St Augustine Real Estate Builders and Contractors

When it comes to New Home Construction on the First Coast it is VERY IMPORTANT to make sure that you have an experienced, licensed and bonded Contractor in your corner. Fortunately the current building codes for St Johns County are the strictest in the state and the Building Inspectors are among the most through you will find anywhere. Although we have avoided a major hurricane for years now (they seem to skirt us, preferring the Outer Banks of N. C. to our sandy beaches), Hurricane Andrew taught us all a lesson about poor construction engineering. As a consequence we now have some of the finest, most durable homes built in the U.S.

Construction Methods;

Common Construction methods can be divided into three separate categories.

Wood Frame Construction typically consists of 2x4 walls and roof trusses covered with either 3/4 in plywood or similar material. The structures are typically finished in either siding (wood, composite or vinyl), stucco or bricked / rock fascia. The structures may sit on either a concrete block foundation or on a wood framed floor joice system.

Pros; Fairly inexperience and simple to build.
Cons;This method of construction is often quite lengthy. It may take as long 6 - 12 months to complete your project. Its important to remember that each month during the construction period your making an interest payment on your construction loan for a house your not living in. Our experience has been that even with a good Contractor you MUST take the time to stay on top of things wile the structure is being built. I personally did not do this, assuming that the builder would do so for me and now I have the pleasure of looking at 2 walls that are not square and plum as well as three years later I am still finding small problems with the construction. My small house took 5 months to complete and after fighting with the contractor (email me for his name ;) for months over problems that should have been resolved in the first place I simply gave up and fixed the problems myself. Unfortunately Wood Frame construction is inherently troubled by the quality of materials and lack of craftsmanship that is all too common in the industry.

Concrete Block structures are typically built on concrete"Monolithic Slabs". These solid concrete foundations offer several advantages over wooden floor systems. First they are simply a more stable foundation to build on. Once a slab has had time to settle it is unlikely that you will experience any settling issues (crack in walls, door and window openings, etc.). They are also proof against what is a very serious threat to your investment, Terminates. Terminates must eat through the concrete to get to your walls, that they cannot do. In typical a wood frame home the soil around the home must be constantly treated (yearly) to avoid termite infestation.