Swamplot Archives by Tag: Construction Materials

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Chinese Drywall and the Smell Test

March 24, 2009 – 9:24 am
   

The first government report on Chinese drywall is out . . . sort of: “On Monday, Florida’s health department said preliminary tests show there’s no ’specific’ health hazard associated with the sulfur-based gases coming from the drywall, but the agency is conducting additional tests. ‘It’s not that we are saying it’s safe,’ Florida toxicologist David Krause told reporters on a conference call on Monday. ‘We are moving forward on a much more detailed in-depth’ study. The test results released by the state health department on Monday did make one, definitive conclusion: Chinese-made drywall contained strontium sulfide, a material that’s known to have the odor of hydrogen sulfide in moist air. The U.S-made drywall did not contain this material. The most common evidence of Chinese drywall problems is the corrosion of air conditional equipment, which is turning black and failing repeatedly. Homeowners have also complained about respiratory problems they believe are connected to the drywall.” [Developments]

9:24 am | 4 Comments | Read more about Air Quality, Construction Materials, Hazards, Quicklink
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Reporting Live from the Westmoreland Stucco Renaissance

March 17, 2009 – 2:28 pm

A reader sends a couple photos of “what will soon no longer be a nice understated commercial building” at 315 W. Alabama, just south of the Westmoreland Historic District west of Midtown:

I watched the remodel work inside going on for a while and was a little shocked to see the brick facade receiving prep work to be refaced in stucco. You can see the nice bit of decorative garland in the process of being knocked off by the end of today.

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2:28 pm | 4 Comments | Read more about Construction Materials, Neighborhoods: Midtown, Neighborhoods: Westmoreland Historic District, Renovations
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Thursday, February 5, 2009

Candlelight Forest Indoor Landscape

February 5, 2009 – 8:37 am

“SPACIOUS LIVINGROOM WITH SKYLIGHT & FLOWERBED,” shouts the listing for this 1970s-era home on a cul-de-sac near White Oak Bayou in Candlelight Forest. And it’s no exaggeration. The Swamplot reader who alerted us to the property also expressed appreciation for its mauve carpet and mirrored Dining Room wall:

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8:37 am | 4 Comments | Read more about Construction Materials, Home Decor, Home Design, Homes for Sale, Landscape, Neighborhoods: Candlelight Forest
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Friday, January 16, 2009

CLUI in Houston: Attack of the Pod People

January 16, 2009 – 5:00 pm

What is it with these Landscape folks and their capsules? Last spring, L.A.’s sly Center for Land Use Interpretation began its residency in Houston by hauling an old trailer, dubbed the organization’s “field station,” to an old junkyard on the banks of the Houston Ship Channel. And now, a year later — the oil-industry spying mission almost complete — CLUI guru Matthew Coolidge and his henchpeople are capping their Houston romp with another demonstration of the delights of enclosed living.

That’s a Brucker Survival Capsule, painted bright red and decorated with a typically deadpan CLUI inscription, being installed outside the University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Gallery, where CLUI’s exhibit on the landscape practices of the Texas oil industry opens — tonight. If planting an offshore-oil-rig emergency escape vehicle on the front lawn of a university art gallery strikes you as slightly absurd, you’re only beginning to appreciate CLUI’s rare and dry sense of landscape humor.

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5:00 pm | 2 Comments | Read more about Art, Construction Materials, Landscape, Neighborhoods: University of Houston
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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The Recycled Glass Driveway at the Cordell Shipping Container House

January 14, 2009 – 11:19 am

Next experiment at that Swamplot-Award-winning house built out of shipping containers on Cordell St. in Brookesmith? The unique driveway installed earlier this week. John Walker of Numen Development writes in with details:

It is composed of recycled crushed glass, with a resin binder, and achieves the consistency of caramel popcorn for lack of a better description, so it has voids that allow surface water to percolate through the paving and ultimately be absorbed into the underlying soil rather than running off into the storm drainage system. It is a triple threat: recycled material, reduces environmental impact of development, and it’s really cool!

Walker says Presto Geosystems, a division of Alcoa, installed the driveway as a pilot project for the Houston market.

This installation has been described by their consulting engineer as most likely the “first and last” residential project they will do in Houston as the product is expected to meet with huge commercial demand, especially for “landlocked” developments for whom expansion is limited by Harris County stormwater detention limitations.

