Find Building Codes, Construction Books, Design Software, New Home Builders, House Plans, Home Improvement & Home Repair Information... Before You Build

RSMeans Residential Cost Data 2016
RS Means Residential
Cost Data 2016
Square Foot Costs, Assemblies Costs and Unit Costs with Location Factors to adjust material and labor costs to U.S. zip codes and selected locations in Canada

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Sometimes it is difficult to actually find that for which you are looking on the Internet. Searching for information about custom builders, or residential construction, or design/build, or custom home building, can be particularly frustrating because almost every site on the Web is under construction and building their custom designed home page.

To make matters worse, some search engines exclude these common terms from the search or weight them less heavily in the results - unless you force them to be used. Then when you finally figure out what keywords to use, the page you actually need may be number 4,444,443 of 4,444,444 pages that match your request.

A few ideas that may help you find information on the Web

Find Words or Phrases on a Single Web Page

Sometimes, after you get to a page, you still need to find your keyword. If you are using Mozilla Firefox^® or Internet Explorer^® in Windows^® and you want to search any page that appears in your browser for keywords, type Ctrl + Home to jump to the beginning of the page you are viewing and then type Ctrl + F to call up the Find dialogue box.

Click in the box and type one or more words, then click Find Next until you locate the information for which you are searching.

Note that this may not work when using other operating systems or browsers that are specific to a particular service like America Online^®.

Find Information Using Search Engines

Try using just one keyword

Try using many keywords separated by spaces

Try using a plus sign (+) before a keyword to include it

Try using a minus sign (-) before a keyword to exclude it

Enclose a phrase with "quotation marks" to find an exact match

Use a dictionary to be sure that you are spelling words corectly

Use a thesaurus to find similar words for your search

Try your keyword as part of a URL www.yourkeyword.com

Turn off your computer, go to your local library, and check out a good book

Ask us! We may not always have the answer, but if we don't we probably know where to look or whom to ask and we welcome your questions!

Good luck with your project, thank you for visiting B4UBUILD.COM, and have fun building!