We have a redwood swing set that was eleven years old – and frankly it was really starting to decay…

I guess we could have let it go, but when we bought it new (in March, 2000) we decided we would try to maintain it to the point of having it 30 years from now. I’m not quite sure that will be possible – but I plan to do what I can. And frankly, I’m almost half-way there now – so of course it’s possible!

But what I’ve discovered is that insect damage, wood rot, rust and sun damage require more than just annual maintenance. It was recently time for a full restoration. I was [quite thankfully] able to invoke my manufacturer’s warranty to get replacement redwood at no cost other than shipping which is what made this possible – as I was going to be replacing nearly half of the swing set. Carpenter bees had really done a number on many of the load bearing supports, and anything that had been touching the mulch was pretty much shot as well.

What was really disconcerting, though, was that once the set was broken down – the damage was far worse than I anticipated. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; that’s the way things tend to go – especially when they’re sitting in wet mulch for eleven years. Still though, it was more work than anticipated. We had to manufacture new footers on the fly (which we were able to do with some of the older wood), had to replace a lot of the hardware – and had to improvise a bit further here and there.

In the end, though, I now have what I consider to be a “significantly” new set – and possibly good for eleven more years!

For anyone striving to conquer something similar (even if perhaps with a cedar or pine set – and especially if you’re thinking about buying a used swing set), you might want to check out a much more elaborate article with many construction photos at the link just below…

http://www.all-about-the-house.com/rehabbing-a-redwood-swing-set/

Thanks for reading, and I’ll leave you with this: as much maintenance as these sets are, I have to say I think they’re worth it. My kids are now 13 and soon-to-be 16, and while they act like the set is for babies – they’re still using it all the time. It’s a focal part of our yard. True – my daughter and her friends are probably talking about “cute boys” now while they’re swinging, but they’re still using the set!

1) Match that paint color: If you see a color at a friend’s house that would look great in your home, use Benjamin Moore’s Ben Color Capture or Sherwin-Williams’ ColorSnap, free mobile apps for iPhone, to conjure up a matching paint color and code in a jiffy. Take a photo with your phone, and the app matches the paint as closely as possible, and will display secondary and complementary colors. (ColorSnap is also available for BlackBerry.)

2) Get rid of stains: Good Housekeeping magazine has placed all their best stain-removal and cleaning advice into their free @Home app. It also includes decorating ideas and a searchable list of the 5,000-plus products that have earned a Good Housekeeping seal.

3) Look for recycled stuff: If you’re searching for a cheap replacement part, or looking for a deal on slightly-used appliances and materials, eBay’s free Mobile app lets you search the auction site’s entire marketplace from iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry devices. You can also put any of your disused-but-functional household items up for sale and recoup some cash.

4) For listings close to home, search the popular Craigslist site through the free Craigsnotifica for Android or Craigspro for iPhone.

5) Price comparison: Finding lower prices on electronics and appliances used to mean driving from store to store or scanning Sunday circulars. With the free Price Check by Amazon, you can scan a product’s barcode at a store and compare the price against Amazon and other merchants. (Android and BlackBerry versions are also available.) PriceGrabber has a similar app for iPhone and Android.

6) Carpenter’s tools in one: For $1.99, the iHandy Carpenter app puts a ruler, protractor, bubble level, surface level, and plumb bob into your iPhone, allowing you to make measurements without lugging out the tool box. It’s perfect for simple jobs like hanging frames and mirrors.

7) Need just a level? There’s a free app for iPhone from iHandy and for Android from Johnson.

Calculate materials you’ll need: Before you approach a home improvement project, use the $1.99 Handy Man DIY to record dimensions of flooring, windows, walls, and more. It calculates how much material you’ll need and gives you a cost estimate.

9) Order supplies: If you’re in the middle of a home improvement job and need supplies, use the $4.99 Work Shop app to order them from your iPhone. It’s also a great tool for keep track of expenses or plan your budget for a future project.

10) Light the way: With the iPhone’s bright display and the super-bright LED flash, you can use it in place of a traditional flashlight to illuminate crawl spaces, attics, cabinet recesses, and other dark spots. There are many apps for this purpose, but two favorites are the 99-cent Flashlight.

11) Know what and when to plant: Wonder why certain vegetation isn’t growing in your yard? Landscaper’s Companion provides a reference guide to more than 2,000 plants. You can search for a plant based on your garden’s sun exposure and garden zone, helping to ensure you won’t get any dead leaves after planting. The app costs $9.99.

12) Find a stud: Using your iPhone’s magnetometer, StudFinderPRO can help you locate studs by locating the magnetic fields emitted by metal objects. The app costs $2.99. A free Magnetic Stud Finder is available for Android devices.

13) Hire a virtual designer: Need decorating ideas for inspiration? Check out Home Interior Layout Designer—Mark On Call for $2.99. Created by an interior designer, the app can help you plan a space and determine if furnishings will fit.

