Creating a Partial Lower Floor

[nkburdick]

Hello,

 

I'm working on a design and I'm not sure how to accomplish it with Chief.  The lot is sloped such that we'll need to create a lower "Basement" floor, but it will actually have a sub floor above a crawl.  As you can see from the pics, the garage will be grade at the back and then we'll be filling to get grade to the front door.  But I'm not sure in Chief Architect how to get the lower "first" floor to only be a partial floor and still have the foundation work.  You can see that the garage door wants to go below grade and be on the "first" floor.  Any tips on how I either create a daylight basement with sub-floor, or a first floor that doesn't extend over the whole foundation would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks,

Nick

[rgardner]

You may try:

 

actual foundation level below the subfloor of “basement” level aka floor 1, your upper floor would be floor 2 including your garage.

 

on your level 1 you would have the walls that are buried as the same wall definition as the foundation.  The floors not over a suspended floor (aka crawl space area.) you would set as concrete floor and foundation and the crawl space would be the opposite.

[nkburdick]

@solver  I apologize, your answer was a little too vague for me to understand how you did that? Would you be able to share that house file so I can take a look at it?  I'm using Chief Premier X10.  

 

I'm not sure if you you're saying that I should build everything manually?  The part that I'm struggling with is that when make the 1st floor (lower basement floor) small that the upper, the foundation wants to go all the way to the 2nd story (main floor) roof.  I think I'm missing a setting there somewhere.

 

Thanks again for all your help!

[GeneDavis]

Just redraw it with lower floor first as Floor 1.  The crawlspace under it is Floor 0.

 

Other might say your Floor 1 is done on slab with frostwalls, but you must need to do what you do because of soil conditions.

 

Houses along the front range in Colorado, Ft Collins to Colorado Springs, suffer bentonite clays in soils that require an approach like yours.

 

They call the bottom floor, if framed, a "structural" floor.  Typically (in better construction) the foundation walls are supported on piers that go to bedrock.

[nkburdick]

Thanks so much for posting the video, that makes total sense now!  I'll give that a go and see what I get with it.  Much appreciated!