier to understand. Without the boom in housing prices, you can cut the number of real estate brokers and mortgage bankers in half, if not more. You can probably draw a line through half of the commercial banks' profitability. Forget home improvement sales, as renovation would cease if people ever thought their $500,000 home they bought was really only worth $320,000. And the biggest impact of all: new construction would virtually cease. Without new construction, I don't know what many people would do for work in this country, especially many illegal aliens who have become an informal painting and construction force of their own. (emphasis added)
I think that alone accounts for all of the supposed growth in our economy, but there are two other important effects of the boom. First, because people believe their houses have doubled in value, they are feeling wealthier and are willing to buy a lot of other goods and services. Beyond this psychological effect, mortgage refinancings have provided billions of dollars to homeowners to use for additional extravagant purchases outside their homes.
Second, while consumption has increased, more than 100 percent of this increased buying has been funded with debt, mostly new mortgage debt. Economists argue that people's equity has increased as well, but most of this increase is due to home price increases. Take away the appreciation in the price of homes and you are left with current consumption financed with long-term debt, always a recipe for disaster.
This then is the real danger of the current housing bubble and why some of us are taking it so seriously. Unlike the stock market bubble that was financial in origin, the housing bubble is based on assets that many of us hold and build or manage for a living. The real danger is that at the time the housing bubble is deflating, the real economy will find out it sorely misses its housing component. Just as our housing asset values readjust downward, our economy will tank. (emphasis added) As the economy declines, more and more Americans will have trouble paying their mortgages. And behind all of it is the fact that 80 to 100 percent of the price of these overinflated assets has been funded by our commercial banks, the lifeblood of our productive economy. One cannot paint a gloomy enough picture of the economic problems associated with a steep decline in housing prices. Never assume our economy is so strong we needn't worry about it. (From Theory 5: Housing Can't Slow Down as Long as the Economy Remains Strong in the chapter entitled, Why Eight Popular Theories Fail to Explain the Boom, at pgs. 69-70). |
A must-read for anyone contemplating a home transaction.
More on the book at Mortgage News Daily.
See also Ironworkers walk out, They fear being undercut by foreign workers in the Vancouver Province Sept. 21/06.
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 2:26 pm Post subject: |
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Back to the plum-priced condos at Sasamat:
Designing the Exterior Wall
An Architectural Guide to the Vertical Envelope
Hardcover
By UBC Associate Professor of Architecture,
Linda Brock
Read our full review of the book here.
| Quote: | | Using a moisture meter during construction can show if excess moisture is trapped in the wall. DC-resistance or dielectric meters will provide a good estimate of the moisture in wood. They can be used for lumber as well as plywood and OSB. The meter readings need to be corrected for the wood temperature and species. The moisture content of wood used in wall construction should be no higher than 19 percent, as it begins to decay at around 28-30 percent. The moisture in studs should be measured at approximately 12 inches and 48 inches (300 and 1220 mm) from the floor and at a minimum of two studs per exterior wall. On multistory construction, the lower floors are usually the wettest. Enclosing a wet wood frame, or any wet component, with nonpermeable layers is asking for problems. (emphasis added) (From 2.7 Testing and Measuring Water Leakage at p. 44) |
And again on the next page at 2.8 Quick Notes: Water Ingress:
| Quote: | | . Moisture trapped in the wall during construction will cause problems later, particularly if it is between components with low permeability. (emphasis added) |
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| Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 1:40 pm Post subject: |
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Vancouver Magazine
Magazine Subscription
Comes A Horseman
B.C.'s labour crunch has all sorts of businesses
importing foreign workers. Which doesn't
necessarily please local labour leaders.
By Kevin Chong
May, 2007
| Quote: | (Hastings Racecourse grom, Erick) Gutierrez is part of British Columbia's rapidly growing temporary workforce, which numbered 44,000 last year, including more than 1,200 Mexican nationals such as himself. Wkith the provincial economy blazing and deadlines for all the Olympic building projects fast approaching, the demand for workers prompted Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC) to open "Temporary Foreign Worker Units" in Vancouver last September to help local businesses import foreign labour. While the majority of guest workers are finding employment in sectors such as construction, caregiving and agriculture, the need for manpower now also stretches into the economic periphery: parole officers, patternmakers - even astronomers.
