A Crash Course on the Four Control Layers

This post first appeared on the Andersen Windows ProViews Blog.

Shelter is a human necessity.  A place to be warm and dry.  A place to be safe and healthy.  These are the main purposes for every new home that gets built.  As our species has moved out of caves and into, first, stone structures, then concrete and mass wood structures, and finally to what we live in today, our expectations for health and comfort have increased.  We want our homes to stay dry, but not too dry.  Temperatures are expected to be comfortable, and sometime consistent with little variation throughout the home.  The quality of the indoor air should be healthy to breathe.  And we want our investment to last for a long, long time.  A newer expectation is that we do not want to spend a lot of time, effort or money maintaining the structure.

This new, solid stone home has a much different longevity expectation than the traditional wood framed home. Then again, both the cost (about $10,000,000 and time to construct (3 years) are much different than the typical home we build today.

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Construction Design-Insects and Rodents

When I purchased my old home, the 1952 Cape in late 2018, the basement area looked good.  Someone took the time to paint all the concrete walls and floor and cleaned everything up to look nice.  Shortly after we moved in, the cat caught a mouse and then the following summer, the basement became a bug gathering place.  Ants, spiders and other bugs apparently wintered in another area and returned to my house in the spring.

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