American Pole And Timber Online Leads

The success of www.AmericanPoleandTimber.com has been astounding - the site brings in a great deal of traffic and, even more importantly, converts that traffic into quality phone calls and inquiries (leads) through our internet form. We have generated some excellent sales from it, including increased sales of existing products in new areas and sales of NEW products, especially our manufactured products such as timber trusses and solid uniform diameter poles.

There are always improvements to be made, however, so I am always looking for feedback. If anyone visits the site I would appreciate feedback you can offer either via the online form or with comments here.

#1 difference between site redesign and the old design - and the #1 reason for the increase in success: Invitations to call or contact us online increased about 20 times in the new site.

To learn more about optimizing websites for leads go to http://www.LeadOptimize.com

Multi-Year Housing Market Contraction

U.S. Homebuilders Batten Down the Hatches as Multi-Year Contraction Awaits
- From Building Online eUpdate
10/12/2006

NEW YORK -- (BUSINESS WIRE) With the U.S. housing market likely in the midst of a fairly severe, probably multi-year contraction, U.S. homebuilder weakness will likely extend into 2007, though a downturn could easily extend another year should a recession develop before the current housing correction troughs, according to Fitch Ratings in its latest edition of 'Chalk Line'.

"Past post World War II period cyclical declines tended to be precipitated or extended by meaningfully higher interest rates and/or a sharply slowing or recessionary economy. This downturn was not," said Managing Director and lead Homebuilding analyst Bob Curran. "Further, probably slight to moderate declines in national housing prices may be evident over the coming months and, this, initially, may reinforce the buyers' negative psychology."

Further declines in housing metrics could occur during a recession, partially because delinquencies and mortgage defaults could spike up. Investors in home mortgages would suffer and demand that mortgage terms be tightened and the loan originators, as in the past, could likely over-tighten mortgage standards.

For the most part, public homebuilders reported growth in revenues, sales prices and deliveries, but lower margins and profitability in the June 2006 (or approximate) quarter. In general, return ratios were slightly higher than a year ago, while most companies' credit ratios were similar or a bit weaker. Delivery comparisons are likely to be less robust in the third quarter and margins and profits will be down sharply on a year-over-year basis. All companies reported better profits for calendar 2004 and 2005 (following record profits during each of the prior 6-12 years or more).

U.S. Home Builders Seek Lumber from Russia

U.S. Home Builders Seek New Lumber Sources In Russia
- from Building Online eUpdate
10/13/2006

SAINT-PETERSBURG, Russia -- Addressing the International Forestry Forum here, U.S. home builders offered to share American home building technology with their Russian hosts and encouraged them to boost exports of softwood lumber and other wood products to America.

"We support opening up competition in the U.S. lumber market because we know that it will be beneficial for those families in our country who want to buy homes," said Jerry Howard, executive vice president and CEO of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). "We also appreciate the benefit it will bring to our home builders, who are seeking a steady supply of affordably priced lumber."

Howard and NAHB Immediate Past President David Wilson, a home builder from Ketchum, Idaho, represented NAHB and the International Housing Association (IHA) at the conference. NAHB serves as the secretariat of the IHA, which was established in 1984 to provide a forum for home builders and related industry groups around the world to share information and discuss issues related to the housing industry.

As a result of environmental and regulatory policies that have greatly reduced timber harvests from public lands, America today does not have the domestic capacity to meet its demand for lumber. Last year, more than 38 percent of the lumber used in the U.S. was imported, with Canada supplying the bulk of that amount.

However, a new softwood lumber accord between the U.S. and Canada that is scheduled to take effect on Nov. 1 will create a complex system of border taxes and quotas that will artificially raise lumber prices during periods of normal or slow demand, and thereby harm housing affordability. The pact is also expected to cause new uncertainties for U.S. builders over the availability and price of Canadian lumber.