By List by Les Shu

http://www.blanconews.com/news/100741/

Representatives with The National Center for the Prevention of Home Improvement Fraud, along with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, gave an impromptu mini-workshop on how Joplin tornado victims can identify and circumvent fraudulent contractors and their claims.

“There are a lot of good contractors out there, (many) coming from other states to help you,” said Phae Howard, founder of the Atlanta, Ga.-based national fraud center. “But there are a few bad ones.”

Lenard Cullins, contractor inspector for FEMA, provided a list of tips:

• Never hand out money to a contractor before the job begins.

• Don’t feel rushed to do anything.

• Do your homework and find out how much the repairs will cost.

• Write down a detailed budget of everything it will take to repair your house.

• Find out everything you can about potential contractors.

• Go over every little detail about the project with the contractor.

• When it comes to estimates (it usually takes a week or two to get estimates back), the lowest in cost isn’t always the best deal. Someone with better qualifications, in the long run, is much better to you than someone who comes in a few thousand dollars cheaper than the next highest estimate.

• Every type of work done should be in the written agreement, Cullins said, “including scope of work, the exact name of the company, start and end date.”

• Be sure that it’s inked in the contract that all pay requests are tied with work progress, and not a length of time.

• Change orders, no matter how small and insignificant, should always be agreed upon and signed by both parties.

• Always get a copy of the contract. Cullins said he’s always amazed at how many people never get copies of the contract.

• Photographs of the site before work begins and photographs taken daily of the work is another important step a homeowner can do to avoid potential pitfalls down the road.

• Never give the contractor your insurance policy numbers, bank account numbers, a key to the front door, a garage door opener or home security codes.

By Kevin McClintock

http://www.joplinglobe.com/local/x357070834/FEMA-cites-list-to-guard-against-home-repair-fraud

Completed in 2003, the church, also known as the Jubilee Church, is a flagship when it comes to the use of nanotechnology in construction. But there are more humble examples, too. Whether it’s in steel, concrete, or windows, nanotechnology is finding a growing number of applications in the construction industry, where it promises to make structures that last for centuries and look as clean as the day they were built.

One only has to look at the Jubilee Church to see why it is the foremost example of what nanotechnology has to offer the construction industry. It was designed by Richard Meier, an American architect with a reputation for creating bright white structures that he wants to stay that way. So far, the concrete shows no signs of darkening. Italcementi, the company that supplied the material for the church, checks it each year for signs that its white color is still as bright as the day it was cast.

Nanostructured TiO₂ particles theoretically will keep the concrete white forever, even in smoggy Rome, says Luigi Cassar, one of the material’s inventors. Titanium dioxide, known for its snowy white hue, is used as a pigment in paint and food coloring. But it has self-cleaning properties as well. When ultraviolet light strikes the anatase form of TiO₂, it excites the material so that it becomes a catalyst for oxidizing organic grime.

And the concrete doesn’t just resist smog, it eats smog. The same photocatalytic chemistry that keeps the church clean also cleans the air around it, gobbling up NO_x, SO_x, carbon monoxide, aromatics, ammonia, and aldehydes. Italcementi estimates that if it covered 15% of the visible surfaces of a large urban area, such as Milan, with its current product containing the smog-eating nanostructured substance, TX Active, it could cut the city’s air pollution in half.

“The work started from a marketing request to make a white concrete stabilized with respect to pollutants,” says Cassar, a research and development consultant who served as Italcementi’s corporate R&D director until 2006. Cassar and his research group began working on the project in 1994 and filed two patents in 1996 and 1997 for the photoactive cement, which is used as a binder to make the white concrete. It was first used in a construction project in 2000, for the Cité de la Musique building in Chambéry, France. Subsequently, the material was chosen for the Jubilee Church, as well as other projects around the world.

“I am an old chemist. I worked in several industries before coming to Italcementi,” Cassar says. “I never worked on cement before, but the mechanism of TiO₂’s photodecomposition was known in other materials, such as polymers.” Even so, he adds, his group at Italcementi was surprised to see that TiO₂ particles nanostructured to have a high surface area were so active when used in concrete. “We observed a synergistic effect between the photocatalyst and the concrete because concrete is a porous material which absorbs pollutants, helping them to de compose.”

Although the photocatalytic cleaning effect is observed in most forms of anatase TiO₂, Cassar says it’s important that the material be nanostructured to have a high surface area in the cement application. The material used in Italcementi’s cement has more than 200 m² of surface area per gram.

“Improvement of the material is ongoing,” Cassar tells C&EN. The TX Active material currently sold by Italcementi is more efficient than the cement that went into the Jubilee Church, he adds.

They’ve also improved the price. When the Jubilee Church was built, Cassar estimates, the special cement cost 10 times as much as standard cement. Now, depending upon the application, its cost can be as low as three times that of conventional material.

