Simpson Strong-Tie started in 1956 with a single joist hanger. Today, there are more than 6,000 products – and that doesn’t include things such as anchors, hold downs, shear wall panels and other related products. It is hard to nail down (couldn’t resist the pun) an exact number of products when you are looking at all…
Remember that batch of muffins or sheet cake that you didn’t leave in the oven long enough? It looked good on the outside, but when you sliced it open, it wasn’t actually baked all the way through? “Half-baked” you might call it. Quite literally. And as that expression has come to be used in other environments outside…
So what is waste? When it comes to the construction realm, waste is a concept that represents “extra” material that is sent to a jobsite to make sure there is enough to complete the project. Most commonly a waste factor gets “applied” in some form of a percentage of the originally calculated value. For example, if…
When we look at lumber, we have a number of ways to see it: rough cut, dimensional and board feet. The questions in this are: Why isn’t a 2X4 actually 2” X 4”? And why is Board Feet used in pricing? For me, knowing this is one thing but understanding it is altogether different. We…
F Channel. J Channel. Starter Strip. Z Metal. Drip Edge. T Channel. Utility Trim. There are a confusing amount of flashing and trim options available for Metal Siding and Vinyl Siding. The question becomes which to use, where to use it and what options are available. Vinyl Siding comes with a top lock to snap…
A picture is worth a thousand words…so use them! If you work on material takeoffs and estimating or do any other work with the construction industry, you’ve likely been more than one situation where there was confusion or uncertainty about the plans, materials, or terminology for a project. Maybe it’s an atypical condition in the…
When we discuss Siding we are talking about a huge category. Fortunately most of them are pretty straight forward and rely on a straight square foot to board size conversion. When we get to Lap Siding, however, things are sometimes more complex than they seem at first glance. Just as a starting point, if we…
PET and Pre-cuts—same thing, right? Well, yes and no. PET refers to “precision end trimmed” lumber which just means that the boards are cut to a stricter tolerance than normal lumber. On the other hand, pre-cuts most commonly refers to lumber that is simply pre-cut to specific sizes. Not only does PET adhere to a…
No matter how you cut it, optimizing your lumber lists is key to success in the construction industry. Too little lumber causes unnecessary delays, and too much lumber creates extra expenses that could cost you the bid or cut into your profits. Or maybe you’ve got the just the right amount of lumber but it’s…
A pitch adjusted measurement refers to a measurement from a 2-dimensional plan that factor in a slope. When reading a set of plans, these materials need to factor in the extra lengths and square footages required to span or cover a sloped area. A 10-foot by 10-foot shed with a single slope roof will have…