"Access to a reliable, steady supply of lumber is the lifeline for any American home builder," said Wilson, who provided conference participants with an overview of light-frame wood construction techniques in the U.S. housing industry. "We believe that lumber trade barriers impose an unreasonable burden on U.S. home buyers and on the industries that depend on adequate, affordable supplies of lumber to provide the housing and other vital goods and services America needs."

While Howard noted that the new trade pact is a misfortune for Canada, he said it represents an opportunity for Russia and the rest of Europe to increase lumber exports to the U.S. over the long term.

"Today, the U.S. is overly reliant on Canadian imports to meet its lumber needs," said Howard. "We are reaching out to you to correct this problem and we are looking to Russia to add equilibrium to our market for this essential commodity for the home building industry.

"The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University projects 14.6 million household formations over the next 10 years," he added. "In the next 10 years, we conservatively estimate that we will need to construct 18 million new homes. We want to work with you to open up this new trading opportunity."

During their week-long visit to Russia, Howard and Wilson also held productive talks with representatives of the Builders Association of Russia, the Union of Timber Manufacturers and Exporters of Russia, Ilim Pulp Enterprise, BaltRoss, Slavyansky DSK and the Association of Wood Housing.

The meetings come one week after Howard visited Stockholm to discuss with Swedish trade and industry officials ways to secure new import sources of softwood lumber and other wood products and to export American building systems and log homes technology.

Brief log home history

Log ConstructionIn the Folk Building Tradition Of the New World
by Ron Diener - April, 1996 from Rumford.com

Log construction of folk design and folk tradition in the inland portions of America were of three general types, depending a great deal on the origins of the builders.
British Log Home Style:The horizontal stacking of logs, whether peeled and rough hewn or squared by broadax or adze, was the preferred method of those of British and British-American origins.

The corners of the log structures were either coped (the upper log carved out to fit the lower log), notched (both adjoining logs trimmed for fitting), or blocked (adjoining logs mortised for locking in place). The more carving that was done at the ends of the logs, the more the tendency to initiate rot and spoilage of the wood.

The chinking of the logs was done with moss and/or mixtures of moss with clay and straw. Years later, as various cements and mortars became available, they were also applied to this use.

The roofing was commonly thatch. In some areas where there were straight-grained hardwoods, shake shingles were made with froe and mallet. They were soaked and applied wet, because when dry they could not be pierced with a nail without bending the nail back on itself or without splitting the shake itself. A third roofing material was bark slabs, laid on poles, fastened with nails and/or tied with rawhide.

Chimneys were made of logs, with "fireclay'' linings that could not and did not protect the wood from flame when the clay cracked or opened. Thus, these chimneys were built outside the log walls. The firebox of the fireplace was clay-lined, as thick as eight inches deep.

The building design, such as it was, tended to follow the rudest concepts of "enclosure,'' with special care to exploit any and all loft space. Larger structures were thus made of multiple enclosures, rather than a larger enclosure divided into "rooms.''

French Log Home Style: The vertical arraying of logs, usually peeled and rough hewn, was found chiefly among the French and francophone settlers, both in Canada (Quebec, Nova Scotia) and in "Louisiana'' and "Illinois.'' The French region along the Mississippi River south of the confluence with the Missouri was known as Louisiana. North of this line the French regions were usually called Illinois, westward to the ill-defined boundaries of New Spain, later New Mexico. Some historians believe that this building design is an offshoot of the stockade concept.

The logs were either chinked (moss, straw, clay) or plastered to a smooth surface with bousillage (straw, cow manure, clay).

The roofs were usually made of shake shingles over posts (some shakes as long as four feet). Occasionally a thatched roof was made. But frequently the thatched roof was thought of as a temporary expedient until good shakes could be split.

Fireplaces were made of stone, as often fully interior as exterior in relationship to the outside walls. The French were the earliest to experiment with stoves and ovens, both in urban and in the rural/folk settings. Thoroughly adequate, if not masterful, stone pointing and masonry were commonly known and practiced.

The basic folk design of the structure was rectangular with sufficient space for subdividing into rooms. The roofline was gabled in such a way that the front entrance and rear entrance, together with a house-long porch area, could be covered by extending the roof well beyond the walls of the structure. This design left a large second-story space, divisible into more rooms.