Also, Bartos says, “the construction industry is dominated by small and medium-sized companies. There are no big players in construction like there are in the chemical industry, where there are massive R&D efforts. Most of construction is, in fact, done by small companies that just employ a few people.”

Surendra P. Shah, a civil engineering professor at Northwestern University and the former director of the school’s Center for Advanced Cement-Based Materials, has spent more than a decade studying how nanotechnology can improve cement and concrete. He agrees with Bartos that there’s been growing interest in bringing nanotechnology into the construction industry, but, he says, “as far as commercial applications are concerned, it’s still in the beginning stage.” Shah thinks there are promising applications, and he notes that the growing presence of nanotechnology in construction materials prompted the National Academies’ Transportation Research Board to hold a symposium on the use of nanotechnology in concrete and cement last year.

One area in which Shah’s group has been conducting research is using carbon nanotubes and nanofibers to reinforce cement and concrete. “When you see cement and concrete, you see cracks because it’s a brittle material,” he explains. “These cracks start at the nanoscale. We have shown that once you know how to disperse them, very small amounts of carbon nanotubes, such as 0.05%, can substantially increase the cracking resistance.”

Well-dispersed carbon nanotubes or carbon nanofibers alter cement’s nanostructure, providing reinforcement, Shah notes. “That’s exciting because that’s what nanotechnology is about, altering materials at the nanoscale,” he says.

Nanotechnology can also make concrete a more sustainable material, Shah says. For example, fly ash, a by-product of coal production that would otherwise be dumped in a landfill, can be used in place of cement to make concrete. The problem, Shah explains, is that the concrete-making hydration chemistry takes longer with fly ash.

Seeding fly-ash concrete with small amounts of nanoparticulate silica can accelerate hydration, Shah says, so you could use fly-ash concrete and have the same speed of construction that you would when using conventional concrete. Furthermore, he adds, the nanoparticles change the nanostructure of hydrated cement, thereby improving durability.

Chemical giant BASF has already taken this seeding idea and created a commercial product for speeding up the hardening process for conventional concrete. Known as X-Seed, the product contains nanocrystals of calcium silicate hydrate. The extremely small size of the X-Seed crystals creates many sites for nucleation, accelerating the speed at which the concrete hardens.

Practically, that means that it’s possible to make precast concrete structures, such as bridge girders, sewer pipes, and staircases, faster than it would take without X-Seed, says Bruce Christensen, BASF’s vice president of global technology and innovation management for construction chemicals. The company estimates that X-Seed can cut hardening time for precast concrete structures from 12 hours to six hours at ambient temperature.

“It’s not something that’s a completely new idea,” Christensen says of X-Seed. According to the patent literature and publications, using nanoparticles to accelerate hydration in concrete was proposed decades ago. “Our research group has found some creative ways to make the particles in such a way to realize the seeding effect,” he says. Specifically, the researchers developed some polymer technology to keep the nanocrystals from fusing together when dispersed in solution.

As far as cement-related products go, BASF also makes a whole line of additives bearing the nano moniker, including Nanocrete, Nanoflott, Nanolight, and Nanosilent. These products don’t contain nanoparticles, Christensen explains; rather, they form nanostructures as they’re used. “Nanostructures have been around for centuries in that regard, but we are understanding better and better how these nanostructures form and in which way this process can be influenced to enhance the properties of the material,” he says.

BASF’s use of nanotechnology in construction materials isn’t limited to cementitious products. They also make Col.9, a dispersion of organic plastic polymer particles and nanoscale particles of silica, which is used as a binder to produce façade paints. According to the company, this combination of elastic organic material and hard mineral resists cracking in cold temperatures but doesn’t become tacky when it’s hot outside.

The nanoparticles in Col.9 are also hydrophilic, spreading rainwater across the surface of the coated area. During heavy rain, this property helps the coated surface wash away dirt, and after the rain, it disperses any remaining water into a thin film that dries quickly, thereby preventing mold.

Christensen expects nanotechnology’s presence in construction chemicals to grow. “The nanotechnology ideas finding their way into construction in a practical way are probably now starting to gain momentum” because the first commercial products have finally hit the shelves, he says.

Another nanostructured building product that’s on the market is a type of steel, known as MMFX 2, developed by MMFX Technologies. Its inventor, University of California, Berkeley, materials science professor Gareth Thomas, first used electron microscopy to peer into steel’s nanostructure in the 1980s. Twenty years later, Thomas led MMFX in developing a series of key patents for making nanostructured steel.

“Making steel was always a black art or a black science,” says MMFX founder and former chief executive officer David C. Pollack. “They used to heat, beat, and hope. They kind of understood what was going on, but with electron microscopy they could actually see what was happening at the nanoscale,” he says. “This gave us a whole new understanding.

“Conventional steel, when it cools, goes through a transformation where it loses its affinity for binding carbon. What happens then is carbon precipitates and that precipitation forms carbides at the grain boundaries,” Pollack explains. “These carbides are very hard, but they’re also very brittle and they’re dissimilar to the rest of the steel microstructure. They’re the Achilles’ heel of the steel.”

