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Archive for October 2013

About tall ceilings

Tall ceilings help make a space, any space, feel larger. Raise the ceiling and instantly you feel like a weight has been lifted off your head.

Buildings and houses built in the late 18th and early 19th century before the advent of air conditioning often had tall ceilings as a natural design element to help keep people cool. This was especially true in warm climates.

Tall ceilings help keep people cool in warm weather because warm air rises. For centuries before the invention of air conditioning, through a process called thermal (or air) stratification. Air stratification is a natural process where air forms bands of different temperatures, with the hottest air rising to form the highest band. Ceiling heights started shrinking in the 1930’s, as air conditioning became more widely available.

Unfortunately today, tall ceilings are often a problem for the same reason—air stratification.

Building codes today commonly call for ceilings with a minimum height of 7′-0″ to 8′-0″ with no specified maximum, this is mostly so tall people won’t smack their heads on everything hanging from the ceiling. New residential construction these days often has ceilings from 10′-0″ to 15′-0″ feet high. In commercial and institutional construction you can easily find ceiling heights that exceed 20′-0″ feet. In these tall spaces air can easily stratify in bands that exceed the height of a person. This means that if the space is not properly engineered, you can have the heat on full-blast in winter and still be cold in the room.

Ceiling fans, when properly sized, do a good job of preventing air stratification by keeping the air moving around the room. In the absence of ceiling fans the mechanical system must be powerful enough to overcome the distance to the floor.

Making FF&E, Material and Finish Selections

The term FF&E is an acronym for Furniture, Fixtures, and Equipment.

Furniture is movable items such as tables and chairs. Fixtures are the immovable items such as cabinets. Equipment is a machine such as a water-heater or air conditioner. All are used to make a house or other space suitable for living and/or working.

Materials and Finishes, are generally talked about in one of two ways; products and construction materials. Every product you choose while developing your project plan will be made of a specific material with specific finish options.

People sometimes use the terms Material and Finish, interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Material is what a raw component is actually made of, while the term Finish describes the sheen, color, and texture.

For example, people often talk about paint as if it is a finish, which it is, but only in the context of being applied to another product, like drywall (sheet rock). However, nowadays the paint itself comes in countless finish combinations when considering available colors, texture additives (like popcorn), and sheen such as gloss, semi-gloss and flat.

Manufacturers differentiate their product lines by generally providing better materials, finishes and options in higher priced products.

The same is true in construction. The qualities of products on the market today generally fit into many different categories: Economy, Basic, Common, Deluxe, Luxury, and Custom – or other similar words. Companies can use different words to describe the same quality level, even among manufacturers of similar products.

There are incalculable combinations of Material, Finish and product combinations. There are so many, there is no way to cover all of them, but don’t let that overwhelm you.

Construction Conductor explains how you can use that to your advantage in Who Selects What.