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Question for you all, since you're always knowledgeable about these things. I want to put a ceiling fan in a room. The room is on one of the ends or "wings" of the house, has an HVAC "out" register in the near-middle of the ceiling, and is always always always scorching hot or freezing cold. I know this is caused by a lack of cross ventilation where the cold/hot air would be exchanged for hot/cold. The attic goes across the top of the main part of the house, then sort of squishes down to a lower roof where you can't...

While we await The Fed’s FOMC rate decision at 2pm (as if it will change!), we had some good news and bad news today. First, the good news. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released their weekly mortgage applications indices this morning. Applications rose 1.8% from the previous week. Unfortunately, mortgage purchase applications fell 1.37% while refinancing applications rose 2.80% and is at its highest level since the week ending January 18, 2013. The HARP share of refinance applications increased from 32 percent last week to 34 percent this week, the highest level since MBA began tracking HARP applications in February...

Q1 Real GDP was released by the BEA this morning. It was a mixture of disappointment and good news (for retailers). Real GDP grew by 2.5% (annualized), but analysts were expecting 3.0%. So, this was a swing and a miss. According to the BEA, “The acceleration in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an upturn in private inventory investment, an acceleration in PCE, an upturn in exports, and a smaller decrease in federal government spending that were partly offset by an upturn in imports and a deceleration in nonresidential fixed investment.” Personal consumption expenditures rose 3.2% in Q1,...

Residential construction shot up significantly in March as homebuilders broke ground on the most multi-family homes in seven years, a report from the Commerce Department showed Tuesday. Housing starts rose 7 percent from upwardly revised levels reported in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of about 1.04 million units, according to the Commerce Department, almost 47 percent higher than levels reported in March 2012. Construction activity significantly outpaced projections from economists polled by Bloomberg, which put starts closer to 930,000. Starts reported in March also inched toward what economists consider a more normal level of about 1.5 million annual...

he USA is experiencing an investor-related housing recovery via foreclosure sales, flipping and investors. But as foreclosure discounts normalize, will the housing market continue to recover? Probably not if the deleveraging occurs in the housing market. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released this morning, mortgage applications fell -3.76% from the previous week. Purchase applications fell -5.15% (NSA) while refinancing applications fell -3.27%. Tight credit still prevails along with negative equity and a glue-like employment recovery. The share of applications that are for refinancing fell slightly to 76.9%. The only product that actually grew was government Adjusted Rate Mortgages...

Every year, employment drops by almost 3 million during January. While the drop was worse than 2012, it is on par with the drops in 2010 and 2011. Of course, the Census Bureau whips out the old X-12 ARIMA smoothing models (maybe even the new and improved X-13!) and produces this much more palatable chart. Phew! That is much better for the media (and economy cheerleaders like Mark Zandi) to tout. Thanks to the ARIMA smoothing model, employment INCREASED by +157.000! As my students know, I like the raw, unsmoothed numbers. All the smoothed numbers tell you is … over...

Housing starts climbed above the lowest points since 1960. That shows you how dreadful the housing market has been since peaking (locally) in September 2005. One-unit starts rose 8.07% in December while multiple unit starts (aka, apartments) rose 20.28%. As we already know, homebuilder confidence remain flat even though starts are improving, particularly apartment starts. Meanwhile, the number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance payments fell more than forecast last week to the lowest level in five years, pointing to further improvement in the labor market. Applications for jobless benefits decreased by 37,000 to 335,000 in the week...

Open source house design community WikiHouse demonstrated their construction system at Milan Design Week, providing a visual update on the project. Their goal is to make it possible for anyone to download and print a timber structure using a CNC milling machine, and then fit the pieces together to build an affordable house ready for cladding, wiring, insulation and plumbing...

FREEPORT, Ill.—Titan International Inc. has laid off about 60 workers at its plant in Freeport because of slumping demand for construction tires. The cuts are the last in a series of layoffs that began shortly before the November election at the company's three U.S. tire plants, according to Titan CEO Maurice Taylor Jr. All the cutbacks are part of the firm's construction tire segment. Quincy, Ill.-headquartered Titan's tire factories in Bryan, Ohio, and Des Moines, Iowa, also experienced layoffs during the past two months, about 90 between the two facilities, Taylor said...