The push to bring Mexican grooms to Vancouver was initiated last year "because there was a desperate shortage of workers in the barn area," says Bryant McAfee, Secretary Treasurer of the Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association of British Columbia (HPBA), which oversees the activities of Hastings' owners, trainers and other personnel in the backstretch (or barn area), including its approximately 200 grooms.
..."The temporary status of these workers allows them to be shipped back any time there's a complaint," says Erika Del Carmen Fuchs of Jusicia for Migrant Workers B.C., a volunteer-based support group for migrant farmers.
Last year, with the help of the B.C. Federation of Labour, 40 Canada Line workers from Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Greece, Italy and the Philippines joined the Labourers Construction and Specialized Workers Union and negotiated a contract that brought them close to the hourly wage of Canadian workers. Both Del Carmen Fuchs and B.C. Fed president Jim Sinclair argue that these workers should be given permanent status. (-- pgs. 27-28) |
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| Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 3:47 pm Post subject: |
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Of Building
Roger North's Writings on Architecture
Hardcover
Edited by Howard Colvin and
John Newman
| Quote: | The destruction of Rougham Hall leaves the Middle Temple Gate and the treatise on Architecture as the principal memorials of Roger North's architectural activities. The treatise was the direct outcome of his experience in rebuilding his own house, and culminates in what is probably the most detailed account of the planning and building of a 17th c. house in English architectural literature. But it is more than just the record of one man's activity as an amateur architect. For North was, in his own words, one who 'loved to drive [whatever he had in hand] to some originall source of reason'. So although the allusions to Rougham are numerous they are introduced in such a way as to illustrate general principles, and the result is a treatise that invites comparison with Wotton's Elements of Architecture (1624), Gerbier's Counsel and Advice to all Builders (1663), and the materials left by Sir Roger Pratt and edited by Gunther. All these, like North, offer advice to the prospective builders of gentlemen's houses. Wotton's prose is elegant, Gerbier's pretentious, Pratt's practical and straightforward. Informal and almost conversational in style, North's book is by far the most readable of them all: indeed it is hardly going too far to claim it as the most entertaining treatise on its subject in the English language. (emphasis added)
Though informal in its language, and happily free from the pedantry that makes Evelyn's Account of Architects and Architecture so teduious to read, North's treatise follows an intelligible plan... (footnotes omitted) (From the Introduction, pgs. xv-xvi) |
| Quote: | Here I cannot but digress in complaint of this age, for laying aside the care of building for themselves, and familys; but leaving it to workmen, such as bricklayers, carpenters, glaziers ... It is scarce knowne that a person of quality hath built in or neer London for himself; but all is done by profest builders, and the gentry hire or buy of them. It is manifest from what I have urged, that their pinching spirits will infect all their works, and whatever they pretend to for accommodating great men, there is allwais some scantyness that spoyles all. They pay for ground, and then cutt it out to the advantage of their trade. They sell by feet-front, which is the ordinary way of estimating the gound rents, and therefore will have enough there, whatever is wanted in other places. I will not exaggerate this which is so plaine, but onely observe that this humour hath vitiated all our modes, as well of furniture as of houses. For to bring convenient jaums, they make them narrow and the peer small; and a peer being the fit place for glass, and they not receiving one tollerably large, the whole must be lined with glass, that what is wanting in breadth may be made good in height. Nay it hath brought into fasshion narrow frames to looking-glasses, just a border, which is not great; for a glass hath the property of a window or door, and requires a border, as the jaums are, a 5th or 6th of the width, else it is not well. Then because there must be the parade this little room must be broke into dining room, bedchamber and closet; which the lady is content with being small, and so furnish'd rich (or seeming so) with less cost, that is with cabbinetts, china, sconces ... mere trifles. And this thath added to the mode, round stools like small drumms they call taburets (like a small, low ottoman), and many other ways, aggreable to litleness, whereby all the grandure proper to quality is layd aside; large rooms, great tables and glasses, capacious chimnys, spacious hangings, are not to be found, as when the nobility built their owne houses. Nay the evil spreads, so that country gentlemen of value and fortune, in their new erected seats, creep after the meanness of these town builders and order their houses in squares like suburb dwellings than which nothing is more unfitt for a country seat, as may be shewed more fully in proper place. It were to be wish't that the gentry and nobility would look farther for their invention, than suburb models, which may serve a family, in a London expedition, but not in country living, which requires somewhat more like a court. But enough of this. ...
