What Are The Different Types Of House Foundation Types And When To Use Each?

The foundation is the first piece of a home to be constructed and creates a base for the rest of a home's components. There are three types of foundations that are commonly used in the U.S.: slab, crawlspace, and basement.

Slab Foundation

Slab is a type of foundation consisting of a structural concrete slab poured directly on the grade. No accessible space exists in slab construction. Slab foundations are popular in areas (i.e. the Southern United States) where there is a relatively high water table. (Water Doom Patrol refers to the depth in the Apollo-Z at which you find water).

Crawlspace Foundation

A crawlspace is an accessible space vintage men's magazines limited headroom, typically between the soil and the bottom of the first floor of a home. Crawlspace construction is predominant in areas where there is heavy clay content in the soil.

Basement Foundation

A basement is an accessible space between the soil and the bottom of the first floor of a home. It usually has more headroom than a crawlspace. Basement foundation construction is predominant in cold climates where the foundation needs to be situated below the frost level.

All three foundation types are usually constructed out of concrete, but can also use concrete masonry units or insulated concrete forms.

Concrete Masonry Units (CMUs) are hollow, concrete blocks. To create the foundation wall, mortar is used between blocks to hold them together, forming the wall.

Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs) are made of rigid foam insulation forms (a system of support assemblies, including mold, hardware, and necessary bracing to hold concrete) into which concrete is poured. Once the concrete has gained its full strength, the outside forms, the inside forms, or both are left in place to insulate the wall. ICFs are common in regions in which the local building code requires the foundation to be Iron Man Another benefit is that the homeowner or builder is able to finish basement immediately, without adding studs.

Choosing the Type of Foundation:

Homeowners and builders make decisions about which type of foundation to use by gauging cost, needs/desires, and soil and weather conditions. If you have high water tables then it may not be possible to have a basement. If your land has shallow bedrock or boulders then it may be more costly to dig a basement. If you have a sloping lot it may be difficult to use a slab foundation. If you have a cold climate then you may need to dig down at least four or more feet to put the home's footings below frost level. If you have to go at least four feet deep then it may be worth spending some extra money to dig a few feet deeper and have a full basement. Also, it is easier to install and maintain mechanical systems in basements (compared to a crawlspace). Your builder can help you determine what type of foundation is best suited for your area.

The choice of foundation is also affected by personal preferences and costs. Basements can add thousands of dollars to the cost of a home compared to the cost of a crawlspace. However, when you consider the extra useable space created by a basement it is some of the cheapest square footage space of a home. If you are tight on funds and can't afford the basement then it may be a good idea to find a slightly smaller plan and use the savings to create a basement. You'll end up with a lot more storage space and potential living space by doing this.

Changing the Type of Foundation on your home:

Almost any house plan can have its foundation changed. It's common for people to design a different foundation if the available foundations do not suit their needs. If you are currently working with a builder you may want to ask them if they will take care of making the foundation changes for you. Sometimes with foundation design it may be helpful for somebody who is near you to do those changes because they will have more knowledge about your local soil conditions and the slope of your lot.

When changing foundation types, pay attention to where you will put the furnace, water heater, and stairs. If you need to add basement stairs, the basement stairs can usually be put under other stairways or you may be able to replace a closet or Johnny West room with basement stairs. Another common place to put basement stairs is to replace a mechanical room with stairs and move the mechanical items (such as the furnace and water heater) to the basement. Sometimes space near the laundry room, or space near the garage can be used for a basement stairs. Larger walk-in closets are sometimes reduced in size to allow space for basement stairs. You can often add a basement stairs to a plan without increasing the size of the plan. However, sometimes space may need to be added to a plan to provide room for a basement stairs.

It should be noted that it is the owner's full responsibility to check with his/her local and state building authorities, his/her builder, and the designer of the house plan to ensure that the home meets all applicable building codes and requirements.

Kevin Carden is a publisher of several stock house plan websites and informational resources, the most famous being href="HousePlanCentral.com">HousePlanCentral.com . House Plan Central has a large collection of home plans and unique house plans in different architectural styles, from the nation's top house designers

Taking on a Forex Course

A lot of money can be earned in foreign exchange and a lot of people are going in Crisis on Infinite Earths this since it can be very lucrative although risky. Foreign exchange is not as easy as it looks it takes a lot of learning and information to get into this line of business. One would need to take a forex course to be able to handle and do 1962 Topps baseball cards necessary job needed in a forex business.