For the second day in a row, the Obama adminstration criticized Israel on Tuesday for its decision to build new housing units in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, often wrongly described by anti-Israeli media as an "illegal settlement in east Jerusalem". “We are deeply disappointed that Israel insists on continuing this pattern of provocative action,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. “These repeated announcements and plans of new construction run counter to the cause of peace. "Israel’s leaders continually say that they support a path towards a two-state solution, yet these actions only put that goal further...

If you wanted to know all about the Big Bang, you'd ring up Carl Sagan, right ? And if you wanted to know about desert warfare, the man to call would be Norman Schwarzkopf, no question about it. But who would you call if you wanted the top expert on American usage, to tell you the meaning of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution ? That was the question I asked A.C. Brocki, editorial coordinator of the Los Angeles Unified School District and formerly senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishers -- who himself had been recommended to me...

The first U.S. multi-family condo built of used shipping containers is slated to break ground in Detroit early next year. Strong, durable and portable, shipping containers stack easily and link together like Legos. About 25 million of these 20-by-40 feet multicolored boxes move through U.S. container ports a year, hauling children’s toys, flat-screen TVs, computers, car parts, sneakers and sweaters. But so much travel takes its toll, and eventually the containers wear out and are retired. That’s when architects and designers, especially those with a “green” bent, step in to turn these cast-off boxes into student housing in Amsterdam, artists’...

Some architects believe that in order to build the sustainable cities of the future, we need to look back to the log cabin era and build “skyscrapers” out of wood. Just over a century ago, the architects and engineers who invented the skyscraper set us on the path to becoming an urban world. Tall buildings of concrete and steel helped make urban density—and the increased sustainability that comes with it—possible. But the buildings themselves come at a heavy, and often hidden, environmental price. Concrete and steel are some of the most energy-intensive materials on the planet. The manufacture and transport...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The FDNY is at a high-rise under construction in Midtown where a crane has collapsed. The call came in around 2:30 p.m. Monday at the building on West 57th Street. The top of the crane, about 75-stories up, could be seen dangling down from the luxury building. WATCH LIVE: CBS 2 | LISTEN NOW: 1010 WINS | WCBS 880 All residents of buildings on West 57th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues have been ordered to move to lower floors. All others have been told to avoid the area. There is no falling debris, but the...

It's the eight-legged discovery of the millennium! An endangered species of spider not seen in more than three decades unexpectedly appeared in Northwest San Antonio two weeks ago. Biologists and science buffs, rejoice. There's just one downside if you're an area commuter: The spider, no bigger than a dime, showed up in the middle of a $15.1 million highway underpass project on Texas 151 at Loop 1604. And in this particular case of nature vs. man-made road, the arachnid wins. The highway project is on hold indefinitely. SNIP . . . No other spiders have been spotted in the hole...

Photos are from: The World Trade Center: A Tribute by Bill Harris Requiem World Trade Center: Once Upon a Time in New York City by Hideaki Sato

The U.S. State Dept. today revealed that it has begun searching for contractors to design and build a new embassy compound at The Hague in The Netherlands, a project that could cost as much $210 million, according to its own estimates. Development of the 10-acre site will include a new office building, Marine security guard quarters, shops annex, utility building, "perimeter security, vehicle and pedestrian access control facilities, utility building, surface parking and a vehicular emergency egress bridge," according to a solicitation that U.S. Trade & Monitor located via routine database research. State's Bureau of Overseas Building Operations first will...

TransCanada Corp. said Monday it plans to begin building a major portion of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline despite the Obama administration's decision to reject a key permit for the project. The company told the State Department in a letter Monday that it will begin construction of a section of the pipeline that runs from Cushing, Okla., to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The stand-alone portion of the project, which TransCanada dubbed the Gulf Coast Project, will cost $2.3 billion and will be completed in mid-to-late 2013, according to the company. The project must still receive other regulatory approvals....