In a moist environment, Pollack continues, the carbides form a microgalvanic cell with the steel’s ferrites, which begins to corrode the steel from within. But MMFX 2 steel is different. It’s made of alternating nanoscale layers of austenite and martensite—two crystal forms of steel—and is virtually carbide-free at the grain boundaries.

Without the carbides at the grain boundaries, the material is ductile, rather than brittle, and resists the corrosion seen in conventional steel. The nanolayered structure also makes the material strong, Pollack says, because it’s composed of both hard and soft layers of material that can bend without breaking.

MMFX 2 steel is made with conventional steel-making equipment. Pollack says that when talking about nanotechnology, people often marvel at materials made by the gram. “In the case of MMFX, we can make nanotechnology at 100 tons an hour,” he says.

The material has been used in buildings, highways, and bridges and has an expected service life of 200 years. And because it’s twice as strong as conventional steel, Pollack notes, structures require less steel to do the same job. So although the steel itself is more expensive than conventional material, labor costs are reduced.

A sector of the construction industry where nanotechnology has been making a clear difference in products is in window glass. By adding a nanoscale coating of TiO₂ to glass, companies make low-maintenance windows that can clean themselves.

It’s the same chemistry that keeps the Jubilee Church in Rome clean: UV light activates TiO₂ so that it oxidizes organic grime, both directly and by converting water vapor into hydroxyl radicals that can convert organic compounds into CO₂.

The practice of using titanium dioxide to make surfaces self-cleaning is fairly old, says Chris Barry, director of technical services at the glass-making company Pilkington. But TiO₂ is typically white, so it was mainly used in paints. “What is new is the ability to make the coating in a thin enough layer to put it on window glass so that you can see through it and it can be applied uniformly enough so that it doesn’t make streaks or variations in the appearance of the glass,” Barry explains. “We make four invisible coatings. One of the biggest problems we have is to make sure that the glazier knows how to install the glass properly so it’s not put in backward.”

In addition to TiO₂’s photocatalytic properties, the material also becomes hydrophilic when exposed to UV light. “It’s an invisible squeegee effect,” Barry says. “Normally, when rain falls onto glass, it tends to bead up and run down in rivulets, but if the glass is hydrophilic and attracts water, then the water will run down as a sheet and it has a flushing action that’s quite effective in removing specks of inorganic dirt, such as silica sand.

“The chemistry of it is very elegant and beautiful,” Barry says of the self-cleaning glass, but he cautions that windows with such coatings won’t always be squeaky clean. “The coating works at the molecular level, and dirt tends to be at the macro level: bird droppings, a lump of spiderweb, resin from a tree. You’re asking a two-dimensional coating to break down a three-dimensional mountain of material. It doesn’t happen instantly. And if you’ve got inorganic dust on a window, it won’t be clean until you get some rain.”

To create a coating that’s just 50-nm thick for its self-cleaning Activ line of windows, Pilkington uses chemical vapor deposition to apply the material to freshly formed glass while it’s still under a nitrogen atmosphere. “We pass the glass under beams that expose the top surface to TiO₂ vapors,” Barry explains. The coating “fuses perfectly with the ultraclean surface of the glass.”

The company uses the same technique to apply nanoscale coatings of other chemicals. Silica and silicon coatings, known as solar-control coatings, help regulate the amount of heat from sunlight that comes through the window, thereby cutting down on air-conditioning use. Low-emissivity coatings, made from fluorine-doped tin oxide, prevent infrared heat from escaping a building, reducing overall heating costs.

Although nanotechnology has matured in certain sectors of the construction industry, most people working in the field expect many more advances in the future. George Elvin, an architecture professor at Ball State University and director of Green Technology Forum, an information hub that focuses on emerging green technologies in architecture, has been studying the intersection of the two disciplines for a decade. He teaches a course in which students examine nanotechnology advances that have been proven in the lab and envision how they could be used in architectural works should they ever be commercialized.

“For example, if you look at the strength-to-weight ratio of carbon nanotubes, they are many times stronger than steel and yet lighter. They can be transparent; they can conduct electricity,” Elvin says. “If you could have large-scale sheets of carbon-nanotube-reinforced transparent material, then you could have a building structure that basically looked like a glass window. You really wouldn’t have the traditional components of columns and beams or concrete and steel that we have now.”

The area of sensors also sparks a lot of interest in the construction industry, says Pedro J. J. Alvarez, chair of the civil and environmental engineering department at Rice University, who wrote a review about nanotechnology in construction last year (ACS Nano, DOI: 10.1021/nn100866w). Such nanoscale sensors would be embedded within a structure’s foundation and could “give you early warnings if you need to do something about a bridge or a building,” Alvarez says.

