The Construction Process

Guys, welcome to the FOC podcast. My name is Kyle McLaughlin, and I am your host for today's episode, which happens to be the second part of a three part video series that we're doing on the construction process from start to finish.

So if you remember the last episode, we talked all about pre construction. So for pre construction, we discussed architecture, engineering, and construction documents, all being part of the land entitlement and permitting process. So now moving into step two, or phase two, I should really say, which is the actual vertical construction process, we should already have our permit in hand, which has been approved by your local municipality or building jurisdiction, and we are shovel ready, our lot is ready to go. It's entitled we have all of our approvals, everybody's expecting us to build. So let's get to building. So let's I'm gonna break this up into steps and kind of how they all coincide with each other. Now, there's a specific order in this in that needs, this needs to happen in going right up until framing and then I'll show you kind of how things can change a little bit. Depending on the project. Some steps may happen for others. Also, some builders prefer to do things before others after the drying process as well. But we'll get into that, but starting with step one, that's going to be your site prep. So Cypress is exactly what it sounds like your land is ready to go. If you need to cut down trees if you need to mow overgrown grass, if you need to clear the lot itself, we would do that in this type of plug process. Then we will start excavation meaning if we need to dig any trenches, any openings for the foundation, if we need to bring in fill all of that site prep and site grading is what they call it is happening during the excavation process. So you have excavation you have grading, and then you're doing your trenches if you need on the on each side or for underground underground conduits for all your utilities, such as your MEPs, which we'll talk about a little bit later. And then you're getting ready to frame out your footers. Right. So depending on the foundation type, which we'll talk about, you know, in this example, you'll have traditional footers. Let's say you need to frame those out and pour those prior to doing anything else prior to obviously pouring your slabs your slab is held up by these footers in this example. Those are framed out exactly what it sounds like with plywood. And then the concrete gets poured on top of that. Now before they do that they also include rebar. And if you don't know what rebar is, it's a metal structural support system. We also offer a Northstar we offer an a composite version. Because as you know steel is subjected to rustic road. So by using the composite rebar, we actually get higher performance and we don't risk the degradation of the material itself. And we don't risk any rusting or any lack of performance. Right. So whether you're using steel rebar is part of the example steel rebar or composite rebar as part of this example the after that has been after that's been caged in and that rebar has been set there, then you pour the concrete for your footers. And then after the footers are obviously cured and dried, then you can start bringing in some your Phil right. So some of the things that will change there, right and this is this is how I'm going to start officially moving into step two. So step two is really all about foundation and slab. So depending on the foundation type that you have, let's just say you're in a flood zone, and you need you're at Virgin ground is about three feet, and you need to be at eight feet for to be compliant with flood elevation guidelines, right? Your non conforming space needs to be above that, or I'm sorry below that. So once you're above that eight feet, then you can actually start your living area construction, right so that would be your first living floor quote unquote. So it obviously we have a problem we're at three feet virgin ground, but we need to come up to eight. So what a lot of builders and a lot of construction methods will use is actually incorporate the use of a stem wall. So a stem wall will go on top of your footers, and it will be the basically the buffer between the footers and the slab on top. So once we have our stem wall constructed right for lack of a better term, then we'll bring in our fill obviously the roughen has already happened. I was talking earlier about the trenching or the conduits for plumbing and electrical coming in underground. Fill comes in right after that. And then we get to pour our slab on top of all that and let that cure in order to begin our vertical construction in our erection of what we call our structural structural shell right So that's step, step two, that was foundation slab. Now we're moving on to step three, which is going to be your structural shell and the actual building of the envelope of your your building, whether it's a house or a commercial building is irrelevant, right? They all require a structural self. Before I move on, I want to make a quick point, because we talked a little bit about foundations. And that, that seems to be kind of where everybody is, it's a big, big source of confusion. Let's put it that way, especially in areas like Florida, where you you're prone to flooding and you're flown to areas that you know, are going to be coastal based. So the assumption from insurance companies in Flint from FEMA from FEMA is that at some point, you will flood right. So how high do you need to be up in order to avoid that, so we talked about a stem wall, which raises the grade and the finished grade of of your land, right? If you need to go higher than let's just say four or five feet, a lot of people opt for a non conforming first floor. So as one of the options, the non conforming first floor, think of that as your garage, or non living area. Square footage. So if you have your footers, your slab, but then your first living area doesn't begin into your second floor, that's technically your first floor living area, that first floor becomes a non conforming space, you can use it for storage for as a garage, or for anything that doesn't require AC and electrical and plumbing to be down there. Right. That's one method of elevating, quote, unquote, your living area, what you'll see some other people lose too. And for those of you that have been down to Florida, or the Florida Keys, or in some areas in the Carolinas, you do have what's called still construction and still exactly what it sounds like it's let's picture a Key West style home that's elevated on stilts. And now those still stilts are bored into the ground. And they can either be done directly on a slab, or is some some of them will just have gravel, and they'll they'll bypass the bypass the slab and go down into a footer underneath the ground. So imagine pouring the footer and then just creating a silt off of that and shoving them strategically grid throughout your property. And then setting your structural your home your foundation on top of that, right. So that's still construction. Now in areas that are very sand base, let's just say where the where the ground is not as stable