Saturday, August 14, 2004

Porch House Construction Prints detail view

3D details help make confusing connections simple and clear. The Porch House Construction Prints will have a special structural sheet to document the ground floor timber frame. The frame is not complicated, but could be intimidating for a builder who has never done something like this before. These detail views are intended to clarify what might otherwise be confusing (and cause for a builder to inflate his price). The 0357 Steel Case House is the only other design that has required this so far. This is a view of the same connection shown in my previous entry. A view like this can take the fear factor out of a detail.

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Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Porch House Construction Prints details

Working my way through some details. When I detail for a stock plan one of my big priorities is making things straight forward to put together, using readily available products, and if something needs to me made special then making it a simple fabrication. So this week I have been working with a corner of the Porch House where everything comes together. At any corner of the house the porch perimeter beams sit on the foundation piers, the post comes down on top of them, and diagonal braces come in from two directions. Under other circumstances a steel connector would be designed which resolved all the connections, but with a stock plan destined to be built with varying budgets I have to try to detail to the lowest common denominator while still making a handsome connection. What's going on here. The perimeter beams are anchored down to the pier using conventional anchor bolts. The beam is connecting to the post with an inverted post cap connector from Simpson - the same kind is being used up top of the post as well. This connector has two vertical legs on each side of the post bolted thru with two 3/4" bolts. We are going to overlay that plate with an angle trimmed to serve as an anchor for the cleavis of our diagonal brace. This allows us to used the same bolts to attach this additional hardware. To bring the other diagonal brace in at the corner we have to have another angle offset in height so the bolts can cross without interference. The diagonal ties must be offset to the inside of the posts to allow them to pass the horizontal frames. A similar detail will resolve all the connections at the top of the post, and hopefully it will all look easy, and be easy to put together.

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Thursday, August 05, 2004

Porch House Construction Prints sections

This round of drawing development for the sections is done. The section drawings do not carry as much notation as my other sheets. They still need reference marks which I will complete in my last round of notations. I am going to move on to the detailed wall sections now. These will take some time as there is a lot to show in this stage. I have some other details I will need to develop after those but I can see light at the end of the tunnel. Its been an amazing week. I get worn down with this pace so the enthusiasm that reaches me keeps me fresh and motivated. At the beginning of this week late in the day I was looking on the web for some ariel photos for a project site when there was knock at the office door. Once in a blue moon the ups guy has a bad day and can come really late so I did not think much of it being 5:30. I open the door and there is a fellow there looking with much interest up and down the outdoor stairway. He introduces himself as one of the people whom I have corresponded with about the house plans, his wife actually. The are from Philadelphia and were driving by my town and said they just had to stop to take a look at our office and he figured he would just knock. Knock me out is what he did! He was very full of enthusiasm for the stock plan effort and I have to admit that it all just caught me completely off guard. I made sure I had them on the mail list and by the time my head cleared it was time for them to run. I don't meet you all out there in person often enough and experiencing the emotion of another person first hand is a charge - I mean here was somebody else right here in flesh and bone who gets it, just like me. And so later this week I get an email inquiry from somebody very interested in the 0380 Cube House and I reply, answer their questions as best I can, and we go back and forth a couple of times with emails. They are looking for a site and so I give them the down and dirty concern list for this design - height considerations as it is tall at 3 stories. I like to tell it like it is, not scare any one off but I want to enable people with good facts of what they may confront even though it can discourage some. Well they come back to me with obvious determination, and backed up with an order for Design Prints. Man - if they are willing to go out and really push for the kind of house they want, then I'm going to push like hell on my end too. The end of the week is coming up now, I get a call from Lauren, my wonderful ad rep from Dwell for my ads in the Marketplace section. She was talking to Bill, the guy who lays out the ad pages at Dwell - takes all my materials for the ad, corresponds with proofs, etc etc. Turns out the guy with the ad next to mine decided to pull out at the last minute, the issue was going to press in a matter of hours and Bill suggested to Lauren that they stretch my ad out to fill the vacant space, Lauren was calling to give me the good news. Hot diggity dog! I got a double-wide for the month. Thanks guys!

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Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Porch House Construction Prints elevations

This round of elevation drawing notations are done. The drawing is not completely done as there are a good number of reference marks that still need to go down, but the bulk of the work is done on this sheet. Here is a greatly reduced shrinky-dink view of the whole sheet. I often wonder, people must want to see what the heck these drawings look like, but when you are selling House Plans you really can't just post them out there. But there is no harm in these reductions and gives you an idea of what the documents look like. The perimeter of the drawing area is indexed, much like a road map, to aid in locating referenced drawings. The section drawing is next. When that is complete I will develop the detailed wall sections for the house which were blocked out earlier. I am getting more and more excited about completing this project every day. This has been one of my favorites and it will be nice to finally see it "have wings". Some strong inquiries on the 0380 Cube House today look like they will drive that one to completion as well.

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