Both Elvin and Alvarez note, however, that despite the enormous potential of nanotechnology in construction, no one knows for certain whether there will be adverse consequences. “Unfortunately, we haven’t always had the best track record in how we have used technology, and we have found out after the fact that certain applications, in some cases, were quite harmful, such as asbestos,” Elvin says. He notes a recent study that showed how TiO₂ nanoparticles may disrupt the nitrogen cycle in aquatic ecosystems (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es101658p).

But Alvarez cautions that current studies on nanomaterials’ adverse effects might not paint a realistic picture of exposure to humans. “We are using test animals or cells or bacteria that are exposed to exaggeratedly high concentrations to elicit a response,” he says. “The concentrations that are harmful, at least for acute exposure, tend to be unrealistically high, much higher than a person would likely be exposed to.”

Furthermore, Alvarez says, studies often look at nanomaterials in their virgin form, when in reality what people will be exposed to are nanoparticles that have been embedded in some sort of matrix or that have been weathered in the environment. Such particles are expected to undergo transformations that reduce the materials’ bioavailability and toxicity. “As the result of that, we are really looking at the worst possible scenarios that are not really realistic,” he notes.

For now, Alvarez says, the key is to minimize exposure. For the construction industry that means making sure nanomaterials won’t leach out of structures easily. More important, Alvarez says, is to make sure that the workers who handle these materials as they’re created wear proper respiratory protective equipment. “Exposure control is extremely important, and that is clearly within our means because we protect ourselves from things that are much nastier,” he says.

Ultimately, Alvarez thinks that nanotechnology will revolutionize the construction industry. “But we’re at the infancy right now,” he says. “Before we move too fast, let’s make sure that the risk assessment and the eco-responsible use, design, and disposal don’t fall too far behind. We want to use nanotechnology as a tool for sustainability, and we want to make sure that we’re not creating a future environmental or public health liability.”

By Bethany Halford

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/89/8924cover.html

Work began on 560,000 houses at an annual pace, up 3.5 percent from the prior month and exceeding the 545,000 median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. Building permits, a sign of future construction, also increased.

Falling real estate values and the threat that foreclosures will push prices even lower mean the construction industry will continue to lag behind other parts of the economy. Joblessness exceeding 9 percent indicates that a rebound in housing will take years to develop.

“Builders just aren’t making profits and so they aren’t putting out homes,” said Patrick Newport, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts. “There’s just general uncertainty about the economy and housing prices, and that’s what’s keeping housing from improving.”

Another Commerce Department report today showed the current- account deficit in the U.S. increased less than forecast in the first quarter as the country’s income surplus climbed to a record. The gap, the broadest measure of international trade because it includes income payments and government transfers, widened to $119.3 billion from a $112.2 billion shortfall in the fourth quarter.

Fewer Firings

Fewer Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, indicating the pickup in firings that began in April is abating, figures from the Labor Department also showed. Jobless claims declined by 16,000 to 414,000 in the week ended June 11. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg projected 420,000 filings, according to the median forecast.

Stock-index futures trimmed earlier losses after the reports. The contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index maturing in September fell 0.2 percent to 1,257.7 at 8:46 a.m. in New York after being down as much as 0.5 percent. Treasury securities rose, sending the yield on the benchmark 10-year note down to 2.91 percent from 2.97 percent late yesterday.

Housing starts estimates ranged from 493,000 to 585,000 in the Bloomberg survey of 78 economists.

The Commerce Department revised April’s total to a 541,000 pace, up from a previously estimated 523,000.

More Permits

Building permits climbed 8.7 percent to a 612,000 annual pace in May, the most this year. The increase was led by a 23 percent jump in applications for work on multifamily units. They were projected to drop 1.1 percent to a 557,000 level, according to the survey median.

Construction of single-family houses increased 3.7 percent to a 419,000 rate in May from the prior month. Work on multifamily homes, such as townhouses and apartments, rose 2.9 percent to an annual rate of 141,000.

Starts climbed in two of the four regions, led by an 18 percent jump in the West that took construction in that area to the highest level since August.

Work began on 1.5 percent more houses in the South, failing to make up for the 21 percent plunge the prior month when flooding and tornadoes closed work sites. Starts dropped 4.1 percent in the Midwest and 3.3 percent in the Northeast.

Growing Pessimism

Confidence among U.S. homebuilders plunged in June, led by a decline in the outlook for sales. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo sentiment index declined to 13 this month from 16 in May, data from the Washington-based group showed yesterday. A measure of sales expectations for the next six months matched the lowest level on record.

Firms like Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. (HOV) are still struggling to turn a profit in the U.S. housing market. The largest homebuilder in New Jersey reported a net loss for the three months ended April 30 that was wider than analysts estimated.

Sales of existing homes, which make up more than 90 percent of the market, fell 4 percent to a 4.85 million annual pace in May, economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast the National Association of Realtors may report on June 21. Existing home sales have been gaining market share from new homes due to growing demand for lower-priced distressed homes.

