Rick Leon Clark, Lost River Construction
Rick was born in the in the Sacramento Valley and raised on a 1200 acre rice farm, the oldest of seven children. Affable and easy to talk to, he is no stranger to hard work. When Rick turned 18, he left the farm and came out to the coast to become a builder.
His career spanned several incarnations as he wound his way toward becoming a General Contractor here on the coast. First he worked at a hardware store, then on construction crews. For a time he built power lines. After getting caught in an electrical storm not of his making, he left that line of work. He spent fifteen years in the pile driver’s union building deep foundations for bridges and public works projects. Once his children were born, he didn’t want to be out of town working Monday through Friday, so left the union. Working on a job in Shelter Cove in the early aughts, he was about to complete his contractor’s license. It was an easy transition to working full time locally on construction projects, first subbing in as a lead under other GC’s, and eventually doing more and more of his own projects. He is based in Caspar, California, which he raves about for it’s central location. A life long lover of the sea, he appreciates being able to hear the ocean from his backyard.
Anyone who knows Rick knows he loves building, and perhaps just as much as building, he loves his tools, the plans for the buildings, and of course, his excavator. I asked him what compelled him about building houses and he said, “When I was a little kid we used to build forts and I always loved it. I was born with it. I used to draw things, get as close as I could to mechanical drawings.” He still draws buildings. These days he sketches his dream house, “a fishing cabin, on the side of a lake, with a little shed roof and a porch on the water.”
One of Rick’s main inspirations was his grandfather, who he describes as an “old world builder.” Born in Luthuania, his grandfather was a carpenter who had no electricity, no nails, no power tools. He made his own nails by custom cutting them out of wire.
His favorite thing about construction is “solving the problems that come up. Building is not easy. Every time you turn around, there’s a problem. I like being confronted with those problems – supplies, equipment, logistical problems – literally problems coming at you all day. I like helping people solve the problems, helping the job keep moving. There’s a rush of being able to forge on. If we do hit a complete brick wall, we figure out a way to go around or work on something else. A construction project has to always continue to move forward, cause to stop is horrible.”
He likes working with the architects and designers. “It’s fun because they are properly schooled, from design firms, with degrees. It’s neat to work with them because it is educational for me. Sometimes I come up with something that makes practical sense and then they adapt their ideas. Those ideas merge and blend and come together, creating something even more beautiful.
There’s excitement in their back ground meeting my background. (I’m) a guy who has built many many projects, meeting with someone like Mark Benihoff… it is a very creative space to be in together.
You have a beautiful design, but it is another thing to have somebody look at with eyes of someone who has built a lot of things, the practical knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work…”
I asked him about the most difficult aspect of being a general contractor here in Mendocino County on the coast.
He said it was balancing the love of building with the business aspect and the need to make money. I suspect many other small business owners might agree that there is an art in and of itself in balancing these two elements: passion and the bottom line. In Hollywood, the advice often given to creatives is “one for the love, one for the money.” Rick also noted “setting and meeting the owner’s expectations.”
I asked, “What do you wish people knew or understood about working with a contractor?”
People don’t realize how involved it is, what it takes to do it the right way. Everybody wants to the job done right but they don’t know what it takes to get the job done right. Maybe it is a thirty thousand dollar foundation. If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes.”
He explains that this gap between the customer’s understanding of what is required to make something structurally sound, or “built to last” and how that plays into why so many buildings are built improperly. “Handymen concede to the owner’s desires. Five years later the house is unloved,” due to poor construction, design, insulation, cutting corners on materials, etc…
As far as trends in the construction industry and what’s on the horizon, Rick Clark says Title 24 has been a game changer. Solar in mandatory now. Every new building must be energy efficient, have better insulation, a grid tie solar system, back up generator, fire retardant for exterior siding and the roof because fire insurance is “hard to get.” Aesthetically, he see many more shallow pitch shed roofs going on new construction houses these days. Traditionally, one might see more gambrel roofs, gable roofs, or a full hip. “Everybody likes Frank Lloyd Wright. Everybody likes the modern look with a flatter roof.” However, “flat roofs don’t shed water as well. They are more likely to leak, and then there’s the pine needles” that accumulate. He’s said he gets lost in Home Depot. It can be a half day affair. Not because he’s gathering materials for a job so much as investigating the newest technology out there. “One thing that I’ve seen recently that I thought was really neat was a technology where if house or concrete slab is not of level, you can drill through the foundation or slab and inject some sort of expanding foam and it brings the slab up to level. It is mysterious . I’m excited to learn about it. Being in heavy civil construction – deep foundation is one of my specialties.”
When I asked about what different about building here on the coast of Mendocino, he said, “The way that you waterproof your windows and doors. When you are right on the coast, the way we get the rain driving horizontally, we’ve had high end doors and windows leak in the frame. The mighter joint in the corner, the product itself will leak in heavy storms, but not the way we frame them. Everybody on the coast, all the really good guys do it a similar way. We lap the counter flashing into the frame. The way you flash that window is critical to making sure it doesn’t leak. The last thing you want when building a brand new house is for it to leak.
“What’s your dream project?”
“To build a half outdoor half indoor house, probably in a place like Costa Rica, near good surf.”
“Peak moment of 2021 so far?”
“Buying my new truck. It was shocking to me that I could just go down and buy a new truck. It makes me feel like a big shot, but I’m not a big shot. I’m just a kid. [He’s 46}, so being able to say yea gimme that one right there was something.”
