Last week, the KXRM Fox21 video crew came to visit our Leed™ Platinum home in Divide, CO to interview us about the project and learn more about the first Platinum home in Southern Colorado. We discussed the energy-efficient SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels) as well as the passive solar engineering and Photovoltaic Solar panels. Below are some photos of the interview.
Stauffer & Sons Construction is very proud to announce that we are building a LEED™ Platinum home in Divide, Colorado! This is a major step for us as a green builder, as there are only four certified Platinum homes in the entire state of Colorado, so we are at the forefront of a new building movement. Upon certification, our home will be the fifth in the state, and Stauffer & Sons will have completed the first LEED™ Platinum certified home in all of Southern Colorado!
LEED™ for Homes is a green building program run by the US Green Building Council (USGBC), and is sponsored in part by the US Department of Energy (DOE).
We will be hosting an Open House when the construction is completed in October of this year, but would be very happy to take you on a trip to the jobsite before then. Feel free to email us HERE or call us at (719) 492-3982 to schedule a visit. We would be happy to meet with you and discuss our sustainable building techniques and answer any of your questions about green building.
Be sure to check back here for more news as we’ll be updating our Blog with photos and info about the job!
We’ve just launched a new channel on Youtube! From time to time, we’ll be uploading videos of projects we’re working on, slide shows, 3D renderings, and interviews with customers and our crew. We currently have three videos, but be sure to check back soon as we’ll be frequently updating the channel!
Click on the screenshot below to check it out:
A: Just about any work that can be done on an existing home will require a permit. Homeowners need to be aware that there is a huge cost associated with remodeling a home without a permit! Sometimes people want to skimp when remodeling their home, especially if the homeowners are doing the remodel themselves. This is understandable, but one area where you cannot cut corners is with permits and inspections.
Some (but not all) of the jobs that require permits are:
All of these (and more), require building permits before construction begins, and all of them require a permit whether a General Contractor or the Homeowner is doing the work. Construction performed without a permit can result in fines and penalties, and it may void your homeowners’ insurance. It also creates a legal hassles when trying to sell the home. In some cases, if a house is sold with un-permitted work and the new owner finds out after the sale, the homeowner who allowed the un-permitted work may even be subject to a lawsuit by the new owners.
Stauffer & Sons Construction highly recommends pulling all appropriate permits for every construction project, and we do not work without permits. We are qualified to pull every permit necessary to complete a custom home or remodel.
A: This question brings up a complex issue, but the answer is fairly simple. Soils in Colorado can indeed be very tricky. Colorado Springs’ terrain is technically classified as a “high desert,” but if you drive west for five minutes, you’re on a 14,000 foot mountain, and if you drive east for a few minutes, you’ve in agricultural prairie land. We have the gamut of soil types, which means a big difference in compaction, drainage, etc.
Having a soils test performed is the single most important step in building a home. If this isn’t taken care of, every other aspect of the job will suffer. Stauffer & Sons’ team is a group of experts in the Colorado building market. We’ve been building for ten years—we know the land and topography very well. Consulting with us before building can save a lot of time and headache with regard to expansive soils.
Though it may not seem obvious, having a soils test performed on-site at an existing house is also a very good idea. There are some neighborhoods and developments in town that have a history of being problematic, and it can empower potential homebuyers when finding out how the soil under their prospective home is going to act ten to fifty years down the road. Bad soil under an existing home can be a ticking time-bomb, even if there are no signs or symptoms yet. Having a soils test performed is like taking an x-ray of the property, to see what’s under the pretty outside.
A home that has been built on top of bad soil can be a nightmare: heaving of the structure or foundation, leaky basement walls and crawl spaces, and settling of foundation walls can all be caused by insufficient knowledge of the soil a home is built on.
Having said all this, Stauffer & Sons Construction has spent many years repairing structural issues in homes, and our team can fix a home that’s been built on problematic soils, even if damage has already occured. We can anchor a home to prevent any damage in the future, which sometimes can mean the difference between being able to sell a home and not being able to.
A: Wells and septic systems are installed within the same time frame: before framing or foundation work begins. (What we call “site-prep”). Here’s a little info about each of them:
Wells:
Wells today are essentially the same as they’ve been for thousands of years. In old movies, you’d see a little girl with a small bucket in her hand, skipping down to the family well to fetch water. Today is basically the same, only today we use pumps, drill bits and pipes. To begin, a hole several inches wide is drilled into the ground (usually several hundred feet) by a well driller who uses a large truck with a very long diamond-impregnated drill bit. This process can take hours, or even days, depending on the soil composition. Once the hole has been drilled, a pump is installed at the very bottom of the well which is connected to a pressure tank at the surface, which creates negative pressure to suck water out of the ground and push it into the home.