By Timothy R. Homan – Jun 16, 2011 8:47 AM ET

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-16/housing-starts-in-u-s-grew-in-may.html

Between January 4th and June 6th of 2011, contractors were convicted in 33 cases and placed in pretrial diversion programs in five others, resulting in nearly $233,000 in restitution to consumers. Two contractors are now serving jail time. A summary of the judgments is attached.

“We are providing this information to remind consumers and contractors alike of our commitment to ensure that Connecticut’s home improvement marketplace is fair and accountable,” Consumer Protection Commissioner William M. Rubenstein said. “Our laws are clear and provide valuable protections for both homeowners and contractors.”

“Connecticut consumers need to do their homework and make sure the contractor they hire is registered,” Attorney General George Jepsen said. “Many of the convictions won by my office involved complaints about work that was done by unregistered individuals and companies. “While registration doesn’t guarantee a contractor’s competency, it does give consumers rights and protections that are not available if the contractor is not registered.”

Under the law, a home improvement contractor is anyone who performs improvements on residential property when the individual job exceeds $200 and when the cash price of all work performed by the contractor in one year is more than $1,000. All home improvement contractors — including roofers, addition and remodeling contractors, driveway pavers, painters and anyone who installs fences, siding, insulation, windows and masonry, for example — must be registered with the Department of Consumer Protection and adhere to strict consumer protection requirements.

The following are tips for selecting and working with a home improvement contractor:

· While competition for contractors may tempt you to make hasty decisions or cut corners, take all the time you can to thoroughly research the job, interview several contractors, and choose one who is fully qualified and capable of getting the work done right, on time and within budget. Be especially wary of any contractor who pressures you to make an immediate decision or tells you that they can offer a lower price because they have leftover materials from a previous job.

· For names of dependable contractors, talk to friends who’ve had remodeling done; check out work being done in your neighborhood, and contact local building officials for suggestions. Your local building official can also advise you on building permit and zoning requirements. Never agree to unsolicited, on-the-spot offers. At this time of year, unregistered and unscrupulous contractors often go door to door offering home improvements at a low price, but you may lose your money and be left with an unfinished job.

· Before signing a contract and before making any payments, check to make sure that a contractor is registered with the Department of Consumer Protection. Don’t just take the contractor’s word for it; confirm the contractor’s registration by visiting the Department of Consumer Protection’s website at www.ct.gov/dcp and go to “Verify a License.” By looking at the contractor’s credential record, you can tell whether the Department has any closed complaints against the person. If you do not have internet access, you may call the Department at (860) 713-6110. While registration does not signify competency of any contractor, dealing with registered contractors gives you important rights that you will not have if you are taken advantage of by an unregistered contractor.

· It is a good practice to get more than one bid and to make sure they all include the same details, such as quality of materials, size of the project, and time frames. The lowest bid is not necessarily a bargain, so resist the temptation to choose a contractor based solely on price.

· Check references thoroughly. You should also verify with the contractor that he has the appropriate level of workers compensation and liability insurance.

· Look at contractors’ recent and past jobs. You can even check contractors’ litigation history to see if they’ve been sued by former clients. Go online to http://civilinquiry.jud.ct.gov, select “party name search” from the left menu and type in the contractor’s last and first name or company name in the boxes provided.

· Ask contractors about their workload. Can they truly start and finish on time? You should be able to speak openly with the contractor and feel that he or she is listening to you.

· If a contractor offers to finance your home improvement project or put you in touch with a finance company, be careful! Have an attorney or some other informed person review the finance agreement before you sign, to verify that it complies with state and federal Truth-in-Lending laws.

· By law, all home improvement contracts must be in writing, must contain all details of the job and bear the contractor’s registration number, so read carefully before you sign. The contract must include the start date, end date, work to be done, materials to be used, and price. In addition, the contract must give you 3 days to cancel. Never allow the contractor to persuade you into forfeiting this right. This is your “cooling off” period, a time to assess the contract, especially if you feel you signed it under pressure.

· Be sure the contract includes a payment schedule that roughly parallels the progress of the work, perhaps breaking the bill into quarters. Don’t pay a lot of money up front and never pay cash.

· Before the work starts, check with local building officials to be sure the contractor has taken out all necessary permits.

· Make sure persons hired to do electrical and plumbing work hold the appropriate Connecticut occupational license – this requirement is distinct from the Home Improvement registration. Like home improvement registrations, occupational licenses can be verified by the Department of Consumer Protection through its website or by telephone. Occupational trades work may be included in a home improvement contract, but may only be completed by a properly licensed tradesperson.

· Under Connecticut law, consumers who suffer damage as a result of dealings with a registered home improvement contractor may qualify for some restitution from the Home Improvement Guaranty Fund, which can return up to $15,000 per contract. You do not have this protection if you deal with an unregistered contractor. The Department of Consumer Protection administers the Home Improvement Guaranty Fund.

