Wood construction, the gringo style

The second day has been just as interesting, we have been seeing at least four models of construction:

The prefabricated house, another one of classic design but armed in the place, soon one with special design and finally one of walls of reinforced concrete.

In this case, I want to focus on wood construction, which seems to be the lifeblood of construction in America. It's funny that thinking about making a two-story house, with at least 3,500 square feet, we think in several months; for North Americans, doing it in 25 days from presale to delivery of keys is common.

The urbanization

They call it Subdivision, and it is a highly planned procedure although it is also a cultural environment linked to many traditions both for urbanization and the suburbs.

The sewage goes to general collectors that the cities have but the rainwater goes to artificial lagoons called "lakes". Due to its flat topography, they do not have rivers to move their waters to in a storm, so each urbanization has designed an artificial lagoon where the water arrives in large tubes from the drains.

The foundations

They use the foundation slab, with pre-mixed concrete and post-tensioned cables made by a machine after casting.

On the perimeter are bolts where the base of the walls is anchored and reinforced with nails driven by a pressure gun.

The walls

Everything is wood, modular panels that are assembled from the factory.  Each piece has a lasser mark indicating where it is located, the nails are placed with a gun and contain a kind of rubber on the tip, which is fixed by the heat with which the nail comes out.

At the ends of the walls they use T-veins in 45 degrees for bracing and special staples at the base to prevent the house from being lifted by the wind in a hurricane, although when the tornado comes there is not much to say.

The mezzanine

It is a kind of playwood that bears the black markings of the lower lines of the floor to guide you. The complete structure is wood, they use special beams for long sections, which are made of glued playwood pieces and wood fused in a special additive, then they fill the spaces with wooden joists armed with plates.

The Roof and others

All the ceilings are from Chingle, high and inside there are the air conditioning ducts, which is an inescapable obligation (Houston is the city with the highest air conditioning consumption in the world). In plumbing flexible ducts are used that are controlled from a panel as we would with electricity.

Time… Everything is very well industrialized, in the factory there are employees simply making a cut in 45, during their 8 hours of work. A 1,300-square-foot two-story home can be completed, from foundation to ready-to-move, in 25 days. Although the most time consuming is the finishes, since the example that I am showing, the entire wooden structure was built in two days with six people in 7-hour days.

My first day was to see its beginning, the second day I missed seeing the roof to arrive a few minutes late.

One day later