BEFORE THE ARCHITECT – HOME DESIGNING BACKGROUND – UNIQUE HOME DESIGNING ARTICLES
HOME BUILDING PROBLEMS
By Before The Architect Copyright 2003-2007 Before The Architect
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BUILDING PROBLEMS CAN GET WORSE THAN BIGTIME IN jULIAN bEEVER'S DUNGEON
INTRODUCTION
This e-article is mostly about how not
to go about developing a home plan and ways you can tell that you're in trouble
with home building problems. The point: avoid this stuff and you're advantaging
successful home design program.
JUST A SAMPLING
Do you know a swell way to ruin a good day on a home building jobsite? Maybe even a lifetime of residence?
I do. I do: screw up the designer home plans,
either in their preparation or their application. Home building problems will
surely follow.
. . . does the roof have to look like
that?
. . . why does it seem like the house leans left?
. . . what gutters?
. . . why's the front door so far back?
. . . didn't know the main floor had 2 levels, did you?
. . . don't you think we needed another half-bath?
. . . why's it so dark in here?
. . . always thought there'd be a door here, right?
. . . what happens when my heart and legs aren't as strong and those stairs are still here?
. . . pool table? Hah, no way.
. . . this kitchen doesn't work for me, see? How tall do you think I am?
. . . how come the wall's so close, there almost no door moulding?
. . . there's no place for a bed in here, is there?
. . . so the living room is the kids' playroom, too, eh?
. . . how do you get this door out of the way of that one?
. . . see how those windows aren't symmetrical to anything?
. . . who knew that the bathroom opens to the dining room?
. . . why's the baseboard so skinny?
. . . isn't that the toilet flushing on the other side of the house?
. . . where do we hang up guests' coats?
. . . our refrigerator/freezer in that space?
. . . really, no room for Mother? Ever?
. . . huh? what style?
. . . you think that the kids'll hear us in here?
. . . feel the floor bounce?
. . . why's the switch way over there?
. . . why'd we have to get custom cabinets everywhere?
. . . what's this space for, anyway?
. . . so our entertainment room is their playroom, too?
. . . how're we gonna make the new washer and dryer fit?
. . . what do you mean, ‘where's your closet?'
. . . what do you mean, ‘where's your vanity?'
. . . how's my family's antique table ever supposed to fit in the dining room?
. . . a home elevator’s gotta cost more than that!
. . . can they see in here?
. . . did you know that room would be so hot with the sun on it?
. . . can you make a single, clean sweep into the garage?
. . . who put that column in the middle of our beautiful view?
. . . what's a Fire Marshall got to do with my windows?
HOME BUILDING PROBLEMS
There are 3 major dimensions to designer home building problems:
 | Poor home designing discipline and
commitment – a non-collaborative enterprise, unshared, non-vicarious
experience
|
| The home building contractors do it the way they're used to doing it |
| Poor home drafting output - a shortfall of
expression between understanding, intent, drawings, and guidelines
|
| Inattention to detail borne mostly of
disrespect for the home building plans, which disrespect is earned
|
HORROR STORIES FROM TIMES GONE BY
Here are some designing and drafting lessons from a lifetime at the granite knee
of experience – personal, storied, observed.
Custom home design a while, draft a while, custom home build a while, home repair a while, and you'll collect your own legion of horror stories of custom home building problems - things gone terribly wrong.