<p>Giant projects such as the reconstruction of 1 World Trade Center, or Freedom Tower (pictured), always end up costing more than the original estimates because “that’s just part of the way the world works,” Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.</p> <p>“It would be really naive on any big project to say it’s never going to come in for more,” Bloomberg said.</p>

Single-family originations will likely dip in 2012 because of fewer refinances, according to Frank Nothaft, chief economist at Freddie Mac. The market will see a refinance burnout, Nothaft said, with a dwindling pool of eligible borrowers and higher mortgage rates by the second half of 2012. Nothaft projects $1.3 trillion in single-family mortgage originations in 2011, compared to $1.14 trillion in 2012 and $1.07 trillion in 2013. The Freddie Mac projections for 2012 come as a Pew Research Center study showed a record-low number of adults married in the U.S. About 51% of all adults were married as of 2010,...

Made In America (Video of home built entirely of American made products)

Pyongyang's construction drive said to kill hundreds of college students 2011-11-29 14:26 North Korean college students have reportedly died in a spate of accidents at construction sites amid intense efforts by Pyongyang to prepare for a milestone political event next year, a source familiar with the issue said Tuesday. The alleged accidents sparked rumors that an estimated 200 college students have died at various construction sites in the North's showcase capital city of Pyongyang, the source said. He did not elaborate on the alleged deaths and asked not to be identified, citing the issue's sensitivity. The development comes as the...

This is not some set left over from The Lord of the Rings. This hobbit house is an honest-to-goodness man-sized home. Not only does it fit a family of four, but it cost just over $4,650 to build.

White House reporters have tried all their sneakiest reporter tricks to find out what is really going on behind the green construction wall on the North Lawn. The 44 blog recently witnessed one journalist trying to extract details from a utility worker, to no avail. Trucks come and go from the White House construction site, their company logos covered for security. There is jackhammering, and digging. The cement truck tires get washed off before they leave the site -- no one wants a messy White House driveway.

Outlays for U.S. construction projects rose 1.4% in August on public and private spending gains...Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected overall construction spending to decline 0.3%

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Builders started construction on fewer new homes in August, government data showed Tuesday, underscoring how the depressed U.S. real estate market shows little sign of recovering. Housing starts fell 5% to an annual rate of 571,000 last month, compared with a downwardly revised 601,000 in July, the Commerce Department said. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected housing starts to fall to 590,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes dipped slightly in September to remain in very low territory, according to an index released Monday. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index fell by a point to 14, on a seasonally adjusted index where readings above 50 are considered good. The index, which correlates closely with single-family housing starts, has held between 13 and 16 for the last six months.

Vladivostok Teeming with N.Korean Laborers In the scorching afternoon heat last Thursday, two Asian laborers sat in front of a grocery store near a building site in Vladivostok, Russia, cooling themselves with mugs of draft beer. When asked if they were North Koreans, the men asked, "Are you from South Korea?" One of the laborers, who was in his 40s, then said there were around 50 workers from all over North Korea, including Pyongyang and Nampo, at this particular site alone, and they can be seen at practically every construction site in Vladivostok. The entire Siberian city has turned into...

/begin my excerpts N. Korean Colleges in 'Shutdown,' and Did Not Even Admit Freshman Class Yang Hee-jung, Washington 2011-08-03 Last week, after returning from his visit to N. Korean colleges, a Russian expert on Korean affairs criticized the extended shutdown of colleges in Pyongyang from June this year to April next year in an attempt to build 'Strong and Powerful Nation,' calling it a waste of human resources unheard of even in socialist Russia(Soviet Union?.) Yang Hee-jung reports: Georgy Toloraya, Director of Korean Programs at Russian Academy of Sciences, said that it does not help producing N. Korea's professional talents...

N.Korean Students Forced into Construction Labor Some 100,000 North Korean college students have been press-ganged into construction work. "The regime is trying to finish redevelopment of the Mansudae District in Pyongyang by April next year," a source familiar with North Korean internal affairs said on Monday. "Because it couldn't finish construction before the deadline, the regime ordered colleges in Pyongyang and other major cities last month to close for 10 months and drafted students to construction sites." The regime twice before changed the academic calendar for a "200-day struggle" in 1988 and an "Arirang" mass calisthenics performance in 2008. But...

Arizona lawmakers want to erect a fence along the border with Mexico - whether the federal government thinks it's necessary or not. They've got a plan that could get a project started using online donations and prison labour. If they get enough money, all they would have to do is get cooperation from landowners and construction could begin as soon as this year. Governor Jan Brewer recently signed a bill that sets the state on a course to building a permanent barrier along its borders, and a website is being launched to raise money for the work.