Some views of the installation:

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11:19 am | 14 Comments | Read more about Construction Materials, Flooding, Green Design and Development, Neighborhoods: Brookesmith
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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Seen on the Street: Holiday Theater

December 31, 2008 – 11:41 am

Again with the fun pix from around town! First: What’s this little toy parking lot?

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11:41 am | Add a Comment | Read more about Construction Materials, Neighborhoods: Fifth Ward, Neighborhoods: Meyerland
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Thursday, December 4, 2008

$99K House Series: SoyBeam House

December 4, 2008 – 5:05 pm

Next up in our $99K House Competition review: An innovative entry from Nick Gillock and Emil Mertzel of Lookinglass Architecture + Design in L.A.:

This project for an affordable, sustainable and energy efficient new 1264 square-foot home combines some conventional home-building techniques - such as below-grade utilities, an insulated concrete floor slab, concrete curbs and framed wall assemblies with pre-engineered shear panels - with an entirely new building component known as the SoyBeam™.

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5:05 pm | 1 Comment | Read more about Construction Materials, Green Design and Development, Home Design, Neighborhoods: Fifth Ward
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Wednesday, December 3, 2008

$99K House Series: The Rippling House

December 3, 2008 – 11:11 am

Today’s featured entry to the $99K House Competition comes from Luca Donner and Francesca Sorcinelli of Donner & Sorcinelli Architetti in Silea — near Venice, Italy. It’s called the “Rippling House.”

The idea was to give people a home that could be built cheaply, using simple technologies, suitable for self-construction, and where they can have optimal comfort. These are the issues our studio focuses on: everyday problems. We believe that a good project should not necessarily cost more. You can give convincing answers even with limited budgets, and this project is an example.

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11:11 am | 5 Comments | Read more about Construction Materials, Green Design and Development, Home Design, Neighborhoods: Fifth Ward
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Monday, December 1, 2008

$99K House Series: The Shell System

December 1, 2008 – 3:55 pm

Digsau, an architecture firm out of Philly, worked with Oldcastle Precast to come up with this $99K house entry, which uses some concrete technology more commonly encountered in Houston area civil structures:

A concrete module serves as the building block for the system, and its combination with other modules allows the structure to respond to specificities of climate, site, and individual preference. The system thus proves highly adaptable as an infill structure on vacant properties in an urban context and allowing for a diversity of exterior space in new developments.

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3:55 pm | 1 Comment | Read more about Construction Materials, Green Design and Development, Home Design, Neighborhoods: Fifth Ward
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Thursday, November 6, 2008

Used Campaign Signs: For the Birds

November 6, 2008 – 2:31 pm

Staircase Treads Covered with Used Election Campaign Signs

What do you do with campaign signs after the election is over? Environmental-news blog Grist links to a brief Swamplot story from earlier this year that pointed to one solution to the problem. The suggestion came from abc13 reporter Miya Shay, who snapped the photo above, showing used signs used as temporary stair-tread protectors in a house under construction. “Let’s face it,” Grist writer Katharine Wroth adds, “it’s fun to kick politicians in the teeth.”

Wroth has several more suggestions for reusing leftover signs, including employing the corrugated plastic ones as a siding material. But another recommendation is more striking: You can send Corex or Coroplast signs to a bird-of-prey conservancy organization in San Antonio called Last Chance Forever. Why does LCF want them?

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2:31 pm | Add a Comment | Read more about Construction Materials, Critters, Green Design and Development
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Friday, October 24, 2008

Neighborhood Guessing Game Over: Pecky

October 24, 2008 – 11:27 am

Neighborhood Guessing Game 29: Bedroom

The winner of this week’s contest . . . didn’t even bother with a guess!

The rest of you guessed Westbury, “off Rayford,” the Woodlands, Memorial, Memorial Drive, Hilshire Village (twice), Braeswood, Old Braeswood, Braes Heights, Piney Point, Meyerland, Riverside Terrace (twice), Glenbrook Valley, West University, Bellaire, Afton Oaks, Spring Branch (three times), Tanglewood (three times), Memorial Bend, Spring Valley, T.C. Jester just outside the Loop, Richmond inside the Loop west of Weslayan, or off Woodway near Sage.