German Log Home Style: Log framing - as opposed to solid-log construction - techniques were the basic method brought by those from Germany and the Alpina (some of French, Italian, Austrian and Slavic origins, but chiefly Germanic). This technique is called Fachwerke. Its major mechanical features are commonly used in modern pole construction.

The logs were peeled and squared, then fitted by mortising. The interstices of the log framing were filled. There were three techniques of such fill. First, brick was used, with plastering interior and/or exterior an option. Second, pointed (i.e., squared with chisel and mallet) stone was applied with an interior plaster. Third, rubble stone was used together with an interior and exterior plastering applied at the same time as the stonework.

Fireplaces were central to the construction, often with a single flue or two flues serving multiple mantles and fireboxes.

Roofs were commonly thatched, later replaced with terra cotta tile if the owner could afford the additional expense. Generally speaking, shake shingles were not trusted because of fire hazzard.
The most common design was that of the central European Hof. The house occupied one of the narrow ends of a larger rectangle, with a parallel building on the opposite narrow end. Walls joined the two buildings, with a gate on each side for a team or hitch to pass through the courtyard. The building opposing the house was used for animals and storage, with roofing and roofline complementary to that of the house.

The house was thought of as two large rooms with a lower and upper story, or Etage. These larger rooms could be subdivided with hanging walls (not load-supporting) of lighter material - occasionally even cloth or hides.

Throughout the Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Michigan), the Northwest (add Wisconsin and Illinois), the Trans-Mississippi west, the Rocky Mountain west, and the New Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho), as well as in the bordering provinces of Canada, all of these styles stood in strange and wonderful juxtaposition. In the oldest cities (i.e., New Orleans, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, St. Louis, St. Charles, Ste. Genevieve), they even stood side by side.

A major change took place in the immigrations into these lands of the New World after 1848. Large numbers of university educated men came from those areas where the revolutions of that year failed - Germany, Italy, France, as well as other central and east European capitals.
They applied scientific principles to building and construction. They thought of their physical pied-a-terre as a place of experimentation, not as bothered by tradition or continuity as their contemporaries.

They did, of course, take on important professional and civic responsibilities in the New World (one of their number, Carl Schurtz, was a member of Lincoln's cabinet). But large numbers of them were intimidated because of their poor or highly accented English, and preferred not to confront or compete with the Yankees. They turned to farming, shopkeeping, merchandising and manufacturing, usually in their own ethnic communities with their own ethnic foods, dress and language.

They tended to influence domestic architecture profoundly wherever they went. And that influence stemmed chiefly from their examples, rather than through an imposition of ideas or concepts. They build round or octagonal barns, turreted dormers (long before Victorian styles), hillside solar-assisted homes, and many creative and innovative styles and designs.

But before them, others had come, in waves, as unrest after unrest swept Europe.

In 1736 the Moravians from Bohemia (via Saxony), as followers of Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf, came to the New World to help fill Penn's Woods with dissidents. This, the largest of several groups from central and eastern Europe, also led the way for many others: Mennonites, Brethren, chiliastic communities, communistic settlements.

In 1745 unrest in Ireland helped to feed the shores of the New World with new stock.
The hunger and over-population of Frankish Germany in the 1740s and 1750s pushed its lesser inhabitants both east and west to the Volga River regions of Czarina Ekaterina (Katherine "the Great''), as well as to upstate New York, the marshes of New Jersey, coastal Delaware and deep into Penn's Woods.

Unrest in the Pyranees led lesser nobility of both southern France and northern Spain to come to the New World after 1763, together with their entourages who quickly abandoned their masters after their arrival on the Western shores.

More unrest in Ireland brought more refugees in the 1770s and 1780s.

Ambitious adventurers of the Low Countries from the lowly stow-away peasants to the rather wealthy younger sons of nobility and even royalty left their homelands to find their fortunes in south Asia, the Orient and America between 1785 and 1810.

