Contractor Blog

Wow, very cool product allows you to add solar power to your metal roof in no time. Using thin-film photovoltaic (PV) laminate peel and stick panels. Run the wires into an inverter and tie it into your electrical system. Nice.

At the 2007 Grand Rapids home show I stopped by the Infrared: Conservation Unearthed display. So what is Infrared (IR), and how can it benefit me? Infrared can be a helpful tool in inspecting a home you are considering buying. IR can point out signs of energy waste, display unknown air infiltration, insulation deficiencies, and water and moisture intrusion locations.

You can see in the video how cold my ears and nose are! (It was very cold that day.) The demonstration also shows how a wet cloth on the back of a piece of drywall is easily detected by the infrared camera, this could be an invaluable home investigation tool for detecting water damage and intrusion behind walls.

You can contact Infrared: Conservation Unearthed at:

Infrared: Conservation Unearthed
5595 Wabaningo Rd.
Whitehall, MI 49461
Phone: 231-740-1122>
Infrared: Conservation Unearthed Website

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More Resources on Infrared can be found at Oregon Infrared

As a contractor, how do you differentiate yourself from the competition, how do you stand out? With many of todays consumers having ready access to the internet, why not use the internet to enhance the communication during projects. Especially larger jobs like a new home build or major remodel.

We have created a free contractor software solution to help contractors setup their own web-based communication tool. With this software, your customers can login and see the status of all the tasks of a particular project, they can also then leave comments and questions about specific tasks. This will provide a great way to communicate and also create a record of what changes were made throughout the project. The contractor software is free to download. It uses PHP and MySQL, so ask your webhost if they support these technologies before trying to use the software.

Touch free, or touch less bathrooms. Isn’t it nice when you wander into a commercial rest room at a movie theater, or an airport, and you realize you don’t have to actually touch any surfaces. Businesses should strive to provide touch free bathrooms. There are enough colds and other things that travel around and cost untold amounts of dollars in lost time and medical expenses. It really isn’t hard to do a touch free bathroom. Really you have 4 main areas to address.

1. Doors Open/Close
2. Flushing
3. Water On/Off
4. Hand Drying

Now Doors Should be fairly easy, make a swinging door, that can easily be opened with a foot, or make the “walk-through” entrance where there is not an actual door. Flushing can be a small infrared device that hooks to the toilet to allow it to flush automatically. The water faucets might be the most expensive item. There also would probably be infrared to come on and turn off automatically. Hand drying can be done with a headed dryer or a towel dispenser that only required pulling on the paper towel, not moving a handle.

That’s it, not to hard to accomplish. Find a bathroom contractor (ask them if they can do a touch less bathroom)

A great website is available for any Oklahoma City Builder that is looking to get on the web. OklahomaCityBuilder.com Please contact me if you are interested in this website. This site is a very nice, easy to remember name. Customers would easily recognize and remember your site.

The Microsoft small center is giving away free websites, complete with domain name! I tried this myself and it works pretty slick. There is a really nice online website creation tool also. The whole process was very easy and worked quite well. I would really recommend this for any small business owner looking to get on the web. Here is how you can do it.

Visit this link to the Microsoft small business center, and there was a link/ad that says “get your free website and more”. The site does ask for a credit card, but only for verification.

This post is really off topic, but it does fit with the daily needs of running this website. I needed a new laptop, the old reliable gateway is going on about 4 years or so now, and is getting a bit fussy sometimes.

I ordered a new gateway TL-50-MX6454 from bestbuy.com. It was supposed to be a black Friday in-store-special, but I happened to check online on Thanksgiving morning, and it was availble to order at the $699.00 black Friday price. Great, so I went ahead and happily ordered the laptop. No waiting in line all night at bestbuy to try to fight for one of the few the bestbuy store would get. I was especially glad when I drove by at 10 pm on Thanksgiving night to see the line already about half way around the store.

Anyway the laptop arrived on Tuesday this week. Super. Open it up and everything is great…then the heat fan comes on…ugg. The thing is so loud and is making a slight grinding sound.

Alright don’t panic…I will just take it into my Best Buy store the next day
and have them replace it. Not so easy. I go into my Best Buy store, they tell me they can’t exchange it because there are none in stock. They tell me to go home call the 1888-BEST-BUY number. Do that, wait about 20 minutes on hold. Best Buy number says, sorry nothing we can do, you will have to contact BestBuy.com (apparently these are all completely somewhat seperate operations). BestBuy.com tells me they only do exchanges in-store, and since there are none available in store, I have to find a store that has it available and drive there. (they will not ship one from another store). She also says, just check back every few days to see if they get them in stock. But, I say…you have a 14 day exchange policy on laptops. Right, she says – you have 14 days to check back and see if they have it in stock. Whew… what a mess here. So I can either keep the laptop at this great price and deal with a loud bad fan. Or return it and watch for another sale…ugg.