From the smallest of home renovation projects to big new build constructions, you find yourself faced with one particular problem.

Well, okay, you find yourself faced with many problems. You find yourself waking up in the morning to a light layer of dust over everything, and wondering why you ever began this project. You find yourself visiting friends, staring at their walls – without holes in them! – and daydreaming of living in such a place. We all reach a point where the downsides seem to be so substantial, there’s no possible…

[Photo courtesy of Ksenia Chernaya/pexels.com]

Hang on; that wasn’t the point I was trying to make. Okay. Let’s refocus. No more whining; we all know the benefits of home-style construction and why it’s worth it. We live with our choices and embrace them – even if they can be a little problematic at times!

The issue I was originally referring to was much more simplistic. No matter the scope of your project, you’ve probably encountered it: should you buy or rent expensive machinery?

[Photo courtesy of Mark Schellhase/wikipedia.org]

This applies to everything, from a humble power washer when sprucing up your home’s exterior – right through to an excavator for a garden project. Hiring can seem the easiest answer, but it can also be prohibitively expensive. The choice is usually an individual one, but if you’re struggling to make a decision, here’s a few pros and cons on the hiring/buying debate. I’ll take it from the perspective of buying for yourself, for the sake of clarity.

PRO: It’s yours.

The most obvious one, but an important aspect to consider. If you do something to a piece of machinery you have rented – an accident, or misuse that results in a breakdown – you could be in for a massive bill. With your own machine, any potential mistakes that you make are your own. It will be cheaper to repair an item than to compensate a hire company for any damage that results from your use of it. Then when it is repaired, you can still use it free of charge when you own it.

[Photo courtesy of pixabay/pexels.com]

CON: You’re responsible for repair and maintenance.

Even if you decide the initial purchase price is cheaper than renting on a cost-per-use level, that’s not the end of the road. With renting, if a piece of machinery breaks down, it’s not your problem. You can hand it back to be fixed, providing you’re not the one who broke it.

If you own it, however, any breakdowns are going to be yours to deal with. Factor this in when you look at the purchase price.

As an example, let’s say you want to hire a mini digger for a big garden project. Rental is going to cost you $200 per day. You anticipate you’re going to need it for around seven days. The cost to buy your own is $1000 – a saving of $400. Seems an easy choice, until you factor in potential repair costs in future.

There are ways and means of lowering the cost. Performing routine servicing will keep an item running as it should. Replacing parts from a reputable retailer such as Woods equipment and the like can also insure against future issues. There should also be a warranty that means any issue not of your fault will bounce back to the manufacturer. But it’s still worth keeping in mind.

PRO: You can expand future projects thanks to it.

Staying with the example of the mini digger, you might have planned to use it for one particular project. That means it’s going to be surplus to requirements for anything else, right? So hiring might be more expensive, but at least you don’t then have to store a digger you have no other use for it.

You will probably find that you do find a use for it. The scope of your existing projects can change and expand because you now have a piece of machinery that makes more innovative ideas possible.

CON: You run the risk of not being able to take it back.

If you hire something, you always have the option of returning it if it’s not a good fit. You might choose something that isn’t up to the task at hand; or even an item you just don’t feel comfortable using.

When you buy, you’re stuck with it – within reason. All the usual buying laws apply to you, but you have to be careful to read the small print to ensure you can return an item. Some sales policies – especially for larger machinery – may only allow you to return an item for store credit, partial refunds or not at all if the item has been used. Be aware of your rights in case something doesn’t work as you hoped.

PRO: You can hire it out to friends and family.

One way of keeping a piece of machinery running is to make a little money off it. There’s nothing stopping you from hiring it out to your nearest and dearest for a small fee to help contribute to maintenance.

CON: You might not use it.

[Photo courtesy of Peter Griffin/publicdomainpictures.net]

There is always the risk that you will buy something, planning many future projects… and then never feel the need to touch it. If buying is cheaper than renting, then this still might be worth it – it all depends on the storage space you have available.

For smaller items like pressure washers and wallpaper strippers, you probably have a corner of your attic that you can use. For large machinery, then it might be a little trickier to give over space for something from which you’re not getting much use.

PRO: You can always sell it.

However, if the above happens, you always have the option of selling an item on. Returning to the mini digger: you saved $400 when you bought it, paying $1000. If you then sell it on, even for a small amount like $200, your saving goes to $600. Providing you get a good deal on the purchase price, this is definitely something to keep in mind.

Building  a house is great commitment that’s why before beginning a construction everything should be considered and planned accordingly. It should start from your budget, look and size of the home, the contractor and the time needed for your project.  On this regard,  when we started the construction of our new house we didn’t set a budget because we already planned that we are going to construct the house slowly, just when we have the funds to do it.

We started having a house plan before the construction begins and right now we are still finishing the first floor, we still don’t know when we could start building the second floor. We are informed that constructing the second floor will not be as expensive as the first floor as it does need a concrete roof anymore but a colored roof  installed and there are also left over pieces of lumber, woods, sack of cements, sheet metal, gravel and sand that we could use to start the second floor.

Sheet metal is being used for different purposes  like in roofing, kitchen sinks and even in car bodies, cutting the sheet metals need a proper tool and the good thing in our place most people are carpenters and laborers so most men has their own tools and even if there’s none, carpentry tools can be easily borrowed from someone who has one.

Well, if you are planning to renovate or build your dream home and you are looking for a professional constructor/builder visit  Sherbrooke today!

Our house is almost ready for occupancy, one of the major things that is needed to do is transfer the electricity from our old house. My mother already asked someone to do an electrical survey on how much we are going to spend on electric wires, power outlets, lights and etc. I thought it would be so expensive (though it is really expensive), the proposed budget of the electrician is $350 and labor is not included on it.  Hiring someone to do the survey is convenient, at least we already have an idea how much money do we need for this job.

If electricity is already installed in our new house my family can move already even the windows and doors are not yet done, living in our province is not that dangerous because most people know each other, and mostly they are related to each other. My mother says they can just use bamboo as temporary window like what you see in the picture (left where the orchids are).

Electrical survey is important because it can help you to save more on buying extra wires that are not needed and you can make sure that your house electrical installation will be safe, the outlets will be in the proper place.

You may know that you are supposed to look at an Advanced Geosciences resistivity survey before you start work on any building project. However, do you know what types of things you should be looking for as you go over the survey? Understanding exactly what you should watch out for can help you identify it much faster than you would be able to otherwise, so you should know about these common pitfalls in advance.

First of all, you just need to look for any underground water sources that could pose a problem. The water table below the surface may be invisible to the eye, but it functions much like the water on the table surface. There are lakes and rivers. You do not want to dig down for the basement or to construct the foundation and discover that you are attempting to build on unstable ground over an underground water source.

Depending on where your project is located, it may also be a good idea to look for fault lines. The survey will tell you if you are building on top of one. At that point, you can decide if you want to go through with the project or if you would feel better about it if you moved to another location. It is worth noting that a fault line itself does not mean that it is unsafe to build, but you have to take special precautions and use special methods to make sure that the building is really safe.