Article from Green Building Product Dealer Magazine… This is a very informative web resource with many relevant articles and links to products and ideas.
Green Building Product Dealer is a national magazine dedicated to informing the construction and remodeling supply channel about a new generation of high performance green products which are destined to become the standards in the building community.
Showing builders new ways to save money can be profitable for both of you
With the housing situation as tight as it is, dealers need to keep their customers’ loyalty and grow some additional margin. At the same time, builders are looking at new ways to cut waste. “Some of them have been doing this for a few years, others are just picking up on it,” said Terry Stone, GM/Marketing for Ainsworth. Stone has recently seen dealers come up with some clever ideas for marketing his company’s APA-rated 0.8E Durastrand OSL Rimboard:
• Don’t overspec. “For a rim application you don’t necessarily need a 1.3 E-rated product. There are more cost effective ways to meet code. Durastrand’s 0.8E designation means that it has a modulus of elasticity’ of 800,000 psi.”
• If you have a basement window, historically you would have had to cut the rim board out over the window and put in a LVL or something with a higher E-rating. “Our Durastrand Rimboard allows you to keep a contiguous rim and acts like the short span header over that basement window,” Stone pointed out. That saves labor and reduces waste.
• If a builder has his rim board delivered in 24 foot lengths but only needs to use 20 feet of it, he can use the 4 foot section that’s left over as the header over a window on an upper floor.
• “he can use it as a stringer when building stair systems in conjunction with Ainsworth’s StediTred,” said Stone.
• A retailer trying to differentiate himself with his clients could manufacture the stair systems in-house for jobsite delivery to the builder. “That’s an opportunity to make some extra margin on products a dealer would be carrying anyway,” said Stone. “All that’s involved is adding the value of a little labor, and a little marketing savvy to sell their wares.”
• Durastrand can be purchased in wider dimensions than you’d typically encounter in sawn lumber at depths of up to 24 inches and lengths as much as 24 feet. That would allow the lumber yard or the stair system manufacturer to nest 2 stringers in with one another. “Now you’re no longer throwing away all those little triangles,” Stone pointed out. “That’s a savings of about 40 percent off the waste that would otherwise end up in landfill.”
Link to Green Building Product Dealer web site
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