Having a new home, or a townhome, built in the United States can be a bit daunting. That’s usually why you leave such activities to trained professionals/builders, who are more knowledgeable when it comes to constructing a new home. This ensures that the best work is being done, and at the end of the process, you the homeowner, or tenant, will have a quality home to live in.

As with anything you’re paying for, though, you still want to have an idea of what’s going on with the home building process. This means having an active role in learning about the terms associated with home building. For example, imagine you’re an investor, or a landlord, seeking to invest in a piece of property with passive real estate investing. This is a case where you need to know the home building jargon. You can check out a few pieces of building terminology explained below.

Here are the Details

Foundation

The home foundation is the load-bearing portion of the structure, which is typically built below ground. A foundation has three separate tasks: support the structure above, keep out groundwater, and act as a barrier to water and soil vapor.

The foundation of a home is a part of what home builders call the structural components of a home. The other parts of the structural components include the framing and the roof of a single-family home.

A strong house foundation won’t have cracks, and there shouldn’t be leaning, bowing, or twisting on the side of the wall of the foundation from one end. If you’re looking for common problems when it comes to foundations, these can first be seen at the corners of foundations. Lastly, water is an enemy of a home’s foundation.

As water moves through the ground or across the surface of the ground where a foundation is set, this can disrupt the setting of the soil the home was built on. Once this happens, the soil moves or becomes saturated with groundwater. This will deprive the foundation of its support over time. As mentioned before, it’s best to have an idea of what such terms mean, especially if you’re a landlord or real estate investor who is practicing passive real estate investing in a new home or rental property.

Frame

Any good Home Builder knows a frame is a bit like a human skeleton. For example, a house frame is what keeps the structure of a rental property or commercial property from falling. Think of this in terms of mammals. Without a skeleton frame, we’d all be gelatinous puddles of goo. The home fame is composed of beams that are joined to form the “bones” of the structure. A solid frame combined with a good foundation build can keep a house up for many years. This can ensure that your floor plans for commercial property or rental property will be stable in the coming years.

On the opposite side, a home with a defective frame or feeble foundation can ensure that the house will fall. In this case, the stability of your floor plans will come into question, as the frame is a bit weaker. Having an idea of what the frame is as a homebuyer, or even real estate investor, is a great step toward improving your home building jargon.

Roof

When it comes to home building, the term “roof” encompasses a lot more than its basic definition. At its base level, a roof is a top covering of a building. This includes all materials and constructions necessary to support it on the walls of the building. A roof provides protection against rain, snow, sunlight, extremes temperatures, and wind.

The primary job of a roof is to shed water to the gutters, circumventing such liquid from falling into your home. Roofs come in a variety of types including metal, tile, rubber, and solar panel shingles. The roof comes with its own variety of pieces including the flashing, the ridge, the hip, the eave, the fascia, and the valley. Each component serves a different function for the roof’s purpose.

Knowing just some basic terminology can help you out greatly when having your own home built or determining the sort of buildings you’d like to invest in.