true. my spec sheet is for Louisiana,south central La., a hot humid climate. while location isn't in the actual specs location is in the links & of course my user name. lzerarc,you got my gender wrong. LOL. Are you still building Energy Star homes? I've been doing mostly existing homes but have a builder that wants to build to the 50% better standard, for the $3,000 builder credit. do you find this too much to ask of a builder? just wondering if I want to invest time & effort into this..again. glad to see my specs are helping. please no IC recessed lights. ICAT only. recessed lights & duct leakage is so easy to get right and has such a bad effect when it isn't done right. these two things are my pet peeves. best of luck.

Joe, as others have said, you have been furnished a "list of features", not a construction specification. Such lists may often be as misleading and confusing for what they omit as for what they claim to proscribe. The language of your construction contract will determine the extent to which your "features" list governs and is binding, including recourse (if any) for errors, omissions and disagreements. For examples of construction specifications, visit the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI). Here's the Wiki definition for "Specification--Technical Standard". A key element of a legitimate specification is its three parts for each and every area of Work--General, Products and Execution: Construction specifications in North America Specifications in North America form part of the contract documents that accompany and govern the construction of a building. The guiding master document is the latest edition of MasterFormat. It is a consensus document that is jointly sponsored by two professional organisations: Construction Specifications Canada and Construction Specifications Institute. While there is a tendency to believe that "Specs overrule Drawings" in the event of discrepancies between the text document and the drawings, the actual intent��"made explicit in the contract between the Owner and the Contractor��"is for the drawings and specifications to be complementary, together providing the information required for a complete facility. The Specifications fall into 50 Divisions, or broad categories of work results involved in construction. The Divisions are subdivided into Sections, each one addressing a narrow scope of the construction work. For instance, firestopping is addressed in Section 078400 - Firestopping. It forms part of Division 07, which is Thermal and Moisture Protection. Division 07 also addresses building envelope and fireproofing work. Each Section is subdivided into three distinct Parts: "General", "Products" and "Execution". The MasterFormat system can be successfully applied to residential, commercial, civil, and industrial construction. Specifications can be either "performance-based", whereby the specifier restricts the text to stating the performance that must be achieved by the completed work, or "prescriptive", whereby the specifier indicates specific products, vendors and even contractors that are acceptable for each workscope. Most construction specifications are a combination of performance-based and prescriptive types, naming acceptable manufacturers and products while also specifying certain standards and design criteria that must be met. While North American specifications are usually restricted to broad descriptions of the work, European ones can include actual work quantities, including such things as area of drywall to be built in square metres, like a bill of materials. This type of specification is a collaborative effort between a specwriter and a quantity surveyor. This approach is unusual in North America, where each bidder performs a quantity survey on the basis of both drawings and specifications. Although specifications are usually issued by the architect's office, specwriting itself is undertaken by the architect and the various engineers or by specialist specwriters. Specwriting is often a distinct professional trade, with professional certifications such as "Certified Construction Specifier" (CCS) through the professional organizations noted above. Specwriters are either employees of or sub-contractors to architects, engineers, or construction management companies. Specwriters frequently meet with manufacturers of building materials who seek to have their products specified on upcoming construction projects so that contractors can include their products in the estimates leading to their proposals. Good luck on your project.

Butt cabinets have nothing to do with plumber's butt, although I guess my posting might have given that impression. LOL! More on butt cabinets: A butt cabinet is one where the two doors "butt" together, rather than have a center stile (upright member) behind where the doors come together. It's a more complete access issue because you have access to the whole cabinet interior, not just half and half. It can be a construction issue as well. Some cabinet lines use thinner materials and cannot construct butt cabinets because they won't have enough support without that center stile. I wouldn't deal with a cabinet company that didn't at least offer butt cabinets in their line, even if they were an upcharge. :( Many cabinet lines offer them as a standard without you even having to ask. Butt doors will all have a tiny gap between them, because of the clearance needed to be able to open both doors. That bothers some people, and it doesn't bother others. If I'm spec'ing a butt cabinet with interior lighting, I'll also spec what's called a "dust strip" by cabinet companies, or a T astragal by door manufacturers. It's a small strip on the back side of one door that covers the gap. That means that you have to close that door first and open the other one first. It's not a big deal for a glass display cabinet, and it keeps the light from shining through, but it can be a pain on more often used cabinets so those don't usually have that spec'd. Now you know more about something you didn't even know existed than some box store kitchen clerks do! LOL!

I thought I'd update on what we did - we did end up going with the installer I found with the positive yahoo reviews. The sink cutouts and the single seam that they had to do look good, and they did basically manage to do the work on our timeline (a blizzard delayed everything in the city by a day, and the slabs they got from Zodiaq had some serious flaws that made them shatter, so they had to return them and replace them with some Caesarstone slabs instead, but even working around these issues, they managed to get the job done quickly). The only possibly quibble is that there are uneven gaps a bit at the far back of the countertop between the countertop and the wall, but the walls are really not straight at all, so I'm not sure that I can fault the installers for this (are they supposed to template the wavy back walls somehow? - I also didn't clearly say that we weren't intending to put in a backsplash, so perhaps this is my fault in not communicating clearly enough). So while we weren't intending to put in a backsplash, we are doing that now to address this issue, but since it is not too expensive or complicated to do this and it should fix the issue, I'm ok with that. I did end up joining Angie's list in the end, but I found it totally overwhelming and difficult to navigate - there were hundreds of firms listed under countertops in the NYC area, but none of the ones I had already considered or had recommended to me were listed, they almost all seemed to have the same ratings, and most of them were not specifically fabricators - they seemed to include a lot of general kitchen supply places (like Home Depot, for example), so I gave up. Maybe if I had had more time, I could have figured out how to use those listings more effectively, but in the end I just didn't feel up to prolonged weeding through, and I felt pretty comfortable talking to the firm we ended up going with (and figured that the positive yahoo reviews had to mean they were at least of a certain basic standard). Thanks again for all the advice and feedback - I really appreciate it during this complicated process that can be so overwhelming for someone who has never renovated before!