130 articles
Laminate flooring
Laminate flooring is a rigid floor covering of a printed wood or stone image under a hard wear layer, invented in Sweden in 1977 and installed as a floating floor.
Laminated veneer lumber
Laminated veneer lumber (LVL) is an engineered wood product made by bonding thin wood veneers with parallel grain, stronger and more uniform than solid timber.
Lath and plaster
Lath and plaster is a building technique for finishing interior walls and ceilings, in which wet plaster is applied over thin timber lath and held by hardened keys.
LEED
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a green building rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, launched in 1998, with certification levels from Certified to Platinum.
Light steel framing
Light steel framing, also known as light gauge or cold-formed steel framing, is a building system of thin galvanized steel C and Z sections for walls, floors, and roofs, widely used in residential and modular construction.
Lime mortar
Lime mortar is a masonry mortar made by mixing lime as the binder with sand and water, dominant from antiquity until the late nineteenth century and still used to repair traditional buildings.
Living building materials
Living building materials are construction materials containing living microorganisms, usually cyanobacteria, which fix CO2 and precipitate minerals, in contrast to bioinspired or merely bio-based materials.
Living concrete
Living concrete is a building material containing living microorganisms, typically cyanobacteria or Bacillus bacteria, that remain active inside it, healing cracks and capturing carbon dioxide.
Log construction
Log construction is a building method in which horizontally stacked logs joined at interlocking corner notches form load-bearing walls, historically dominant in Norway and widely used for log homes.
Low-carbon concrete
Low-carbon concrete is concrete designed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, chiefly by replacing Portland cement clinker with supplementary cementitious materials like fly ash, slag, or calcined clay.
Lumber
Lumber, also called timber or structural timber, is wood sawn from logs into standardized pieces for construction and trade, graded by quality and dried to a specified moisture content.
Lump sum contract
A lump sum contract, also called a fixed-price contract, is a construction contract with a single price fixed at the outset regardless of the contractor's actual costs.
Masonry
Masonry is a construction method in which brick, block, or stone units are laid and bonded with mortar, in use for more than 8,000 years.
MasterFormat
MasterFormat is a standardized list of numbers and titles for organizing construction specifications and project manuals, published jointly by CSI in the United States and CSC in Canada.
Means of egress
A means of egress is the continuous, unobstructed path from any occupied part of a building to a public way, comprising the exit access, exit, and exit discharge.
Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing
Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) is the construction-industry term for the engineering systems that make a building usable: air conditioning, power and lighting, and water supply and drainage.
Modified bitumen roofing
Modified bitumen roofing (mod-bit) is a low-slope roofing system of polymer-modified asphalt sheets laid in multiple plies, typically lasting 20 to 25 years, installed by torch, adhesive, or self-adhered methods.
Modular construction
Modular construction is a building method in which factory-made three-dimensional modules are assembled on-site into finished structures, faster and with less waste than site building.
Mortar (masonry)
Mortar is a paste of sand, a binder such as lime or Portland cement, and water, used in masonry to bond brick, stone, and block and seal the joints between them.
Musterbauordnung
The Musterbauordnung (MBO), or Model Building Code, is a German model law adopted by the Bauministerkonferenz in 1960 as the template for the sixteen binding state building codes.
Nail (fastener)
A nail is a straight, slender fastener, usually pointed and headed, driven by hammer or nail gun to hold two or more pieces of material together.
National Building Code of Canada
The National Building Code of Canada is a model building code published by the National Research Council, setting technical requirements for building design and construction since 1941.
NFPA 101 Life Safety Code
NFPA 101, the Life Safety Code, is a National Fire Protection Association model code covering life safety in both new and existing buildings, organized by occupancy type.
Oriented strand board
Oriented strand board (OSB) is an engineered wood structural panel made of cross-oriented layers of strands bonded under heat and pressure, widely used in North American home construction as a plywood alternative.
Painter and decorator
A painter and decorator, also known as a house painter, is a construction tradesperson who applies paint, wallpaper, and finishes to buildings, ranging from homes and offices to bridges.
Particle board
Particle board, also called chipboard, is an engineered wood panel made from wood particles, such as sawdust and chips, bonded with resin and hot-pressed into sheets.
Passive cooling
Passive cooling dissipates heat from buildings and electronics without powered components such as compressors or pumps, using radiation, conduction, natural convection, and evaporation; it matters because buildings use about 30% of global final energy.
Performance specification
A performance specification is a written construction requirement that states the result the work must achieve, such as an acoustic rating, and leaves materials and methods to the contractor.
Plaster
Plaster, also known as calcined gypsum, is a building material made from lime, gypsum, or cement mixed with water and applied wet to walls and ceilings, hardening in place.
Prestressed concrete
Prestressed concrete, also known as concrete prestressing, is concrete in which tensioned steel strands introduce permanent compression, preventing the cracking that concrete's weakness in tension would otherwise cause.