Nobody actually guessed River Oaks, but Richard mentioned it:

. . . I also like this house and totally agree that it took some $$$ to create the hallucinogenic patterned nightmare. Without the kitchen it actually looks like a Howard Barnstone house or even the house that Philip Johnson designed for Dominique de Menil in River Oaks.

So he is the winner!

An honorable mention goes to paneling expert Robert, who obviously knows his woods:

The paneling in the den is a pecky cypress commonly referred to as “wormwood.” Expensive in it’s day, too expensive for Westbury. The house appears to large with too many custom features like that to be a basic tract house. The pattern festival was popular back in the 70’s and cost a lot to create that abomination in decorating.

In what part of River Oaks has this home been hiding?

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11:27 am | 3 Comments | Read more about Construction Materials, Home Decor, Interiors, Neighborhood Guessing Game, Neighborhoods: River Oaks
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Thursday, October 16, 2008

Got Mulch?

October 16, 2008 – 9:59 am
   

What to do with the 5.6 million cubic yards of wood waste left after Hurricane Ike? The city doesn’t know either — so it’s sponsoring an ideas competition: “The contest will pay $10,000, $5,000 and $2,500 for the top three ideas for how to best use the heaps of debris, which city officials have said would be enough to fill up the Astrodome nearly four times over. . . . So far, the city has given about 700,000 cubic yards of wood waste to two companies that will turn it into mulch and compost for resale. But the sheer volume of debris far outstrips local market demand for recycling it. . . . ‘We don’t want to have to fill up our precious landfill sites with a bunch of wooded waste, so we’re going to try to recycle all of it,’ [Mayor] White said. ‘It will probably be the single biggest recycling project that there is in the country this year.’” [Houston Chronicle; competition site]

9:59 am | 5 Comments | Read more about Construction Materials, Disaster Aftermath, Green Design and Development, Landscape, Quicklink, Trees
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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Seen on the Street: Blown Away

October 15, 2008 – 2:49 pm

Van Missing Letters, Houston

A few fun — and not-so-fun — sights around town: First, Houston visitor Mike Smith’s photo shows some of the few letters left after Ike’s attack.

More hurricane photo souvenirs below!

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2:49 pm | 2 Comments | Read more about Art, Construction Materials, Disaster Aftermath, Neighborhoods: Humble, Neighborhoods: Seabrook, Neighborhoods: Spring, Trees, Wildlife
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Monday, October 6, 2008

Houston Streetside Lumber Yards

October 6, 2008 – 3:15 pm
   

Hurricane Ike means . . . free wood! For the taking! To woodworker Jim Fuller, southwest Houston is in bloom: “’I’m harvesting right now,’ he says. ‘I’ve got six or seven different types of wood – live oak, white oak, some kind of cedar, a stewartia. I got a huge piece of sweetgum – it was about 36 inches around and it was kind of hollow in the middle so I was able to saw it into planks right there. I also got a big magnolia, and that’s something you don’t see very often.’” [Hair Balls]

3:15 pm | 2 Comments | Read more about Construction Materials, Disaster Aftermath, Quicklink
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Monday, September 8, 2008

The Solar Powered Shipping Container Sales Center for the Mirabeau B.

September 8, 2008 – 11:23 am

Mirabeau B. Sales Center, 2410 Waugh, Hyde Park, Montrose, Houston

The new sales center for the Mirabeau B. is looking pre-fab! Now at the northwest corner of Hyde Park and Waugh: two 20-ft. recycled shipping containers, outfitted with a solar array on a digitally fabricated rack. The website for Metalab, the architecture firm in charge of the project, claims the solar panels will generate 180 kilowatt hours per month. What’s that figure converted to condo sales?

Oh, but selling condos is apparently only this structure’s day job for now:

Solar panels on the roof can fold shut at night or during bad weather, said Andrew Vrana from Metalab.

“We would like to further develop this as a solution,” he said. “People could have one of these made and put in their backyard and supplement their energy with solar power.”

Below: more pics!

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11:23 am | 2 Comments | Read more about Buying and Selling, Condos, Construction Materials, Development Strategy, Environmental, Green Design and Development, Homes for Sale, Neighborhoods: Hyde Park, Neighborhoods: Montrose, Proposed Developments, Real Estate Marketing
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