What you are describing does not hold true in Asheville, Boone, Blowing Rock, Charlotte, or the coastal areas. I'm not that familiar with the Durham area, but perhaps you are surrounded by cheap, dorm-style housing. I have no idea if building technology is more advanced in places like CA or FL, but I really don't think the northeast or middle Atlantic has anything on NC. Standards are CLEARLY much higher, at least in the under $2 mio. One of the biggest surprises I experienced when we moved to NC from an expensive NYC suburb was how much better-maintained the older homes were and how much more attractive the new homes were. The only homes on slab I see are in price ranges where radiant heat would be unusual, regardless of location. It's neither a new technology nor something that's difficult to get done in NC. It's annoying, but not regional.Īlthough radiant heat is not the norm, we have two homes in NC (one built in the 50's, one new) with radiant in-floor heat in some areas. I think wanting to stick with what they know is very, very typical of builders in general - it's not specific to NC. Meghane - I don't think that's a fair assessment of NC builders at all. And I don't expect that to change until the good ole boys are all retired. It's not like I'm in the boondocks.Īnyway, while it's probably partly the expense of separate AC and heating systems, the biggest factor is that the building industry is stuck in 1980. And I live in Durham, ya know, near Duke, UNC, NC State, NC Central, Merideth College, Peace College, etc. Someone actually asked me what that machine was AS I WAS CUTTING THE GRASS. Then you should have seen me with my electric plug-in mower. You would have thought I made my countertops out of horse manure with the looks I got. Basements are very rare because of drainage issues associated with clay.Ībout 5 years ago I had concrete countertops in my kitchen. We DO have a lot of slab built homes- it costs extra to get a crawlspace. Tile the area of the floor covered with thin-set. Dont clean the trowel by banging it on the mat. Then turn the trowel over and rake the thin-set to a 1/4-inch uniform depth. It's just that there is such a network of good ole boys in the building industry that they are still building stick homes. With the flat side of a 3/8-inch notched trowel, apply thin-set over an area of the mat. If you were moving to the mountains you'd probably run heat from late August through April. It isn't *that* hot here and we do actually run the heat from October through March. Having moved to NC from MD 9 years ago, my guess is that things change VERY slowly here.
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