The Green, The Energy Star, The Chasing of Subs

I'm not happy. I'm gonna have to call the boss. That shower end wall above the tub bugs me. It follows the tub surround perfectly. Arrgh. Arrgh. It's me that put it in.

The twelve recessed lights and three pendent boxes need caulk, as does the overhead stuff in the garage.....45 minutes. Thirty-five feet of double-nailing the garage ceiling joints left to do and then that chore is over....twenty minutes for that plus another ten for getting the eight foot ladder and the nails. Got to caulk the drywall to the shower surrounds....ten minutes to do that, so that means getting some of that anti-bacterial mildew-proof stuff. Good stuff, rated for fifty years. At least the house will be ready for the drywall mud slingers this Monday.

My weekend is shorter....again, by 75 minutes. (Just called the boss, nail garage ceiling only...whoopee. Also caulk the shower surrounds...then off to enjoy the weekend!)

I went through over two pounds of drywall nails and at least that in screws. I had to screw and nail two ceiling joists that were missed as were seven studs. Also very few of the walls were nailed near the bottom. More complaints about subs in the next paragraph or so.

This is a Green, (beyond) Energy Star house. They (future mass production houses) will cost a little bit more but the owners will make it up in a building that will use far less energy to heat or cool, and will last far longer with a reduced maintenance cost. Hence the fifty year caulk and the Hardi-Plank, not to mention all the insulation and sealing. Also my boss is building a house that everyone else will be required to build in the next decade or so.

The work that the subs did in the course of this building would be passable to a normal tract house developer, but not to my boss. That's where we come in, me and the other two guys. We also adjust and fix the work the subs did, so the house can get its certification for the Energy Star and the Green. In ten years, everyone will have to build like my boss in this country..

This means, stick building (basically building a house one piece at a time) houses is going to have to stop. This also means that modular ( built in an assembly line process) houses will have to be built much better then they are now. Why modular? A modular house is built at a central indoor location under controlled conditions and then shipped to where it's supposed to be. Some rather fancy houses have been built this way. The only structures built in the field are the foundation and the garage. One day of setting the modules, and a month or less of finishing the hookups and the joins in the house. Peak Oil is a reality, not fantasy, and we all have to start dealing with it REAL soon. There is Palm Homes in Florida that is an Energy Star modular builder, but even they are not green enough for my boss.

So here I am, punch listing and chasing sub work. Wise up Sub-Contractor Guys......can't do schlock for much longer. The times, they have started changing now. The building codes will be a whole lot stricter in the next ten years. Keep doing schlock and your customers will get tired of paying guys like me to remedy it. Next thing ya know, you are going to get fewer jobs......