The French Revolution and its sequela to the fall of Napoleon pushed out wave after wave of persecuted, tormented and threatened Frenchmen to help settle both the United States and British America (Canada), men of means and of talent and of education.

All of them, each and every group, had its special imprint on domestic architecture, folk architecture, the design and the style that are not really a "design'' or a "style'' at all, but rather the simple repetition of the known and familiar. But the repetition of the known and familiar often had to take shape in unknown or new materials. Thus domestic folk architecture developed in spite of itself.

What is Timber Merchandising?

What is Timber Merchandising

- article from myfuture.edu
This is a sector of the forest and forest products industry.

This sector includes wholesale distributors who import timber and wood products from overseas and/or interstate or buy from local manufacturers for sale to merchants and other large volume clients. They are often associated with large timber producers and are usually based in capital cities or major regional centres.

Timber merchants sell to trade users of timber products (eg commercial and industrial builders, furniture manufacturers). They usually handle many different types of timber species and products, bought from a large number of suppliers. They may provide ancillary services (eg quantities and sizes to order, drying, moulding).

Re-manufacturers design and construct wall frames and roof trusses to engineered specifications for domestic and commercial building. Others produce pallets, casks, boxes, crates and so on for agricultural and industrial use.

Retailers sell timber products and associated hardware in smaller quantities to individual tradespeople and the general public. Here the emphasis is on display, customer service and packaging.

Wood Design and Building Expo - Nov 6-8

2006 Wood Design & Building Expo


American Pole and Timber will be at the 2006 Wood Design and Construction Expo
November 6 - 8, 2006 in Anaheim, California.
www.PoleAndTimber.com

Two American Pole And Timber project consultants, Dennis Macel and Eric Lincoln, will be at the expo to discuss pole and timber products as well as manufactured products such as timber trusses and Solid Uniform Diameter poles. We hope you can visit us there.

Schedule of events:

Monday, November 6, 2006
8:00 am - 11:45 am Educational Sessionsbr
11:45 am - 7:45 am Exhibit Hall Open
12:45 pm - 5:45 pm Educational Sessions

Tuesday, November 7, 2006
8:00 am - 10:15 am Educational Sessions
10:15 am - 3:45 pm Exhibit Hall Open
11:00 am - 7:00 pm Educational Sessions

Wednesday, November 8, 2006
7:30 am - 12:15 pm Educational Sessions

To learn more about the expo, visit http://www.wooddesignandbuildingexpo.com.

www.PoleAndTimber.com

www.AmericanPoleAndTimber.com got more than 120K page views during the month of September and drew in five times as many leads as it did the month before.

It has been considered very successful. We are re-designing www.BuildingProductsPlus.com now.

Chris

Successful Inventories

Physical Inventories at Building Products Plus are getting more accurate and faster. Like anything, they go more smoothly when there is more planning.

Key factors for success:

• Straighten, Clean, Tidy before the count
• PRE-COUNT
• PRE-COUNT
• PRE-COUNT
• Training - make it clear to everyone what is to be counted and how it is to be recorded.
• Bar Code Scanners and wireless canopy over yard - faster initial entry and no re-entry. Easier to correct mistakes as well
• Daily communication during pre-count about progress
• Count teams that work together well during the count

It helps to have an experienced team who knows what they are doing as well but really believe that will the above, the count could go well with people who have minimal training of the products themselves. This is especially true for the pre-counts where you truly are simply counting. It does not matter what the product is, just count it and tag it. The counter should know that part.

Raise Floor Building Benefits

Raised Floor Building - Top 10 Benefits
10.10.2006

Raised Floor Home Building: Top Ten Benefits A Southern Pine Council Article Raised floor houses are beautiful and have proven to stand the test of time. There are many benefits to using the raised floor method to build a house. The Southern Pine Council has compiled what it considers to be the top ten.

