have to get out of the house!...well, place of living...

I made Curt go with me on a walk this past Saturday at that nature preserve I discovered last week (He was actually the one to suggest it, what a nice person he is). I took a picture of him on a nifty bridge. If you click on the picture you can see that the trex like composite material that they used in making the handrail was installed too close together so when the material expanded it made the hand rail bow in and out. Moral of the story: Plan for expansion/contraction. A little research or planning will always do you good :)

So, yesterday I needed to be out of the apartment so I drove to a nice neighborhood by our church and wandered around for a couple hours (not before emailing Curt where I would be, of course, it would not do for me to go missing on one of my spur of the minute explorations of Ann Arbor and not have anyone know where I at least started).

I love spring flowers.

I have been reading up on some of Michigan's building codes (I know, nerdy). Yesterday's research informed me all about radon (I had only surface skimmed the topic in college classes). Radon is a decayed gas that used to be Uranium that is naturally found in the soil everywhere. Why do you care and what does this have to do with construction you ask? Well, houses act as a natural vacuum to suck it up and then contain it, especially in basements, crawl spaces, ect. Why do you care if it collects in your basement? It causes lung cancer. The county in Michigan where we live is a zone 1, which means high risk of a radon problem. So I read all about it and now I know how to install several different mitigating systems in new construction. Fun. But now I also have started noticing all of these retro-fitted, active radon mitigation systems on older houses; which is what this picture is of. Super cool.



And lastly, this is a picture for my Dad. He loves barns, especially with cupolas (the decorative things on the roof that are actually there for ventilation purposes).