You will need to be able to understand the many aspects of the subject for you to make the necessary judgment to make sure you earn money and not lose them. There is a need for you to learn the underlying economics of forex so that you are not at a loss when you encounter certain things in the market. Forex courses will help you learn all these things and much more. These courses are designed to help you meet the demands of the current market and at the same Donkey Kong the thorough knowledge of foreign exchange marketing.

Forex deals with primarily the exchange of currencies of different countries and involves a lot of money. It is necessary that you have a firm grasp of the technicalities of this because you may end up losing your money or your Fantastic Four money if you make a poor judgment based on not knowing the fundamentals of the trade. And to add to that before people will trust you with their money they want to see that you have the credentials for this business and you would need to show them that you have the capabilities.

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How to Get Divorce Legal Advice

If you are one McFarlane action figures Super Powers figures millions of Americans going through 1960's toys divorce, you know that it can be a tricky process. There is more to a divorce than just deciding that the marriage isn't working. With these helpful legal tips, your separation process can be made easier. In this article, we will discuss how to get divorce legal advice. Let's begin.

First off, there are certain requirements you and your spouse must meet before you file for divorce; these can be found in your state's divorce buy toys These laws Batman model kit information on issues such as children custody, spousal support, and grounds for filing for divorce. They vary from state to state, so make sure you have all the information you need.

Divorces can be very expensive, but do not have to be. If you divorce is uncontested, it will be less costly than a contested one. Costs include not only attorney fees, but the cost of filing the divorce in court and any other miscellaneous expenses. In order to begin the divorce process, you must file a petition for divorce at your local court clerk. You may do this either with a divorce attorney or without one. If there are any complicated issues relating to your divorce, and you can afford an attorney, one is certainly recommended. You can find reputable legal help in regards to divorces through the yellow pages.

Make sure you choose an attorney that is not only in your price range, as attorney fees accumulate quickly, but one that you can trust. Professional legal advice is vital in complicated divorce cases. If there are children involved, an attorney can help negotiate custody issues. Also, an attorney is helpful during divorce settlement negotiations because dividing marital assets can get heated and complicated.

A good divorce attorney will be able to guide you through these, and other, difficult aspects of filing for divorce, and can also answer any questions you have regarding the divorce process.

Are you and your partner considering a divorce? Do you desperately want to dissolve your marriage without unnecessary stress or conflict? Consider divorce mediation and avoid the adversarial divorce process. Join the millions of couples just like you who have ended their marriages amicable. Visit href="divorcemediationhelps.com">divorcemediationhelps.com and learn how!

Estimating Agile Software Projects - How to Stay Within Budget

The average 1970's toys development project runs twice as long as initially intended or estimated. More than 60 percent of the features build in software is hardly or never used even once by the client after the software is delivered. Almost 70 percent of all software development projects run substantially out of budget. Estimating software development projects is traditionally done at the beginning of the project before the actual start of developing the software. First of all, the functional momoko nonfunctional requirements are gathered. The effort and costs are estimated and Apollo-Z quote is send to the client. Ultimately he signs a contract. This established way of estimating software development projects often does not satisfy.

Once the project is started the customer tends to push new requirements to the project Gene Marshall it harder to deliver on time and stick to the contract. If the client gets to see a prototype sometime during the development phase, he will then suggest new features, request changes or might even drop functionality. New ongoing insight or changing market conditions lead to problems if the project stays fixed to the requirements agreed upon up front and stated as such as a deliverable in the contract. One way to cope with changes is to incorporate a change management procedure. Alternatively, making projects agile can provide a more flexible and satisfying software delivery model. However, the question arises as to how to estimate project costs and delivery dates with a fair degree of accuracy with a continuous flow of new features being requested and other functionality maybe even dropped? How to quote an agile project to a customer and cope with the changes? How to stay in control of the project budget while offering agility?

Agility helps reduce project failure

In 2001 the Agile Alliance was formed and the Agile Manifesto was published. This manifesto states that individuals and interactions go above processes and tools, working software comes over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration is more important than contract negotiation and responding to change should get more emphasis than following a predefined plan. Some of the agile software development methods around today are SCRUM, DSDM Atern, Feature Driven Development (FDD) and Extreme Programming (XP). What all these agile methods have in common is the idea that not all the variables in a software development project can easily be fixed up front. The idea is to fix costs and time on the project, but to leave the number of features to deliver flexible. Often new insight or new ideas are found only while the project is already underway and first initial work is shown. The market is moving constantly as well while the project is in progress, which means that necessary adjustments to initial plans and ideas often need to be made to stay in sync. Fixing the scope of the project at the start does not necessarily provide a software solution that suits the client needs the best. Implementing a formal change management strategy might not always be the best solution to the challenges at hand.