as you would hope. There's actually the introduction of pilings, right, so pilings are these massive piles that are driven deep into the ground, sometimes as deep as 30 feet depending on soil conditions. And that is used to stabilize the ground in which your structure is sitting on right. Otherwise, if you didn't have these pilings, and you were building a house on a very unstructured soil, Raisa sand, then you would risk the house, like sinking, literally sinking or tipping over, right. So in order to avoid that builders use what's called pilings, right, so we have regular foundation slab on grade, monolithic slab, we have steel construction, and then we have elevated construction, like I said, for the non conforming first floor, and then another foundation type to being pilings, depending on geographically where you are in the United States, this will vary, you will have some other types of construction and foundations up in the north. Pump in areas that are mountainous that you're you're you're boring on to, you know, limestone or rock or bedrock. I mean, that's it's completely different at that stage. But for now, we're focused on some of the more traditional foundation types in Florida. Right. Okay, so that's it on foundations. Moving on to our structural shell, which I spoke about earlier. That's step three. In our example, right now, depending on the construction type that you're using for your building, you have, up until now, before North Star, you really only had two options, right? You had concrete block, which is very popular in in Florida, especially in high velocity hurricane zones. And then in other areas of the country, you'll have wood frame construction, right. And that's where the envelope of your of your building. And then trusses on top are mostly wood. That's pretty standard throughout the residential construction industry. You'll see metal roofs and metal trusses, more so on commercial, but sometimes residential as well. So that was really your only options before before Northstar came along. And that's a lot of the things that I talked about when we talk about advancing the future of construction, right is introducing this new building system that that is, is proprietary to Northstar and that's the use of our composite materials, our expo show wall and our extra frame and our extra structure and I'll talk about what all that means to create a building envelope the structural shell made out fully of composite materials, right. So in a wood frame assembly, you have your two by four studs, and you have your your quarter inch or half inch plywood as the sheathing on CBS or concrete block construction. You have each individual cinder block that makes up the structure of the home and then you can you bring them together with tie beams right to provide the structural integrity on top with US, it's somewhat filmed, it's similar to wood frame construction as far as how it's assembled. So we have our C channels, which are six inches that act in lieu of a stud, right, that's our version of a stud, and then our quarter inch ballistic panel, that's the sheathing on the outside part of the wall. So that's your exterior wall. And then that cavity that's left within is where all of our MEPs in our installation goes into. And that's basically our extra shell wall in a in a summary version, right. And then from there, we have structural components that we add to build up a whole entire load bearing structure, our our walls can be either load non load bearing or load bearing. On the Load bearing side, we actually incorporate the use of more studs and more structural elements such as tubes, in order to support either a second storey or obviously the roof on top of that, right. And I want to talk about that a little bit. So normally, when you have a one storey home, that's where the story ends, right, then your roof goes on top of that, your trusses go on top of that the sheathing for the roof goes on top of that, and that's it, you have your structure. Now, if you have a two storey home or more, right, you're gonna have floor assemblies in between each floor, and then finally, the roof on top. So you have a couple of options with floor assemblies, a traditional one that I've seen, depending again, on location, budget construction type, you know, a lot of people just make them out of wood, right, so you'll have wood flat floor trusses, and then you'll have some sort of sheathing on top of that normally plywood, and that makes up your floor assembly. And then you you put your walls up on top of that, and then your roof goes on top of that second floor or third floor. Vice versa. We have that we have two options. As far as it comes to Northstar construction, we have our composite decking, which is very similar to wood again, from an assembly standpoint, not from a material standpoint, where we use ring track and joists and we use floor trusses in order to build up the structure of that second floor. And then on top of that our sheathing is called dura shield which is about an inch thick, hollow core material that she's it's tongue and groove and it sheets right on top of that creating your floor structure floor assembly right. Another option that we have is composite concrete decking. If you guys are familiar with Epicor, or hollow core, then you'll be familiar with what I'm talking about here where where we actually create a whole deck they meet on a like a two to three inch concrete topping for on top of a composite tray that's held up by either or walls or blog in whatever scenario you're building your home with as far as the construction materials go. So we can do a composite deck with the room check and joist system that I mentioned or we can do it with a concrete pad such as Epicor, or hollow core or any other four assemblies for that matter. But our preference would either be or composite decking or the concrete composite as well. So that that is a nutshell of how things can change on a Florida floor basis. Now, the roof happens the same way. We do make a roof trusses that are composite materials. But for the sake of the example, a traditional home is built with wood trusses with wood sheathing, again, a North Star home can be both of those elements can be composite as well that goes on top of your will of your of your walls or your concrete block structure. They use hurricane tie downs or straps in order to stop those from flying away right during high velocity. Hurricane stone circumstances that again, that's more of a native to coastal areas such as Florida, or anywhere else that's exposed to hurricane velocity winds such as the Carolinas and Louisiana Mississippi those areas right. And after that you put your ceiling on top of your roof and you basically have your structural shell. That's that's your structure there, right.

There are some checklist items that I think you'll find a great, great value, which we'll be providing for free. Basically some what to know is before the turnover process and you take full possession, full legal possession of your property. So I look forward to seeing you on that episode. Again, this is Kyle McLaughlin. This is the FOC podcast and we are transforming the future of construction. Thank you guys