The names of contractors and summaries of the judgments announced today are available online at www.ct.gov/dcp and www.ct.gov/ag. Consumers who have home improvement questions or concerns may contact the Department of Consumer Protection at 860-713-6110.
By Department of Consumer Protection

http://www.stamfordplus.com/stm/information/nws1/publish/News_1/State-announces-convictions-in-33-home-improvement-cases13426.shtml

Barriers created by criminal record checks

--  After the market crash in 2008, the financing of construction projects
    plummeted, resulting in mass layoffs and project delays.
--  Many construction sites sat idle and long-time construction employees
    and skilled workers found themselves without a job.
--  When hiring resumed in the construction industry, it was often under new
    policy (adopted over the last 2-5 years) where criminal record checks
    were now a mandatory part of the application process.
--  Long-time employees previously qualified to work were 'flagged' due to a
    criminal record that had not impacted employment before, but was now
    blocking a re-hire.
--  Many skilled workers were left unable to obtain employment because of
    mistakes made in the past that now prohibit them from passing the
    screening process.
--  Workers are also faced with issues around being bonded - all stemming
    from criminal records.
--  Most companies who complete record checks do not screen past the "yes"
    or "no", don't look into what the record was for, when it was obtained
    or how it may or may not impact the working environment.

Heightened demand in construction

According to the Construction Sector Council, rising incomes and lower interest rates have sustained a constant flow of projects since the recession, and recovery in commodity prices have created several mining, pipeline and port expansions.

Demand for various types of construction and skilled trade workers continue to increase, particularly for:

--  Boilermakers
--  Carpenters
--  Construction estimators
--  Construction millwrights
--  Drillers and blasters
--  Electricians
--  Plumbers
--  Sheet metal workers
--  Steamfitters and pipefitters

Over 4.2 million Canadians have a criminal record

In an industry like construction, it’s often impossible for these individuals to land a job after employers see they have a criminal record. Both candidates and businesses looking to hire suffer, as does the economy overall – jobs cannot be filled, projects completed and business cannot happen at the proper pace.

Ainsley Muller, an expert on criminal records and issues surrounding hiring within the construction industry from Express Pardons, says there is often a misconception when it comes to the kinds of people who have a criminal record.

“Whether it’s a neighbour, friend, or co-worker, many hard-working Canadians have a criminal record and it’s important to recognize the barriers these people face. They’re often left unable to get a job, travel, get an education, or support their families. Many construction companies put applications in the “no” pile, without even knowing what the applicant’s record is for.”

Express Pardons helps qualified Canadians obtain pardons, and plays an integral role in the future of the construction industry by ensuring construction projects have enough skilled workers to complete projects.

For steps on how to evaluate background checks of skilled workers and to make better hire decisions, visit: http://www.expresspardons.com/hr/

To learn more about Express Pardons, visit: www.expresspardons.com.

To view the video associated with this press release please click on the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpoYck6ewuo

By: Marketwire

http://www.sys-con.com/node/1872308

The 0.4 percent gain followed a revised 0.1 percent increase in March that was smaller than previously estimated, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median estimate of economists in a Bloomberg survey projected a 0.3 percent increase.

The prospect of more foreclosures pushing down housing prices further and unemployment at 9 percent mean new housing construction will remain depressed while homeowners upgrade their current residences. With the economy slowing and state and local governments seeking to reduce spending, a recovery in non- residential construction may take time to develop.

“We’re looking for some recovery from the very weak numbers at the start of the year,” Jim O’Sullivan, chief economist at MF Global Inc. in New York, said before the report. “The trend in construction is flat.”

Increase Forecast

Economists forecast construction would rise after a previously estimated gain of 1.4 percent in March, according to the median of 51 projections in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from an increase of 1 percent to a drop of 1.5 percent.

Construction spending decreased 9.3 percent in the 12 months ended in April.

Private construction spending rose 1.7 percent in April from the prior month. Homebuilding outlays increased 3.1 percent, led by a 7.6 percent jump in home improvement, according to calculations by Bloomberg. Construction of both single-family and multifamily units fell.

“The housing market is still bouncing along the bottom,” John Canally, an investment strategist at LPL Financial Corp. in Boston, said before the report. “There’s still a big overhang of inventory, and with that it’s hard to build new product.”

Private non-residential projects increased 0.5 percent, led by a 3.2 percent increase in power plants and gains in education and health-care facilities.

Some companies, including Caterpillar Inc. (CAT), the largest maker of earthmoving equipment, are expanding capacity. Caterpillar is seeking to meet rising demand from China and other countries as well as in North America, where mining activity is ramping up.

Substantial Investment

“We are investing in capacity increases around the world to be prepared for 2012 and beyond, including substantial investment in the United States,” spokesman Mike DeWalt said on an April 29 conference call. “More than half of the $3 billion that we expect to spend on capital expenditures in 2011 is being invested in the United States.”