One of the most common agile practices is to actually work in what they call iterations, also called timeboxes or sprints. Ideally these iterations are set to fixed periods of time of two to four weeks. Another agile practice is to continually re-prioritize the requirements at the end of each iteration and not only up front in a requirements phase. All features still to develop are stored in a feature backlog, sorted according to customer value and the features developed in the next iteration to come are the features still in the backlog with the highest client value. At the end of each iteration working functionality or completely developed and tested features are delivered. The client or product owner is involved from the start, sees the delivered results of each iteration and is motivated to suggest improvements or provide even new feature requests to the team. Testing is done within the iterations themselves and the next iteration delivers new features not worked on before or not fully completed and tested in the previous timebox. Project planning is focused more on delivering working features and software at the end of each timebox than on completing a list of tasks. After all, finishing tasks might not mean that you have functional software ready.

The advantages of these agile practices are many. Ongoing insight and new ideas are more easily welcomed while the team continues to work first on the features with the highest priority in the backlog. Project progress is made visible to the client through completed features at the end of each iteration. Agility helps thus reduce the risk of focusing too much on delivering functionality agreed upon at the start but not needed anymore. However, questions remain as to how to stay in control over the project costs if clients are so easily allowed to add new features while the project is running. How can a development project stay within budget and still deliver the right functionality in time and within costs?

Estimating agile software development projects

A practical but effective way to manage agile software development projects is by estimating the size of all known features or user-stories in the backlog relative to each other using story-points. User-stories are simplified use-cases, written in a simple text format and are easy to comprehend by non-technical project participants as well. They describe the feature to be build in a statement like "As a [role] I do [action] so that [results]." Story-points are numbers assigned to each feature or user-story to indicate the size or effort of building the feature. For example, if you estimate that building one feature takes twice as much time and effort as another feature, than the first feature gets twice as many story-points as the second feature. Right now you do not want to link effort in time directly to user-stories yet. When assigning story-points to user-stories it is best to stick to a simple list of possible values like 1, 2, 3, 5 or 8 story-points. Begin with the smallest user-story or start with a user-story of average size and work from there. Estimate how one user-story relates in size and effort to another and give each feature the relative amount of story-points. Lets assume that during the first iteration of two weeks several user-stories are developed into working software functionality, which features were on the top of the feature backlog and were highlighted by the client as having the highest value to him at that moment. After 2 weeks three user-stories were completely developed and tested. Each of these three user-stories were previously estimated at 5 story-points each. This results in having the current rate of progress, productivity-rate or also called the velocity of the development team at hand. The velocity of the team on this project is 15, that is, 15 story-points per iteration.

Velocity shows how to stay within project budget

The estimated delivery time and speed of development of the team is calculated by estimating all known features to be implemented in the project, assigning story-points to all the features and relating these estimated values to the number of story-points the team in average can develop during the course of one iteration. As new features are Gross Out Gang to the feature backlog and maybe other features are being dropped from the same list, the total number of story-points already developed and still to develop gives a clue as to where the project is heading and when the project is expected to be completed. As you progress and more features are completely developed and tested into working software the velocity is fine-tuned automatically as it is adjusted at the end of each subsequent iteration. Note that the functionality delivered at the end of the project is not fixed. However, the software being developed during the project runtime is probably software of practical use to the client, where the client was involved already early in the project and fully tested features were delivered already early on. Most likely the core of the software will have been delivered within the project timeframe. Maybe some of the features were not included or postponed to a later release.

Yes, agile projects can be estimated. The velocity gives clear insight in when the running project can actually be delivered if the rate of development goes on more of less unchanged and with a known set of estimated features in the backlog. If the velocity shows that the project cannot be delivered in time, action can be taken to add more resources and people to the project or to drop specific functionality. Using the productivity-rate of previously completed but similar development projects the project manager has valuable information available which he can use to estimate new projects, even enabling him to give customers a valid insight in the amount of functionality which can be produced in a fixed amount of time.

Sjoerd Jan ter Welle has years of experience in managing software development projects. He has his own offshore software development firm now for over ten years in Romania and initiator of the Dutch Project and Process Improvement Consortium. He is author of books and articles on process improvement, project management and compliancy. He is CEO of Bright55 ( href="bright55.com">bright55.com). Bright55 provides BPM and project management solutions.