A great round of questions & answers to help Owner Builders

What this episode covers

Show Notes: On this episode, Landmark Home and Land Company president Steve Tuma answers Interesting questions from customers on how Landmark can help with designing and building their new home, and addresses some common fallacies regarding Panelized home building. Transcript: Interviewer: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me as always is the President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes, where they want, exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993 and that’s Steve Tuma. How are you doing Steve? Steve Landmark: Excellent. It’s a great day today and hello out there panelized home building world. Interviewer: What do you say we talk about panelized home building? I think that’s a good place to start. Steve Landmark: I think I know a few things about it. Interviewer: I think you do. One of the things we’re being asked about by customers and potential customers writing in is about the building-planning phases, the different phases after you’ve – you decide to build a house and you want to start designing and understanding that whole process. A lot of people I imagine just figure you can grab a piece of paper or a napkin at a restaurant and design a home by drawing it on a piece of paper and I would imagine it’s a little more complex than that. Steve Landmark: Well, the initial concept can start there because someone might have an idea of hey, I want to build a 2000-square-foot ranch with a three-car garage or gaming room, a home theater, a master suite. You know, big Eden kitchen or a kitchen with a peninsula or an island or something like that. So yeah, they could draw it up. But sometimes where that falls short is that people don’t always realize that there are details that go into the plans. So sometimes they will go through and say, “Well, I drew this house and it’s 40 feet by 30 feet.” But Steve, when Landmark drew the plans up for my new panelized home, the rooms weren’t the same size or the house had to get a little bigger, whatever it may be. The reason being, there are certain dimensions for wall thicknesses. There are certain things that have certain codes. So for example, people will draw a house. Say there was a 40-foot wide house and they wanted four rooms, they will draw it up as being four 10-foot rooms. Hey, that makes sense. It’s 40-feet wide. But the issue is they forgot the thickness of the interior and exterior walls. So you can lose a couple of feet in there and that’s one of the reasons – just to make sure that the plans are accurate, but there’s also code issues. Hallways have to be a certain thickness, a certain amount of space around toilets, a certain amount of space to work in kitchens. Windows have to have certain elements for egress and light and ventilation codes. Ceilings have to be a certain minimum height. Doorways have to be a certain height. So even though you could draw it up with your pencil on a napkin and it all fits, once you consider all those details, the plan can change a little bit and a lot of – now it seems like you can go anywhere and buy some draw-your-house software. You can even go online and do it and people say, “Well, I drew my plans up.” It’s like yeah, but that software doesn’t make sure it’s structurally sound. It doesn’t make sure the codes are adhered to. It doesn’t make sure that the plan makes sense. Interviewer: Right. Steve Landmark: It’s basically taking your idea, so you could get the concept on a paper so then we can help you with our complete planning phase. I think that a lot of – this is one of those things of you don’t know what you don’t know. So it’s interesting as people start if they’re – you know, just sketch something on a piece of paper and then they see the final set of plans.