Real problems can arise anywhere between the dream of an idea and its presentation on site. It is this custom home designers conviction that a well-designed, well-drawn designer home plan set taken seriously by everyone directly involved – client, home designer/draftsman, contractor – would have avoided the lizard list of common custom home building problems that I have personally witnessed, among them:
| A few thousand watts on a 15-amp circuit – 10 basement lights, 2 flights of stairway lighting, and L2 lighting overall, 2 bath's heating lamps, fans, and outlets |
| Big headers with butt joints |
| Bright nails as fasteners in exterior decking |
| Toe-nailing used for permanent fastening in lieu of hangers, connectors, and face nailing |
| A house remodel mostly wired with lamp cord – inside and out |
| Paid-for, professional house plan set without a foundation plan, roof plan, and electrical plan |
| Long-span floor joists on the plans as 2x12s at 12 linear inches on center and framed 2x10s at 16 linear inches on center. |
| Houses – big houses – built without using a level |
| The same concrete steps screwed up not once, not twice, but three times running for lack of adequate footings and reinforcement, and they still aren't right |
| New stairs with 8 linear inch treads |
| Plans wherein three passage doors conflict in the same space |
| Painting crews hard at it all day in very cold, very dark, very wet houses |
| On a rainy day, oak flooring straight off a wholesaler's delivery truck to chop saws and nailers in a cold, damp house |
| Drains that'll only draw when water runs uphill |
| A builder in my neck of the woods who commonly passes off 8d nails for 10ds and 10ds for 12Ds |
| True masonry clad wythes without air gaps and weep holes |
| A 6-month old mansion's kitchen floor deflected 5/8" on 4' for inadequate joisting below a huge center island and an unspecified natural stone floor |
| A bedroom with no convenient place for a bed |
| A dining room too small to even squeeze around a seated table |
| A roof over a cathedral ceiling in Maryland that's been replaced 3 times in 8 years and in its 9th year is rotting out again, because of persistently inadequate rafter bay ventilation and inadequate rafter bracing |
| 2 doors at a head landing that not only conflict, but also sweep the travel path |
| Majorly under-illuminated interiors |
| A garage floor with no pitch |
| Footing drains laid atop footings and not beside them |
| Insufficient and poorly applied reinforcement – or none at all – to concrete slabs-on-grade |
| A home design in Rhode Island with all four chimney caps 2' below a large belvedere not 4' away |
| Plans detailing doors and windows subsequently determined to have been out of production for years |
| Plans detailing windows that the specified maker never made |
| 2"x10" joists notched 8" and unsupported at their bottoms of face |
| Badly over-sized dormers |
| Custom kitchens with active travel patterns passing the main sink |
| Custom kitchens with wall ovens in an active hallway |
| Custom kitchens with wall ovens opening across a passage |
| Custom kitchens with 48 linear inch refrigerator freezer facing 3 linear feet to an island, kitchen sink and stove or main sink at opposite sides of the island |
| Bearing walls several feet away from subordinate support |
| Raised brick and natural stone hearth laid on rough floor over common joists |
| Plans so deficient and misunderstood that no one's really sure how the interior slab-on-grade floor got 2 elevations |
| Windows undersized and set exceptionally high, in order to shave materials bucks and avoid time spent setting cripple studs |
| 24 linear inch on-center trusses with ½ linear inch OSB decking gaw-ron-teed to sag substantially within weeks of installation |
What I'm not saying is that the bad wiring, plumbing, framing, masonry, foundation, roof, traffic patterns, lines of sight, kitchen work flows or anything else that goes wrong with custom home building is entirely on the guy who designed or drew the custom home plans.
The home designer could be a party to it; could be not the only player; could be out of it somehow (the author's grasping).
Custom home building is complex in regard to home building materials, means, methods, individual and group interrelationships, the site, the weather, the money, the time, community standards, comprehension of style, and on and on. There are plenty of opportunities in custom home building to get it wrong.
What I am saying is that the single, substantive, significant common thread of communication between all those directly related to building a custom home is the designer home plan set.
Takeoffs, materials' orders, labor and skill level, means and methods of application, physical association of parts both absolute and relative, sequence of work on site, durability of structure, safety of use, convenience of habitation, expectations realized – all these facts and behaviors relate one way or another to the designer home plan set - some causal, some derivative, none casual unless the plans are no good. Get it mostly right and life is good.
Get it wrong, and everyone can suffer. That's what I am getting it.
IN OTHER WORDS
There is a vital centrality to home building plans: everyone in home design and home building communicates based on home building plans.
All the major players in custom home building focus on the home building plans – doesn't matter whether they communicate directly with each other, because they communicate via the home building plans.
Let's check off the major players in custom home building to get this story straight:
| Clients (owners) can work with most others,
except unusually with subcontractors, where the actual custom home
building is done.
| ||
| Financiers at the very best know only what they can see on designer home plan sheets and that's it | ||
| Building authorities sometimes inspect on the basis of designer home plans, sometime don't, and sometimes don't inspect, and still the designer home plans had most often better reflect at least more commonly recognized codes and common building standards | ||
| General contractors use the designer home plans as the basis for bidding, distributing work and its sequencing, gauging performance of theirs and others and | ||
| Subcontractors may rely solely on the home building plans, possibly with little or no other direction | ||
| Suppliers usually have nothing but home building plans with which to work, either on their own or in client company, guiding them through product choices and options based on those plans |
So here's the test –
Q: What is the sole and unique basis for universal communication of custom home building expectation among all those involved in a home building project?
A: The custom home plans. The plans. The plans.
Got it? The custom home building plans. The custom home building plans. Custom home building plans are the basis for expectation, for necessity, for sufficiency shared among and between all the players in custom home design and custom home building.
. . . . . . .
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