Floor Elevation Question

[ChiefuserRob2025]

Team, 

 

It should be obvious to me, and I have looked for reference to understand my options. But I do not have a clear answer to the following question. 

 

Issue: 

I am designing a house with a garage. The house will have a crawl space. In North Carolina, the footing has to be below the frost line (which is 12"). Then there will be 30" of wall before the installation of the sill plate. Obviously, the garage pad will be a ground level. What is the best method of controlling wall height for the set up?

 

I have tried to place the garage and the house on the same layer, but I do not seem to have the control I need to set a wall with 42" wall height to the footing. Additionally, setting a different elevation for the garage wall is difficult. I have even tried to place the garage wall on the same layer as the house foundation. This works but the result leaves the sill plate running through the garage doors. Can you help clarify what I am doing wrong?  Thanks 

[Michael_Gia]

7 hours ago, ChiefuserRob2025 said:

What is the best method of controlling wall height

Wall height in Chief is controlled by Room Height. 
 

[mtldesigns]

9 hours ago, ChiefuserRob2025 said:

I have tried to place the garage and the house on the same layer, but I do not seem to have the control I need to set a wall with 42" wall height to the footing

You will design your homes as it is.  Don't worry about the footing until you get a foot print of your home.  The garage will be on the same level as your home (floor 1), but in the dbx of that garage room, you'll put in a negative floor height.  I attached one I am working on now, this garage floor is -12" from the main finished floor level.  If I read your question correctly, is it 30" that the home will above grade?   If so, your garage floor will be -30".  Once you get your plan straighten out, you then "build your foundation" using the pull down... This is how you get your crawl space.  Pick the "walls with footing" then about half way down set your min. height of that stem wall.  A crawl space is considered a stem wall.  This will put all of your foundation on level 0. 

 

Hope this helps and gets you going.  BTW there are plenty of tutorials out there to assist further.  Start with baby steps, before you know it, you'll be running a marathon.  

 

 

[mtldesigns]

here are some training vids..

 

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos

 

[BerthaLee]

I also design and build in NC - the eastern side. I'm not sure which part you are in, but in our area, we use pier curtains with continuous footers with a brick veneer. If you need any help with that aspect, let me know.

 

The method mentioned above is the way to go to get the garage lower however, one thing to note is when you get your garage walls up and a room is defined, Go ahead then (or before you start building walls) set your default room heights. Set your garage floor to be - 30". I like to build the roof before the foundation because most of my foundation plan is manually drawn anyway.  (I usually set the garage to 0 and the first floor to 37 1/2" for our plans)

 

Hope this helps :)

Susan