Different wall heights on each side of furnished attic

[meanwhile]

Hello! The left side wall of this attic bedroom is 10" higher than the right one in real life. How do I model this?

 

The length of the room is accurate, although I believe the peak/ridge of the roof is at least 5" taller (couldn't get a clean measurement).

 

The first floor ceiling heights are accurate, but the roof baseline height is somehow taller on the exterior.

 

Thanks!

Edited Sunday at 09:44 AM by meanwhile

[JiAngelo]

Create a room in that attic space that is 1" tall, no flat ceiling.  That should raise the left attic wall and raise the lower rafter soffit.

Edited Sunday at 11:37 AM by JiAngelo

[GeneDavis]

Raise the larger roof plane 10 inches?  Those rafters likely bear on a plate atop the floor frame.

[meanwhile]

Thanks for the tips! The 1" tall attic space room sadly caused some weird problems with split height roof planes.

 

I'm quite stumped, so here's a stripped down copy of the plan, as well as a couple of images below showing that +10″ taller wall from both sides of it.

 

Another possible missing piece of the puzzle – that side of the room seems to have a different ceiling pitch than the 45º of the other. My iPhone measured 42º, and a Klein digital angle finder measured 48º, so I'm stumped again. Both tools measure 45º on the other ceiling plane though.

 

It's a tricky one! You'll see a small corner overhang "patio" in the model that complicates it as well.

 

Would really appreciate any help on cracking this one.

 

Edited Monday at 07:04 AM by meanwhile

[JiAngelo]

Hello, I looked at your plan this morning.  My original method assumed you wanted this done with auto-roofs as much as possible based on the information you provided.  To that end, renaming the attic wall to bonus (for example) makes it a real room and Chief will automatically raise the rafters and this gives you pretty much what you wanted.  However, upon reviewing your plans, this creates a different problem that I will address later.

 

First, we need to address your pictures.  The room appears to be framed with 2x6 rafters. It also appears you are measuring your 10 inches to the roof sheathing, not from a 42" top of wall line.  In fact your 10" is derived by measuring below the double top plate down from the sheathing.  If those are 2x6 rafters, the ~7 1/4" plumb cut plus 3" top plates = 10 1/4" 

 

I overlayed these items on your cross section view.  Is this correct?  Is the other side framed with 2x12's to be at 3'6" or are those rafters furred to create a 3'6" measurement?  I don't have pictures of that side, so I can't tell.

 .  

 

Back to my original proposed solution, renaming the attic room to bonus (for example) makes it a real room and Chief will now build the rafters on top of this one inch wall.  Make sure the two end walls are gables, not hip.  Then change the left wall to an 11.45 : 12 pitch.  The result is 10 3/16", which is pretty close to what you original asked.  I would lower the room to 13/16" and you should be at 10" exactly.  However this doesn't match your pictures. 

 

And that porch with a hipped roof creates another problem.  One that I solved initially by extending the bonus room over the porch.  i can change the wall to a hip after I'm done with auto roofs.  However the gutters will never match up unless the heel is raised over those garage rafters.

 

Note, the model is missing some textures I don't have on my system.

Please review and let me know your thoughts..  

 

Edited Monday at 11:44 AM by JiAngelo

[meanwhile]

Thanks so much for your help! Sticking to auto-roofs is definitely more ideal, but either way works alright, I'd just like to accurately model it.

 

I think that in-the-wall photo was misleading, sorry – the tape measure was for reference, but the wall height difference (9 3/4″ actually, on remeasuring from subfloor) really is to the top of the wall line of the interior drywall on each side of the room (see below). Which you did seem to achieve by some magic. The 1″ wall attic→room conversion breaks my brain a little bit. Like, 1″ seems kind of arbitrary. But somehow it more or less works?

 

I'm unsure about the rafters on the other wall (east) – it's fully enclosed. But yeah, the taller wall (west) does seem to use 2×6 rafters (5 1/4″ wide by my measurement).

 

One snag and piece I only partially mentioned is that the exterior boxed eave soffits are 9′ tall exactly IRL, which is 8″ higher than the 8′ 4″ interior ceilings of those walls just on the other side (1st floor). The attic–bonus room trick lifts those soffits up too high, to 9′ 4 3/4″.

 

The other snag is that the way I had gotten the "patio" overhang to generate is actually how it is in real life – the corner / double hip, rather than the full gable your solution yielded.

