SH_Canada

8 hours ago, robdyck said:

In the example you provided, you shouldn't need to do any detailing to the underside of the stairs; the fire / insulated separation should be the walls around the stairwell and furnace room.

the kicker here was the washroom. he said that had to be isolated as well because it is not part of the dwelling, but then where does the radon rough in go.

but back to #1 even on a normal walled staircase for the energy calc, are you using the area of the entire exterior wall or just above the stairs or just the top level. And then for floor area, are you using only plywood(stair materials) for the energy calc for the stair opening or using the outside dims for floor area?

I figured if I could build a floor below the stair it would take care of the opening problem for the energy calc as well. But your point on how the heck would someone know what to build is well taken. I got it approved as it is without that, but it is a bit of a dog's breakfast, IMHO

In this case for the energy calc,  the city was okay with me just using the top floor of the exterior walls and using the full floor (incl the stairwell) for the floor calc. But given the pickyness of the radon rough in, I think he just missed it. But they have also not said anything for other plans submitted which i have done similarly. So i figure everyone is ignoring it, no one cares, or no one has realized it. but i could not find any doc on this scenario. There is doc for required RSI of floors over garages, but have not seen anything wrt a stairwell

Just wanted to know what others are doing 

14 hours ago, Doug_N said:

I would have a discussion with the plans examiner.  The area under the slab is all connected, so it shouldn't matter where the radon rough in is located.

that was exactly my thinking. apparently not his.

"can't be in the garage", he wrote it first in the initial review and then said it when I spoke to him. Couldn't convince him otherwise.

Also had another interesting one on this plan. He said the laundry room door had to be 32", I said no, laundry is it's own room and does not fall under "utility" room. He quoted the oxford dictionary. I sent it to the govt of alberta. GoA came back with, it is its own room type, not a utility, doesn't need to be 32". examiner brings in his boss, his boss says, the NBC illustrated guide references W/D for utility rooms. GoA says no, original ruling stands, not a utility room. in case you are wondering why not 32. they want W/D in a bathroom in a closet with a pocket door. Not enough room for 32" pocket door

3 minutes ago, Doug_N said:

Does Alberta use the National Building Code?  In Ontario we have our own version (OBC) with lots of goodies added onto it just to make live unbearable

we use NBC tables for STC, FR, but yes we have our own version called the of the code, affectionately known as "ABC" 

2 minutes ago, Doug_N said:

aybe put in in the furnace room and mechanically vent to room to the exterior. 

thats where I had proposed it, for the 6 sq ft, and he said it had to be in the "centre", so he picked below the landing.

The whole thing, in my view is a bit ridiculous for the tiny area as the bathroom does not count for the dwelling

@Doug_N ..must be getting late for me to miss the obvious. thanks. looks good now with the ceiling plane and the landing. I suppose I could cheat and probably adjust the stringer to match as well

11 minutes ago, Doug_N said:

I have another question for you.  How is the radon gas rough in accessed?

dont get me going on that.  The conversation with the examiner started with me saying. Do I really need radon for 20 sq ft (I originally had it in the garage and they said it could not be there)

. Then he said it had to be in the middle of the slab somewhere and the outlet could be in the furnace room.

I was waiting for him to tell me I had to have a FR mini door behind the toilet

so to answer your question.... floor hatch..but to answer it in real life. no one would care. but it is another reason why I wanted to get the FR below the stairs, so then I could say there is no part of the dwelling not isolated from the slab. He was indicating the furnace room was part of the dwelling and I said no as the ceiling was FR and then he said what about the penetrations, then I said, they can be fire stopped and it is HW heating so there are no ducts, so then he said an HRV is needed and that will need air flow .......

so i am looking to avoid all this with rated floor below the stairs and FR walls and FR door to the (non) furnace rom

7 minutes ago, Chopsaw said:

 

So you should be able to just calc. the wall area above the stair level for the conditioned area I think.

right but how does one do that, trace the stair riser and tread/nosing for each stair? use the stringer bottom?

I tried the ceiling plane, looks not bad if I can change the depth of the landing to match, how does one change the landing joist depth? I tried changing the deck in defaults, no luck, the component of the landing claims it is 2x10, but a measurement on the section shows that not to be the case

9 minutes ago, Chopsaw said:

So for question 1, do you intend to put a door at the bottom of the stairs ?

there is one there, it is just on this side of the camera, on the outside wall

the plans exam examiners are getting pickier....

"backyard suites" are getting popular here. These are essentially garages with a suite above. The suite above must be separated from the garage by a fire rated ceiling.

The problem are interior stairs. Normally one can get around this by putting a door at the top of the stairs. But in this case the customer did not want this as he wanted a pony wall

This then creates two problems

1. for canadaland, calculating the wall effective R value for the inhabitable space (divided by above and below stairs).

2. create a fire assembly for below the stairs to separate from the garage (normally this is avoided by enclosing the stairs). in cases where the customer wants to use below the stairs

My question for 1, is are people  drawing a polyline down every stair to get the value above the stair? cut one down the middle and call it a day? just calculating the wall area for both above and below where the stairs are and "giving up" the area below the stairs? In most cases the wall does not meet the req R value so by adding this area below the stairs, it makes the tradeoff calc more difficult to achieve.(need to add more attic insulation)

For 2, is there a way in CA I could draw an angled "floor" to run with the stairs as shown by the blue below? (the customer wanted a bathroom in the garage below the stairs). I could do it in this elevation view with CAD, but wanted to know if there is a better way. Ideally this would mimick the floor assembly to get the prescribed FR and STC ratings. so say 9" deep with insulation, channels, rated drywall. Then the polyline for 1. would also be simpler.

thanks

On 1/3/2022 at 1:20 PM, Richard_Morrison said:

One of the MAJOR improvements in X12 was the ability to have more than one layout open at a time. Ed Koenig did a video of a VERY fast way to place details from a detail warehouse layout. The upgrade is worth it for this feature alone.