After this process, the County Health Department will test the water for simple potability (drinkability). If a more detailed analysis of the water is desired, a water sample is then taken to an environmental health laboratory. A cheap, quick way to test your water is to look in your dishwasher: is your water discoloring your plastic dishes? If so, you may have heavy minerals. Once a well is installed, there is no regular maintenance necessary. Occasionally, a well pump will need to be replaced, but they’re built to last for decades.
Septic Systems:
Waste water from toilets (called “black water”) and runoff from showers, washing machines, sinks and dishwashers (called “grey water”) is collected and drained downhill into a two-chambered tank (called a “septic tank”). The first chamber catches and holds solid waste, while the liquid waste will spill over a specially designed wall (called a “baffle”), and into the second chamber, then out of the tank into a leach field. A leach field is a network of perforated pipes buried in gravel. This disseminates all liquid waste into the ground, responsibly, legally and hygienically.
Septic systems require more maintenance and care than wells. They also cannot be abused like sewer systems can. Unlike living in a city with a sewer system where you can flush anything and everything down the toilet or use a garbage disposal to discard items never meant for a sink in the first place, septic systems need special attention. Fats and oils, as well as bones and other solid matter should never be disposed of in a septic tank. Garbage disposals are also not recommended for septic systems as they will clog up the lines faster than anything.
All septic tanks should be pumped every few year or so, depending on how many people are living in the home. Septic tanks can also be probed with a scope to visually inspect for damage. Occasionally, complications arise, particularly with leach fields. We’ve had some clients with older homes with a leach field that had become completely saturated. In this situation, a new (secondary) leach field must be dug, or disastrous results can follow: a flooded basement, toilets backing up, etc.
When Stauffer & Sons Construction builds a home, we like to set the septic tank lower than the slab (bottom of the basement) whenever possible. This avoids needing a special pump to force waste uphill—which is problematic and not recommended.
A: The answer to this can be exceptionally complicated. Only a competent land realtor can truly answer this question with any authority. Stauffer & Sons Construction has worked with land realtors in the past and is happy to make recommendations based on a client’s needs.
The short answer is that there are several tests that need to be run and questions that need to be answered before actually purchasing a home. Zoning, site location, surveying, government easements, setbacks, utilities, title history, soil percolation tests, storm drainage, and covenants are just a few of the issues involved when purchasing a lot to build a home.
Our recommendation is this: if you’re considering building a home and would like to build with us, don’t wait until you’ve purchased the land to contact us. We can best serve you if you contact us before choosing a lot. This allows us to give you a fair analysis of the property, and discuss the challenges in building, if any.
In the past, we’ve received phone calls from clients who had just purchased land with the intention of building, but after visiting the site, we had to share the bad news that the lot was completely useless for building a home on. This is a heartbreaking experience, yet is entirely avoidable. By visiting a site before the transaction is completed, we can help prevent this from happening in the future.
A: Yes! If your are the homeowner or a realtor, it is your responsibility to make sure that the subcontractors working on your project are legitimately insured, certified, registered and licensed as applicable for their trade. That’s the key—some trades have minimal requirements for doing their work, while others are highly regulated. Here’s a quick quide:
Trades that ARE required to be licensed in Colorado:
Most other trades are not required to maintain any licensing. If you have any questions about needing a licensed subcontractor for a particular aspect of a job, call the local building department to verify. In Colorado Springs, our building department is the PPRBD (Pikes Peak Regional Building Department). You can reach them at (719) 327-2880.
A: Great question! Stauffer & Sons Construction is a Residential General Contractor, which means that we oversee the construction of entire homes, as well as whole-house remodels. Theoretically, there may be some projects that are too big for us to handle, but we haven’t come across one yet! Our previous experience ranges from building a single deck, all the way up to developing a multi-million dollar ranch on several acres with multiple homes. Our expertise is broad, and we’re willing to tackle almost any job.
On the smaller side, however, we don’t normally do single-trade jobs. i.e. “I just need one bedroom painted,” or “I have two inch hole in my kitchen drywall that needs a patch.” These little jobs are best given to smaller subcontractors who specialize in these fields. Over the years, we’ve built up a comprehensive list of some of the best subcontractors in town, and we would be happy to recommend one for you if this is your need. If you’re not sure whether your job is “big enough” or not, call us! We’re happy to discuss your project with you, even if we don’t end up working with you.
A: Soils in Colorado tend to be expansive—meaning they gain volume, or “swell” when wet or frozen. This swelling is very strong, and can shift entire foundations of even the largest homes (though usually only by an unnoticeable amount.)
Basement walls sit directly on top of the home’s foundation, which makes them susceptible to moving when the ground becomes saturated with rain or when temperatures dip below freezing. Floating the basement walls allows the soil to expand without adversely affecting the home. This method, while effective, is not entirely fail-safe, and even if your basement walls are floated, the ground can still move enough to make small cracks appear in the drywall or in the floor tiles. However, these are just cosmetic concerns, and don’t affect the overall integrity of the structure.
