Exploring Predrawn Plans: Accuracy, Completeness, and Uniformity

What this episode covers

Show Notes:Exploring the intricate world of predrawn plans, this post delves into the crucial aspects of accuracy, completeness, and uniformity to navigate the complexities of building department approval and ensure buildability. Transcript: Steve Tuma: And what happens is sometimes people will go through and they’ll say, hey, my builder can adjust it on site and I’m like, well, you probably can, but you’re just opening your wallet up in your schedule. Interviewer: Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for episode 53 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 nationwide and around the globe since 1993. Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how’s it going, buddy? Steve Tuma: It’s a great day. Another great day for people to start building a house. Always a good day. Interviewer: Always a good day. And if I sound a little stuffy or even if Steve sounds a little stuffy, I think we both went through a cold thing and everybody’s been getting this, whatever this seasonal cold thing is. So hopefully we sound pretty clear. I think we’ll survive. Yeah. So you had brought up a subject you wanted to talk about today and that is standard plans, store and online bought plans and are they any good? And I’m sure a lot of people have questions about this. So is that something you’d be up for getting into right now? Steve Tuma: Yeah, that’s kind of an interesting topic. It’s actually the whole plan situation is interesting because a lot of people will say, hey, I bought these plans. The local guy did them and he wins the awards in town or hey, I found them online or whatever. There’s a plan service in town or a plan book or whatever and they buy the plans and that was for your, hey, everything’s taken care of. Well, it kind of depends on what your situation is of the land because most of those plans are set for a house to be built on a flat piece of land. They don’t have considerations for slopes in the land, different situations, showing mechanical drawings, plumbing and electric that are relevant to your actual building site. So they might be a decent starting point for the concept, but the chances are you’ll need more details to really go through and build. So if you were just to go buy a set of plans and these people say, hey, they’re good for building permits. Well, you got to wonder where they’re good for because most of them have a lot of disclaimers on them. You must go through a structural engineer. You must verify all the codes. You must verify the mechanical design. You must verify the dimensions. There’s so many things that you have to verify that you’ve really got to take the concept but start from zero to make sure that it’s put together. So if you were building a simple home in an area where there aren’t as many regulations on a flat piece of land as well, they might work if it’s a simple home. But if you’ve got a home that’s more complex, a Victorian, a modern design, a home with a lot of corners, a home with a lot of ridgelines, you might see that the plans have to be adjusted, especially if you get into higher snow loads, earthquake zones, high wind speeds, because those plans in general have been designed for areas where the building code enforcement is relatively simple. Say a 20-pound snow load, which is a lot of the United States, but then you go take this into Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Northeast, anywhere in the plains states, anywhere in the West Coast,