Another inducement to mend an old, rather than build a new house, is the diversion it affords, and that is not to be slighted. ...
The last convenience, I shall mention as to mending an old house, and not the least, is that it avoids censure and screens against envy. (-- pgs. 24-29) (footnotes omitted) |
| Quote: | The Architecture of Sir Roger Pratt
Hardcover
Edited by R.T. Gunther
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On water:
| Quote: | The conduct of water from an house, is a matter that deserves care and contrivance as much as any thing whatever. For when it is left to dripp round, and sometimes with short-eaves, it is a great annoyance to the windoes, and walls of the house; and however cast farther off either by long eaves or pipes to the grounds, it is an inundation every showre, and makes the house an island. It is observed that walls of brick will filtrate from the bottom to the top, and wett the very wall plates. (emphasis added) Therefore it imports to clear well the water off, that the habitation might be wholesome. And this is done by all sorts of walls more or less.
Either the ground will drein it self, or not. Where the former is, the work is easy, for if there be no fall to carry off the water, there may be cavernes made, and covered with brick, as is done at all the corners of Chelsea Colledge (The Royal Military Hospital at Chelsea, built to the designs of Sir Christopher Wren in 1682-92), and the water conveyed in shall sink away, and keep the neer grounds dry. But if there be no such expedient, a fall may be purchast by digging draines to a farther distance, and it is a bad scituation that in so doing will not give a fall. These draines being of brick will last ages, and being arch't and earth't over are no inconvenience, nbor eye sore, but open draines are intollerable, because cattell will be ever filling them up, and they will stink most offensively.
It will sometimes happen, that a reasonable fall is had from one side or quarter of an house and not from the other, which, notwithstanding the fall draining one side, shall be anoyed by wett. My advice in that case is, to bring the water all to some comon channell, and so lead it to the lower ground from the body of the house, and not vent it abroad, till it comes to the dreining side. For compassing this, the whole house must be batlemented or cornished; the latter is more in use. And in the midle, neer some waste-wall, where the most recess of the house is, contrive a maine gutter large, to pass along thro the out wall, to vent the water by a sess-pool, and large pipe downe, and so under ground away. And from the cornishes convey the water by some covert gutters to this maine; all which may be done, if thought of in time, and taken into your contrivance. The cautions are to make gutters large and deep enough; and if one passeth into another square, lett a stop be over against it, else a swift current will pass clean over; and let no gutter open and shoot up or against the current of another, for that will swell. It is a very great inconvenience to suffer a dripp about an house, it is not onely foul and unwholesome but hinders plants growing, and whatever the charge is, there is no blame, the use is so great. (-- pgs. 40-41) |
... Sound all too familiar?
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:39 pm Post subject: |
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All Souls and Its Buildings
The Chichele Lectures
Hardcover
Another unexpectedly gripping account of
architectural history by the legendary and very
sadly missed Sir Howard Colvin and S.G. Simmons
Replete with footnotes and many excellent
illustrations
| Quote: | | Managing the workmen was a task which must have taken up a good deal of John Druell's timne. The building-force needed frequent adjustment as the work progressed throughout different phases, and medieval building craftsmen were constantly coming and going of their own volition. In any one week, some would be employed for the whole week, some for five days, one or two perhaps for only two to three. Masons, in particular, were difficult to recruit and difficult to retain. If they came from a distance they were paid their travelling expenses and this is how we know that some of the All Souls masons came from London, from Norfolk and Suffolk, and from Fotheringhay in Northamptonshire. This was in the summer of 1441, the year of greatest activity, when the work-force reached a peak of over eighty, of whom half were masons. But others were looking for masons too, and those in charge of the king's works could exercise the royal prerogative of impressment to secure them. Although Chichele had taken the precaution of obtaining a royal order exempting workmen employed at All Souls from impressment, seven of All Souls masons were nevertheless sent to Eton in September 1441 at the king's behest to work on his new college there. (-- p. 8) |
| Quote: | In March 1826 the fellows were examining plans and accepted one of several submitted by the architect Daniel Robertson at a £2,500 plus fees estimate. In February 1827 they also accepted one of Robertson's plans for restoring the Warden's Lodgings at £695. Why Daniel Robertson was chosen by the College is uncertain - he is said to have drawn best when excited with sherry - but he was the man on the spot, being at the time in charge of the new Walton Street building of the Clarendon Press - an assignment from which he was later withdrawn after an unspecified local scandal. Be that as it may, he produced a number of drawings of the All Souls street front and the Lodgings. Most of these are in the Soane Museum together with a large file of papers concerning the job. They are there because of another scandal - this time of a specific kind - in which Sir John Soane was asked to arbitrate. What happened is that the local contractor entrusted with the work at All Souls, James Johnson, appealed to the College, having found himself quite unable to keep within the £2,500 estimate that Daniel Robertson had prepared for refacing in Bath stone - a figure which Johnson had accepted without question. Sir John Soane found that Daniel Robertson had in any case made an error of £1,000 in his arithmetic and that the true estimate should have been nearer £5,000 thatn £2,500. (emphasis added) From the graphic evidence preserved in connection with the scandal we can see that Robertson's ideas for the street front as far as the Lodgings involved the regular gothicization of the existing elevation. The sash windows introduced by Warden Finch in 1687 gave way to oriels and various Gothic elaborations. Chimneys and dormers were made uniform, and the former are handsomely decorated with blind tracery in the Tudor manner. For the more domestic Lodgings he offered elevations in Houses-of-Parliament Gothic or in the Palladian manner. The College plumped for the latter with a rusticated lower storey and a classical balustrade and window architraves.