Builders are reluctant to add office space as prices fall. U.S. commercial property prices fell to a post-recession low in March as sales of financially distressed assets weighed on the market, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

The Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index dropped 4.2 percent from February and is now 47 percent below the peak of October 2007, Moody’s said in a statement May 23.

Work began on 523,000 houses in April at an annual pace, down 11 percent from the prior month, as tornadoes and floods in the South shut down construction sites, the Commerce Department reported last month.

Builders project demand will remain subdued into next year, Jeffrey Mezger, CEO of Los Angeles-based KB Home (KBH), told a housing conference in New York on May 11.

Any housing recovery will “be slower than in the past,” Mezger said, adding that he expected sales to “bump along for the next 18 months.”

Home Prices

Home prices in 20 U.S. cities dropped in March to the lowest level since 2003, showing housing remains mired in a slump almost two years into the economic recovery.

The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities fell 3.6 percent from March 2010, the biggest year-over-year decline since November 2009, the group said yesterday in New York.

Spending on public construction fell 1.9 percent from the prior month as state and local government projects declined. Federal construction spending fell 2 percent.

“The housing sector remained distressed, with house prices flat to down and a large overhang of vacant properties restraining new construction,” Federal Reserve policy makers said in minutes of their April policy meeting released May 18. “Business outlays for nonresidential construction remained extremely weak in February, restrained by high vacancy rates, low prices for office and commercial properties, and tight credit conditions for commercial real estate lending.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-01/construction-spending-in-u-s-rose-0-4-in-april-on-home-improvement-gains.html

By Bob Willis – Jun 1, 2011

www.bloomberg.com

Spending on home remodeling peaked nationally at $362 billion in 2007 and has declined since then in the face of high unemployment, tighter credit, and record foreclosures.

Yet homeowners are still spending big bucks: Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies has projected the figure for 2011′s second quarter alone at $130 billion.

With all that money involved, homeowners’ chief concern is getting everything they’ve paid for, when they want it.

That goal is more easily achieved, the experts say, if everything is set down on paper, in the form of a contract, with all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed.

“It’s amazing the number of major remodeling agreements that are based only on a one-page bid sheet or a handshake,” said Bruce Hahn, president of the American Homeowners Foundation in Arlington, Va.

“No one- or two-page document can cover all elements of a good agreement, or hope to prevent even most of the potential problems,” he said.

To reduce the likelihood of disputes, a homeowner needs “to have a meeting of the minds” with the contractor on every possible aspect of the contract and their relationship, Hahn said.

The Remodelers Council of the National Association of Home Builders cautions that no work should start until the customer reviews and signs an agreement spelling out in detail “the what, where, how, time span, and cost of the project.”

In other words, if the contractor says, “Don’t worry about it, we don’t need a contract,” the homeowner should insist on one – or start looking for another remodeler.

The Remodelers Council, the American Homeowners Foundation, and the National Association of the Remodeling Industry appear to be on the same page regarding the contents of a standard contract.

Hahn’s group offers an eight-page contract designed with the assistance of homeowners, remodelers, architects, and lawyers. It is available, for a small charge, at www.americanhomeowners.org

Any agreement should start with the contractor’s name, address, telephone number, and license number.

By Alan J. Heavens

http://articles.philly.com/2011-05-27/business/29590305_1_home-improvements-harvard-university-s-joint-center-housing-studies

Leading the way in job growth, for a change, was the long-suffering construction industry, which added 2,400 jobs, followed by professional and business services with 1,700 and manufacturing with 1,200 new jobs.

Employment Security chief economist Dave Wallace said the construction jobs were created in heavy and civil engineering.

Six other industry categories also showed job gains last month, while 2,500 jobs were shed in government, 800 in leisure and hospitality, and 800 in a category called “other services.”

Pierce and Thurston county jobless data will be released next week. Pierce County’s jobless rate was 10.7 percent in March, and Thurston’s was 8.9 percent. The national jobless rate was 9 percent in April.

“Everything seems to be growing at this point – except government,” Wallace said. He said he expected public sector jobs to continue shrinking for months to come.

While recent job growth has been steady in Washington, state officials are eyeing an array of potential influences that could halt progress. The state Economic and Revenue Forecast Council said that economic growth measured at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011 had slowed in February and March.

Forecasters pointed to several factors: High energy prices are limiting how much consumers have to spend. The earthquake in Japan has affected the economy of a key trading partner for the state. And a battle in Congress over the federal debt ceiling could push the economy back into recession.

Wallace said there is still a long way to go before the state returns to pre-recession jobless levels.

“There are a lot of headwinds out there,” Wallace said. “I’m hoping that they’re not going to be so strong that they’re going to reverse everything.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
ROLF BOONE; Staff writer
Published: 05/19/1112:05 am

Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/05/19/1671048/jobs-increased-in-april.html#ixzz1NJARRSYO