One thing Austin Texas is blessed with is the abundance of stone. There are many importers of Cantera Stone as well as an abundance of quarried stone. Using natural stone however is not always the most economical solution to building a custom range hood over your stove.
Cantera Solid Stone Range Hood
Continue reading ‘Build a Faux Stone Range Hood to look like Solid Stone.’
Facing some hard zoning challenges in the the Village of Volente and the City of Austin, we turned to a local engineering company in Round Rock to help us come up with some alternatives to the cities new impervious cover requirements.
Pervious Concrete used by Masters Touch Custom Homes
Masters Touch Custom Homes was faced with what seemed to be zoning requirements that were to strict for our already approved lots. We owned 4 lots in the Village of Volente, three were vacant and one we built on right after closing. During the Build process of home #1 we were told by the city officals that the Village has just adopted new zoning requirements. They told us that we had to follow the 20% impervious cover guidlines. ( Needless to say our lot was only 7200 sq ft and they were now only going to allow us to cover with Pervious materials 1440 sq ft)
Our new engineering firm proposed using a concrete that was pervious. Their proposal stated that if we can use this concrete in-lieu of standard concrete we would not have to count the square footage of the driveway against us.
Eco Creto was developed in Mexico to allow their streets to act as a network of underground drains.
Concrete slab that can be lifted
Masters Touch Custom Homes was one of the first Custom Home builders in Austin, Tx to use a state of the art foundation system that was designed for expansive clay soil or unpacked fill. This system was designed by Childress Engineering based out of Richardson Tx. They coined this system Slab Tek. See link
http://www.slabtek.com/SlabTek_Info.pdf
Slab Tek is a scientific system that was built like many suspension bridges across the States. CES developed this system to be used for residential foundation systems in the Richardson, Dallas and Austin Texas Areas.