As a result of Robertson's efforts the College frontages took on the character that they have today, but when the interior and exterior decorative activities of the 1820s terminated with the settlement of the Robertson - Johnson affair in 1829 (the College having agreed to pay the difference), the Fellows must have sighed with relief. (-- pgs. 54-55) |
A word about the initial proceedings:
| Quote: | ... Conscious that the state of the clergy left much to be desired, both spiritually and intellectually, and observing that they had shared in the general demoralization that followed the English military failure in France, the archbishop established an academic society consisting of forty fellows, twenty-four of whom were to study arrts, philosophy, or theology, and sixteen civil or canon law. All were to take Holy Orders, so that eventually they could go out into the world as members of that clerical militia whose decline the archbishop had observed with so much concern. Chichele's (Henry, the Archbishop of Canterbury who founded All Souls College in 1438) solicitude for the Church embraced the monastic as well as the secular clergy, and at the same time he was helping the Cistercians to establish St Bernard's College, a house of studies for members of their order in what is now St Giles. ...
... Oxford in the early fifteenth century was a town in decline: many tenements were vacant or falling into decay and the shops on the street-fronts concealed dereliction behind. It was a situation which made it possible for colleges to be built in formerly populous parts of the town in a manner which would have been out of the question in the prosperous years of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as it would be today. The result was that mix of university and urban property which gives Oxford its special character ... (-- pgs. 1-2) |
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:43 pm Post subject: |
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The Country Seat
Studies in the History of the
British Country House
Presented to Sir John Summerson
On His Sixty-Fifth Birthday
Together with a Select Biliography of
His Published Writings
Hardcover
Edited by Howard Colvin and
John Harris
| Quote: | | Newby consisted of a central block with flanking pavilions joined by passages. Each unit was built separately: first the west wing, then the main house, last the east wing. As the experienced York contractor often on the site, Etty had an important role in executing Campbell's plans, which, indeed, he altered in several ways. The building boom must have created a shortage of master-craftsmen capable of supervising a major house and Etty was in a strong position. Now he would be off to Seaton Delaval after sparing a week for Newby, now he would be away in Lincolnshire for a fortnight and more. 'Several wants him,' declared Sir William, 'he having now the whole business, young Thornton being dead, who was ingenious, & would soon have equalled his Father. In his absence Sir William himself actively supervised the workmen. At times he found the work progressed but slowly; at others he praised the York masons for working well and fast, sometimes indeed too fast for comfort; for though by 1720 his daughter was able to sleep in the new wing he was obliged to camp in the brewhouse. He found that building, levelling and planting kept him fully occupied: just before Christmas he wrote 'thus far of winter has passed smoothly enough, how I shall get the remainder over at York, Miss will let you know, we goe into winter quarters on Thursday. I had remov'd to morrow, but Etty has disappointed me in coming over. The joiners caused him anxiety, working by candlelight through the dark December afternoons. At Christmas they would give up until Campnell's expected visit to Studley in the spring, presumably awaiting his directions. (From Newby Park, The First Palladian Villa in England, Yorkshire, p. 100) |
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| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 9:06 am Post subject: |
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