Need your sewer lateral replaced?

So the question is to trench or not to trench.

Trenching is the most common and in some cities and counties the only choice.

I was bidding a new lateral on a home that is under a complete home makeover.

As it turned out I was on the Denver side of the street just one house from the Denver, Littleton county line.

So it’s back to the way I know tear up the yard from the sidewalk top the street. Cut up the street, sidewalk and yard.

Now you are ready for inspection, then back fill , repair the street, replace the sidewalk and your lawn.

So let’s say you live across the street, and then they would just dig a hole above the city sewer line and another at the house.

You have much less street to replace, no sidewalk and a small portion of the lawn along the house. You still need an inspection but the job is complete in one day in most cases.

You put a cable puller at the house and pull a new line to the house. Hook up the new lateral up on the street side and pull. Hook up to the city and house and ready for inspection and backfill.

At about 6 to 12” a minute it is not a long wait on average homes.

It is cleaner disturbs less of your yard and the cost is the same.

So the cost is the same or less , it is faster, cleaner and I am still looking for a down side.

Richard Sims,

 Sims Construction

Fire Safe Homes

Fire Safe Homes
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Building with Fire safe Materials

As wild fires rage in Colorado and fire fighters are forced to do what is called Structural Triage, where they have to make the hard choices of witch structures to save.

Do you have debris cleared?  

A defensible area around your house?

Do you have trees cut back from the deck, house and out buildings?

As stated by Fire fighter Jim Bolton of SmartStructure.com

 “If people aren’t going to pay attention to what the Forestry Department

and their local fire departments tell them to do to keep their property

safe, then their house may have to be the one that we can’t save”

What if you built fire safe?

We now have products to offer fire safe roofs, decks and entire homes.

SCIP “Structural Concrete Insulated Panel” Homes are made form a combination of steel, wire mesh, wire trusses and EPS “Expanded Polly Styrene”

The panel is covered by 1.5” of cement giving two hour fire rating.

All the components are made of a high percentage of recycled materials.

This coupled with the 50-70% energy efficiency of the SCIP panel system, with an average of 5% extra cost the pay back can be realized in a little as three years.

The cement gives you fire safety inside and out.

 The cement on the interior side of the exterior walls coupled with a thermal break (EPS)  creates a thermal mass system unequaled in standard building practices

For more information on the energy saving go to http://www.ornl.gov/sci/roofs+walls/research/detailed_papers/thermal/index.html

“Comparative analysis of sixteen different material configurations showed that the most effective wall assembly was the wall with thermal mass (concrete) applied in good contact with the interior of the building. Walls where the insulation material was concentrated on the interior side, performed much worse. Wall configurations with the concrete wall core and insulation placed on both sides of the wall performed slightly better, however, their performance was significantly worse than walls containing foam core and concrete shells on both sides.”

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