The federal government is stepping up efforts to relieve overcrowding in public schools, and it is merging those efforts with a concomitant infusion of educational technology and equipment—on behalf of the Ministry of Education (MOE), that is, in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

~ EXCERPT ~ Both short and long-term confidence in the U.S. housing market continue to fall, with homeowners now expressing the highest level of pessimism in two years. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 15% of homeowners expect the value of their home to go up in the next year while 33% expect the opposite and think the value of their home will decline. The current figures reflect more pessimism than a month ago when 19% were optimistic and 30% pessimistic about the value of their home over the next year. Looking longer term, only 39%...

Sam Zell: Obamacare And Dodd-Frank Are Economy-Killing Monstrosities, And There Won't Be New Construction For Years Joe Weisenthal Mar. 3, 2011, 7:39 AM Billionaire real estate mogul Sam Zell is on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning. Like many guests, he's furious at the Obama administration over Dodd-Frank and Obamacare, both of which he regards as economy-killing, uncertainty-creating monstrosities that ought to be repealed. He considers the odds of repeal to be 0%. As for commercial real estate, his wheelhouse, he doesn't see any significant construction for the next 2-3 years, at least. Update: He continues to slam US policy, saying...

SIERRA VISTA — The importance of Fort Huachuca can be seen with the number of new construction projects which will start soon and future ones planned for upcoming years, Brig. Gen. Gregg Potter said Thursday. New facilities, worth $15 million for the Army’s Gray Eagle Unmanned Aerial System training, is a year out from opening and a $6 million replacement fire station will be occupied in May 2012, said Potter, who commands the Intelligence Center of Excellence and Fort Huachuca. Making his comments at a dinner of the Fort Huachuca 50, an organization which for the past 23 years has...

President Barack Obama unveiled a $37 billion budget blueprint that calls for $640 million in military construction projects at installations in Texas, including $315 million for Army and Air Force projects at Fort Sam Houston, Lackland AFB and Randolph AFB in San Antonio.The amount of Pentagon-proposed military projects in the state is far below the $1.1 billion sought last year, but represents the end of a building boom created by the 2005 base closure process and the transfer of Army troops from overseas installations to Fort Bliss and Fort Hood.

Dallas-based Primoris Services Corp. announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, James Construction Group LLC, has been awarded five contracts — worth about $89 million — for highway infrastructure work and projects related to the construction of natural gas production facilities in Louisiana and Texas. Primoris moved its headquarters to Dallas from California earlier this month.

Bones delay Blue Island stadium By Steve Metsch smetsch@southtownstar.com Jan 18, 2011 02:31AM Blue Island Park District Commissioner John Spizzirri isn’t joking when he calls the hill at Blue Island’s Memorial Park, “Curse Hill.” Over the past year, the construction of a new stadium there has been delayed by weather, building woes and, yes, bones. Human bones. “We didn’t find any full skeletons,” said park board president Fred Bilotto. “It’s all pieces. A femur here. A rib there.” Construction workers discovered the bones in September while excavating for the foundation of a new football stadium at the park. When the...

The stretch of U.S. 65 between Ozark and Branson (MO)has some of the Ozarks’ most impressive scenery. There are lush, rolling hills, distant horizons and, if you look east, one of the biggest homes in the United States. A house currently under construction near Highlandville spans almost a full acre from wall to wall, on a 500-acre site. The ambitious project, nearly three years in and barely at the first floor, totals 72,000 square feet. Putting that figure in perspective might require a few comparisons. According to the Census Bureau, the average new home size over the last five years...

Fort Walton Beach - Authorities believe that between 30 and 40 illegal aliens were employed in the construction of the 7th Special Forces Complex, but by the time the very thorough 3-month investigation was wrapped up, so was most of the work, and the great majority of the workers were unaccounted for. Fort Walton Beach - Authorities believe that between 30 and 40 illegal aliens were employed in the construction of the 7th Special Forces Complex, but by the time the very thorough 3-month investigation was wrapped up, so was most of the work, and the great majority of the...

