What Does Insulation Do?

The main purpose of insulation in your new home is to conserve energy. During hot Florida summer days, the existence of wall and ceiling insulation makes it much easier for your home to retain the cool air produced by your air conditioning system. Likewise, on the rare Florida winter days, insulation helps your home to retain heat.

What Does RJM do to Insulate My New Home?

RJM meets and exceeds code to insulate all new homes. RJM installs R4.1 foil wrap insulation on all exterior walls. This insulation sites in between the exterior wall furring strips and your drywall (see image). This thin but efective layer of insulation is a great help in helping with your new home’s energy efficiency.

R4.1 Foil Insulation

When it comes to insulation the ceiling areas in your home, RJM uses ‘batt’ insulation, which is superior to the more common blown insulation used in some homes.

R-4.1 (Left/wall) and Batt Insulation (Right/ceiling)

Choosing the right insulation can save you big bucks on cooling and heating your home over the course of your lifetime. This is why RJM pays careful attention in choosing the right materials during this part of  the build.

Kids and Pets = Avoid Carpeting

This one seems pretty obvious but we thought we’d mention it. Let’s face it, kids and pets are messy no matter ‘perfect’ their parents think they are! Cleaning-up spills and pet accidents is much easier when your flooring is not carpeting. All carpeting (and the padding which sits beneath it) absorbs just about everything. And all the steam-cleaning in the world won’t get rid of the typical pet smells that even small dogs and cats leave behind. We recommend going with tile or laminate flooring throughout your house if kids or pets are in the picture.

Keep Laminate Flooring out of Wet Areas

Laminate flooring is one of our favorite upgrades but we almost never recommend it in ‘wet’ areas of your home. For example, while laminate looks nice in most bathrooms, here’s the downside. When laminate gets saturated (say, the first time your toilet gets clogged causing an overflow), it tends to respond poorly. One small flood or big spill may cause enough damage that you’ll want to replace it. For these ‘wet’ areas, tile is recommend for it’s durable characteristics.

Seal Floor Tile

This last tip is another that is rarely-followed but almost always creeps up later. Over many years of foot traffic and kitchen spills, your floor tile and grout will become stained to some level. Since this happens over a long period of time, it’s usually not noticeable until it gets bad (see image on left). Take the preventative step of sealing tile and grout will keep your tile looking cleaner, longer and will help you avoid expensive cleaning services later on down the road.

We hope these quick tips are helpful. Contact us with any questions and thanks for reading!

For many families, the kitchen is the focal point of their home. Aside from cooking and eating meals, the kitchen is a place where families and their friends tend to gather. It makes sense then that we spend a lot of time in our kitchens. For this reason, choosing the perfect kitchen finishes for your new home is pretty important. For this post, we asked Kim Bunner at RJM to share a few tips.

Tip 1: Choose Neutral Kitchen Colors

While many of the popular home improvement magazines tout the newest fads and styles, we recommend that customers take a more conservative approach to choosing kitchen cabinet, tile, counter-top, etc. colors. The reason is simple- What’s hot now may not be hot in 10 years when you try to sell your home. By choosing neutral colors for the main kitchen components, you’ll avoid aging your home or ending with a kitchen you don’t like 10 years from now.

Tip 2: Choose Single-hole Kitchen Cabinet Knobs

Simply stated, “Choose single holed knobs over double-holed, holes can be added but never taken away.” Kim encourages customers to avoid double-holed cabinet knobs as updating the knobs later may be a challenge if you’ve got two holes drilled in each cabinet door.

Tip 3: If Your Going to Upgrade, Do it in the Kitchen!

Kim tells us that most customer upgrade kitchen features for 2 reasons. First, kitchen upgrades get the most return on resales if you do decide to sell your home years down the road. Second, most customers spend a lot of time socializing in their kitchen and upgrades make the atmosphere more enjoyable.

Some common kitchen upgrades include:

• Granite counter-tops
• Sink, faucet and plumbing options
• Cabinet styles and materials
• Flooring including tile options, laminate/wood flooring, etc
• Tile and granite backsplashes
• Under cabinet lighting features
• Much more…

We hope these brief tips were helpful. We’ve include a few customized kitchen photos below. Click any one to enlarge. As always, feel free to contact us for more information.

This week, we snapped a couple of photos of a customized Wildflower model which we’re building for one of our favorite customers!

Building the Pad

Here’s a snapshot of a formed house pad, the first big step in building your dream home! For this stage, dirt is typically trucked in from other locations. In some cases, customers prefer to build a pond in their yard and will utilize the local fill for their house pad. At this stage, it’s important that the pad is placed properly (location and elevation per engineering drawings) and compressed so that it can support the house foundation, walls and total structure weight.

Forming the Foundation

Next, the home foundation us formed using  wood and other materials. Around the outer edge of the foundation, a footer is dug as the slab strength will benefit from extra thickness at the edges. Later on, the form boards will contain the wet concrete after it is poured (until it dries). After form boards are in place, steel rebar is placed and tied together (continuously) per engineering requirements to add additional strengthen the slab. A plastic barrier is also added.

Underground Plumbing and Electrical

Once the foundation form boards are in place, RJM’s electrical and plumbing contractors come in and run conduit (pipes) for any needed plumbing and electrical lines. It’s critical at this time to correctly position the conduit to avoid problems later in the build. RJM’s project managers will carefully inspect the positioning of underground utilities to ensure correct placement. To right, we’ve provide a picture of plumbing manifold and electrical conduit that will protrude from the slab after it is poured. This will mostly likely provide water and electric for the kitchen area. Also note the plastic vapor barrier that will sit between the poured slab and the termite-treated soil below.

Pouring the Slab

After all the necessary inspections are complete, RJM will pour the slab at one time to ensure a flat, strong slab which will support the weight of your new home. During the pour, several concrete trucks will be schedule to the job site and our experienced team will spread and finish the slab. We wait for ideal (warm and sunny) weather conditions for all foundation pours!

Finally, the finished product- A strong, monolithic slab engineered to support your new home for life! (Note: as the slab dries, water appears at the surface)

Stay turn for more homebuilding 101 posts!

Thanks again,

The RJM Team