Different Structural Design Details By Location

What this episode covers

Show Notes: Different structural design details by location of building project.  Also review of the different structural design types required to obtain permits in different jurisdictions. Transcript: Interviewer: Hey everybody. Welcome back to 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 gentleman is Steve Tuma. How’s it going today buddy? Steve Landmark: It’s an excellent day. Interviewer: Good. Steve Landmark: Good day, a lot of customers calling with interesting projects in different parts of the country with different building department requirements. It’s interesting. Interviewer: Well, that’s good because I’ve got more interesting questions for you, so hope you’re ready to feel the feels. Steve Landmark: I probably have some interesting answers. Interviewer: Let’s hope. I want to talk today a little bit about plans again, about getting your plans engineered. And I’d like to go over a couple things again that we’ve touched about a little bit in the past. One of those is structural engineering. Can you just give us your basic expertise on what exactly structural engineering is? Steve Landmark: In a simplified version, it’s just to make sure that the structural design of your home can withstand the happenings on your site. So let’s just say your building in Colorado, there’s a lot of snow in areas. Some part of Colorado is more desert but a lot of it is snow. So you can end up with big snow accumulation overnight, because of the mountains you can also end up with high winds. Also, the way that mountains are, you can end up with expansive soils. So then if you took that same house and said “Hey, let’s build that I California.” You’re going to be in an earthquake situation. If you said, “Hey, now I want to move to Key West, Florida.” Suddenly, you’re in a hurricane situation. So the structural engineering develops the structure, the thing that holds the house up to be able to withstand those conditions. And sometimes those conditions like I say are earthquake or wind or snow loads or expansive soils. And that’s what we’re looking at. So basically, to simplify it, it’s just to make sure the structure is strong enough to withstand the conditions that it’s going to be built within. Interviewer: And we’ve talked a lot about working with building departments in specific areas, wherever a customer happens to be building a house, he’s going to have to deal with the building department in that area. And the request that they come up with, do they request different structural information a lot? Steve Landmark: Yes, it can vary considerably because building departments are different, it’s a national code. But the enforcement of that code is different in different areas. My opinion is basically because some areas, the building departments are more sophisticated and others, they are a little less sophisticated. So that means that some areas like I mentioned before were – they don’t even ask for building permits. Other places, they want simplified structural engineering like header and beam calculations just to make sure that the beams are holding up your house or the headers that are spanning your window and door openings are strong enough to support it. That’s more on the basic side. Others will go through and want just foundation design because of the ground conditions. That happens a lot in Colorado and Texas and a few other places. And then other places want the full design. That’s the foundation and the complete wood structure, shear walls, different connections, beam sizes and different situations to make sure that the house is strong enough.