The McMansion, the mass-produced, super-sized home that saw its heyday earlier this decade, is poised to resurrect itself from the ashes of the real estate collapse. A few months ago, real estate site Trulia declared, "The McMansion Era is Over." Just 9 percent of the people surveyed by the site said their ideal home was more than 3,200 square feet. That news came on top of data from the National Home Builders Association that the median size of new homes dropped from 2,268 square feet in 2006 to 2,100 square feet in 2009. The implication is that the recession has...

A 15-story hotel in Shanghai, China was built in six days, according to ArchDaily. What's even more impressive is that this building is apparently "Level 9 Earthquake Resistant." CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR VIDEO OF ITs CONSTRUCTION

  For union officials who wanted to line their pockets with benefit payments intended for members, Joseph Olivieri was the man to see. Now they will have to go elsewhere. This Wednesday a Manhattan federal jury found Olivieri, ex-executive director of the Long Island-based Association of Wall, Ceiling & Carpentry Industries (WC&C), guilty of perjury in a case that underscored the extent of Genovese crime family control of New York City-area construction contractors and unions. As part of the Justice Department racketeering probe, former Carpenters & Joiners District boss Michael Forde and eight other defendants already had pled guilty....

A plan to install what would have been North America’s largest living wall on the west facade of the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building in Portland has been deemed too risky, and too expensive, by the General Services Administration. Portland’s SERA Architects and Cutler Anderson Architects of Bainbridge Island, Wash., received international attention for proposing 250-foot-tall vegetated “fins” to shade the federal building’s west side. The building’s energy performance is tied to the amount of shade it receives throughout the day, according to Don Eggleston, president of SERA Architects. However, because of concerns about high costs of installation and potential...

And here you thought bedbugs were the biggest source of anxiety for hotel guests. Yes, guests at Vdara hotel in Las Vegas now have something else to worry about: being burned alive by the glare of the building's "death ray." What the heck's a "death ray," you ask? Well, first off, it's not as deadly as it sounds, since no one has actually died from it -- at least not yet. But according to the U.K. Daily Mail, the powerful beams of Nevada sunlight reflecting off the glass hotel onto sections of the hotel's swimming pool area have burned some...

A $7.25 million, 850-foot pedestrian bridge and guardhouse for the Volkswagen plant won approval from a city panel Tuesday. The steel-and-glass structure, more than one-quarter the length of the Walnut Street Bridge that spans the Tennessee River, will serve as the main entrance to the auto plant. The pedestrian bridge, paid from city, Hamilton County and state funds as part of the automaker’s incentive package, will cross over a stream and one of VW’s vehicle test tracks and negotiate a steep change in elevation at the site, officials said. “It will be an extraordinary bridge,” said Steve Leach, the city’s...

Peace Now: At least 2,000 W. Bank units have foundations laid, ready to be built as freeze expires; 11,000 ready for construction without further gov't approval. More than 13,000 settlement housing units in the West Bank are ready for construction once the building moratorium ends on September 26th and at least 2,000 are ready for immediate construction, according to a report by Peace Now released on Sunday. According to the report, 2,066 units in the West Bank have either had construction permits approved or their ground works already laid. Peace Now said that hundreds of additional units, whose foundations have...

HUAIAN COUNTY, CHINA—So you think struggling home from Ontario’s cottage country was tough? Think again. And consider, if you will, the case of Chinese trucker Pang Laisuo. On Sunday his coal-laden transport truck was caught in a traffic jam near here, about 240 kilometres north of Beijing. Pang knew he’d have something of a wait. What he didn’t know was that it would last 18 hours. “Everyone who pulled up at 4 o’clock Sunday afternoon ended up being stuck there until 10 o’clock Monday morning,” says Pang, a lean and grizzled man in his 50s speaking at a roadside stop...

Note: Video included. "Bin Laden's Son Is Hospitalized After He Hears His Father's Voice Omar Bin Laden Is Treated for Schizophrenia, Wife Asks for Divorce" July 9, 2010 SNIPPET: ""It's true that he was put on medication but released himself early," said a spokesman for Zeina Al Sabah, Omar's wife. The spokesman confirmed that Omar had bipolar disorder and was on anti-depressants." SNIPPET: ""Omar loves and hates Osama at the same time," she said." SNIPPET: "Omar, 29, has denounced his father's terrorist tactics and ideology. But he still maintains an emotional bond..." SNIPPET: "Much of Osama Bin Laden's family, comprising...