I'm curious, why not just move from library directly to layout?

It seems there are two cases in the video

1. copying a detail as is from a warehouse layout file to the current layout file

2. scaling a detail from a plan detail (while sending it to layout)

I've been experimenting the last couple days with storing the details in the library and dragging them to layout (into predetermined box sizes). Seems to work okay. the details like siding, insulation etc are controlled by macros I made. It would seem to be as quick, if not quicker as the video's scenario 1. for scenario 2, it looks like you can rescale the user library cad detail once on layout, so it would seem to be close to the same as the video for 2. And given the ability to edit the CAD block directly now, it seems rather fast to change things like the label size.

But wondering if I am missing something? 

i'm curious what happens if you lower the deck room floor to be at or below the sill plate.

in other words, I wonder if this has something to do with the deck

29 minutes ago, glennw said:

Use the Elevation Data tools instead - especially the Elevation Region tool.

i do as well around the house so the corners are where you want them to be when you build the house. in the case of a garage, that elevation across the garage would be the same, so a region in front should work.

I also use elevation lines where fixed points are known across the entire structure.

IMHO there is a difference between what the surveyor has today, and what it will be when you build the house. some points will be built up and some may be excavated to order to get what one wants

for instance there is a county here which makes us plot as surveyed, and as proposed markers, and then there are rules on how much of a difference they can be

are you trying to build a concrete floor with a crawlspace beneath it?

you can adjust the terrain up and down by altering the "subfloor height above terrain parameter". If the terrain is not flat I tend to use terrain regions on the sides of the house to then further adjust the terrain downward.

 I typically also set the terrain as 2" thick to more be like a ground elevation

this is then what it looks like in elevation. in the case below the stem wall also comes up 12" above the concrete floor, to keep snow out

your long gable is at 4:12 across 72', this puts your roof height at 12' at the peak. you side hip (not connected) is 17' at 4:12. this gives you roughly 6' at the peak, so short 6', which can be seen in a cross section:

so to fix it, you would have to change the pitch of the hip, or build a wall

or run the gable all the way across

6 hours ago, IvanCyr said:

I'm back to the CAD line option....unless someone has found a better solution. 

it was more curiosity than anything else as i do these on a small scale rather frequently, but I tend to only show existing and proposed walls, not the demo (occasionally when asked I will and then it is 2 plans, existing/demo/proposed(2d walls only) & proposed(without all the other walls)). But then I am sitting there editing two files for the same wall change. So I'm curious to see how you make out

Are you essentially creating a series of Xs to represent an existing wall(which is not a CA wall), which is to be demoed?

Is there a reason you would not create a different wall type with a different fill and put those on a different layer, and set them to no locate and no room dimension? and then use the wall schedule or create your own?

I remember running into some problems with doing the two walls types such as you could not offset a wall, and problems with the rendering  where the no locate wall intersected an existing wall, but for 2d it seemed to work pretty well.

or why not use CAD polylines with a different fill?

I'm trying to figure out what the advantage of using the X's are

8 hours ago, Todd-W3Design said:

I have been using a BLK360 for year now

so how do these things work when there are bushes all the way down the side of a property? do you use it interior as well? how does it capture around corners for tight bathrooms? i survey some very convoluted houses. Are you assuming for instance, the inside length of a closet, becuase it cannot possibly know that with a bunch of clothes in it? 9 times out of ten that how I find the flue

13 hours ago, IvanCyr said:

I do NOT want to see the exterior cladding pushing vertically downward onto the garage stem wall section above the garage slab.

this is the standard here. parging then happens on the concrete. here is one at 12" +48 for frost

i do these all the time and do not need to use pony walls. adjust the floor to SWT to 12" and stem wall to 12" + frost requirement

oops that is from the foundation level. from level 1 (ceiling looks proper):

6 hours ago, crosscutter55 said:

This meaning the program operates in a clockwise formation follow that pointer in that formation

you have intrigued me with this. what  does this mean?

The odd thing is the zoom in seemed to show it perfectly fine(see below), and the width of the stairs showed 36" even when I changed the decimal places in the middle. I even used the center tool to center with the other stairs and it did not fix it. the only thing that fixed it what was glennw suggested. I suspect the reason this happened was my object snaps were turned off. 

so it appears the program does something specific when snapping this to the wall. I also looked a little further at when open underneath is not checked on stairs, the part coming down is only a thin layer, so my guess is this thinness must be in a perfect spot to have it show on the cross section.

Which, I suppose, I am using this to show the vertical line where the stairs end. it does not actually represent anything in real life, at least in this case. So really for me, although I liked seeing it, there should really be no requirement for me to see it. it was more a matter of consistency

maybe build an attci wall and make it a knee wall

and to you!

that did it thanks.

attached

175 skyview ranch rd - Copy.plan

the left stairs do not show the vertical line like the middle stair does. The right stair is just a copy and paste of the left stair and it shows the vertical line. It is on the stair layer (along with the rest of the stair). Any ideas on why it does not show?. I fiddled with in for 45 min yesterday turning settings off and on in the stair hoping it would trigger it to reshow it. I also tried moving the room divder at the end left and right, that made no difference