Outdoor Storage Shed Building Materials – Things to Remember

Picking up the right shed building materials is vital when you are building your outdoor storage shed. If you are a DIY person you know how much of planning and work goes behind each creation. But if you dont buy the right shed building materials all your time, energy, money, blood sweat and tears is poured down the toilet if your shed collapses, just because you had used the inferior quality materials by squeezing the last bargain from the hardware store. This article gives you some idea about what you should consider while picking the shed building materials for your outdoor storage shed.

If you are a DIY guy wanting to build your own outdoor storage shed, you will start the process by researching on the shed plans and there are plenty of online resources to pick the shed building plans from. In fact there are many softwares like AutoCad, Coral Draw using which you can make your shed plan by yourself more effectively in the computer.

Many hardware stores also provide you the shed building plans. But when it comes to picking up the materials for your outdoor storage shed how far are you sure that what you are choosing is indeed the best one? Ofcourse the shed plan itself comes up with a list of suggested materials, but there are hundreds of thousands of materials to pick and if you want to have a better deal, and the last thing you want to do is run around to every hardware store like an headless chicken to pick the right shed building materials for your outdoor storage shed.

The item mostly required for building your shed is lumber. You will be mostly using two-by-eights, four-by-fours and two-by-fours along with the specific lumber size mentioned in your shed … Read the rest

How to Get the Most Out of Your Cavity Wall

Until the development of the cavity wall in the UK in the 19th century, houses were prone to dampness and humidity resulting from water being absorbed through the masonry of the external walls.

Cavity walls are external building walls which incorporate an air gap. This can be within the wall structure itself as in hollow block walls, between two solid walls or between two partitions separated by a narrow air gap.

When water is absorbed, it never reaches the inner wall. The space or cavity works to drain it back out through weep holes at the bottom of the wall.

In rainy climates such as that in the UK, protection against moisture is vital to prevent the buildup of damp, mould and eventual disintegration of the masonry under the onslaught of moisture.

Moisture protection is something cavity walls do effectively but they offer a number of other advantages. The most important are heat and sound insulation. This means that cavity walls are more energy efficient as well as being quieter than conventional walls.

However, if you really want to get the most out of them, you can expand the effectiveness of your walls for greater insulation and protection from fire.

First, let’s look at how to boost the insulating properties of your cavity walls. Energy conservation is a major issue nowadays with everyone looking to minimize their energy bills. One way is to enhance the thermal insulation properties of your external walls.

You can do this by adding various types of insulation and barriers added to your cavities. The structure makes it easy to fit insulation between the cavity and the inner skin of the wall.

This kind of insulation can lower the heat lost from convection by up to 35% which can result in significant savings on … Read the rest