1. Classic Style Homebuyers are rediscovering the classic elegance that a raised floor design adds to the look of the American home. Drive through the older neighborhoods of your community. The homes with ageless grace and beauty are usually raised. Visually, the raised foundation functions as a pedestal, enhancing curb appeal regardless of architectural style.

2. Uplifting Comfort Inside the raised floor home, there are special qualities that nurture the body and soul. The feeling is warmer, more intimate. Remember that special place when you were a child, a tree house perhaps, where you felt cozy and safe? Raise the floor above the ground and your perspective changes. You feel more secure. An ordinary view from the window becomes a vista. There is calm and quiet above the din of street noise. The subtle "give" of a wood floor system provides a more comfortable walking surface, putting less stress on your back, legs, and feet.

3. Extended Living Space Enjoy your porch and deck. If it is not raised, a porch is not really a porch. Porches and decks are natural amenities for a raised floor system, adding usable living area to your home outdoors. Consider the charm and hospitality of a front porch, the pest-free privacy and comfort of a screened back porch, or a spacious deck for outdoor cooking, entertainment and relaxation. On slab, a "front porch" is just a front patio. The special ambiance you come to expect when gathering on a porch or deck can only be experienced with the raised floor system.

4. Lifetime Foundation The raised floor system has withstood the test of time. Some of the oldest, most historic homes in America are still standing proud with Southern Pine floor assemblies. Southern Pine is the strongest of all North American softwoods, so you can expect a lifetime of strength, stability and durability when framing with Southern Pine. And today, modern pressure-treatment adds long lasting resistance to decay and termite attack. 21 POLY polymer coating encapsulates treated wood making it impenetrable to termites and fungus.

5. Simple Foundation Any foundation can settle, but the use of piers with a raised floor system makes leveling or repairs simple. Repairing or leveling a cracked, damaged concrete slab can be very expensive. With the raised floor system, leveling is as easy as jacking up the floor and adding shims. The raised floor is also less susceptible to disruption from tree roots.

6. Easy Home Improvement Installation, maintenance, and modification of utilities such as water, sewer, and electrical are comparatively simple with a raised floor. Remodeling? Plumbing fixture modifications are easy with the raised floor system. If you want to move the location of a toilet or bathtub on a slab foundation, get the jackhammer! Routing and rerouting of wiring for electrical, telephone, television, and computers is relatively easy and less expensive. If the home is raised high enough off the ground, air conditioning ducts can be installed from below. This option allows floor registers to direct air closer to the actual living area.

7. Natural Insulator Why live on the cold, damp ground? Wood is a natural insulator. A properly constructed and insulated raised floor system isolates the home from potential moisture problems and provides a warm, comfortable walking surface.

8. Reduced Flood Risk Flooding is a potential risk for many homeowners. A raised floor system could be the solution to raising your home's foundation at or above base flood elevation. Considering other options — slab atop dirt fill, slab on backfilled perimeter wall, or ring levee — the raised floor may be the most practical and cost effective way to protect your property and meet local building ordinances in flood prone areas.

9. Pest Control Most pests are ground dwellers. With a raised floor system, your home is up off the ground away from pests. For optimum protection against termites, pressure-treated and kiln-dried after treatment (KDAT) Southern Pine lumber is available. American Pole and Timber offers 21 POLY polymer coating, which makes your raised floor system impervious to termites. For more information call American Pole and Timber at 866-397-3038.

10. Flexible Landscaping Landscaping looks best around the foundation of the home. It helps "ground" the structure to the site. However, the installation of built-up flowerbeds and other landscaping against a slab foundation can invite termite infestation and rot. With a raised floor, landscaping can be located near the foundation without inviting this risk. Furthermore, root-severing slab construction often demands the removal of existing trees in close proximity to the structure. Near a raised floor, these valuable, beautiful and energy-saving shade trees can be preserved. Footings of a raised pier and beam structure only penetrate the root system, allowing trees to thrive.

21 POLY Polymer coating for wood comes in green, tan, brown, and grey and will make a raised floor system last virtually forever and passes building codes. For more information about 21 POLY or pressure treated wood, call 866-397-3038.