 

Also double checked the ceiling pitches, almost positive the East side is 45º and the West side is ~41º, or a 10.43″ pitch, for whatever it's worth.

 

Edited Tuesday at 11:00 AM by meanwhile

[JiAngelo]

Your outside photo verifies the gutter differential I was concerned about in my photo below and obviously the hip stays.  

 

Let's start over.  See my notes based on an elevation view of the entire original building.

 

On the second floor plan, I've numbered the steps you need to follow.

.

Switch back to the overall elevation view and you will find I'm a hair off.  Coincidentally it matches your gable vent

 

FYI - The 3" bonus room setting is what it took for the bonus and left bedroom roof planes to match.  It was a matter of trial and error.  The 1" was a starting point.

 

Once you are done drawing exterior walls/roof, turn auto roofs/frame off and delete the dividing wall.  Or put it on a different layer and turn it off, or just make it invisible.  Just remember as long as it exists your room schedules will show the two rooms instead of one.  And if you need to play with the roof again you need to add that dividing wall back again to make any changes.

 

Hope this helps.

 

[meanwhile]

I really appreciate your generous time and help with this, John.

 

I followed your instructions a couple times over and am running into some different results with a few issues – see photos below.

 

It's so close! Especially on your end. But the biggest issue (which I think happens on both our ends) is still those incorrect exterior roof baseline / soffit heights – it seems impossible to raise the attic/bonus room height by adding a wall without overshooting the soffit height. Which got me wondering how the roof actually meets the edge of the attic IRL and how the soffits play into that, so I crawled back up and took some more pics. I can't see how exactly, but the rafters seem to exactly meet the attic subfloor, so adding a tiny wall there doesn't seem quite right. Even a 0" wall height overshoots the baseline height out there, so I don't understand what's causing this. I'm almost positive the floor structure between floors is the correct thickness, for what it's worth.

 

Also as an aside, this seems like a lot of hoops to jump through! I mean if this is the way to do it, I'll keep chugging along. But I wonder if Chief could benefit from a feature to simply let you specify an individual wall's height difference. In the case of vaulted ceilings, it could just auto-adjust the roof pitch to match. This would be so easy!

 

I'm slowly educating myself on roofs and eager to understand how in the world this all works. It occurs to me that the correct designation for that west wall should be a knee wall, but it seems like the overhanging roof section and diagonal-axis wall below really throws Chief and doesn't let that work properly.

 

Anywho thanks again! Any continued help with these snags is super appreciated.

Edited Wednesday at 09:55 AM by meanwhile

[JiAngelo]

Hello,

 

Step #3 was to extend the invisible wall to the end and make it visible.  It looks like you extended the left wall and turned the corner with it.  It looks like the invisible wall may still there creating cuts in the ceiling.  I don't have these cuts in my interior.

 

Step #5 was to turn the corner with the front wall (which has an exterior siding surface) and because it is a gable the turned wall has to be changed to a hip for the roofs to work.  It should extend back far enough that you won't see wood, you will see siding. 

 

The gable wall I can't read your note in the next to last picture, however I had noticed it doesn't match up and this is because your 3" porch wall has a thicker stucco exterior surface and your 6" bearing walls is just 1/2" drywall painted to look like siding.  If the walls have the same finish, then it cleans up that gable offset.  The turned wall from Step #5 needs to match the exterior finish method you choose.  (I probably should ask why below this gable wall you have (2) four inch walls flanking a 6" invisible wall that appears centered on the each other rather than lining up on one side...)

 

With regards to your 9' soffit height and Picture #1.  There's an arrow pointing to those roof lines not matching up.  the left is slightly higher than the upper right.  I missed that.  It is in my model as well.  Lowering the bonus room to 2.5" eliminated it making it all one roof plane.

 

On the front porch over the door, I'm getting 8'4" (100" frame to frame)  Picture 5 looks like the porch is only 3" deep not 11" deep (from top of subfloor).  So I created an angled Stucco 5 wall splitting the bonus room in two.  The angle is directly over the top of the french door wall.  I opened up the little bonus triangle room and changed its floor structure to 3" instead of 11".

 

NOTE:  The triangle room does mess with the outside corner above right of the french doors.  You can play with extending the exterior layers or put an outside corner over it. 

 

Now the soffit over the porch is 9'  And where you are measuring 9' 6 3/4" is based on a 7-1/4" eave board.  I'm only getting 9' 3 3/4".

 

Open your auto roof dialog and switch to structure tab.  Change the last "Eave Fascia" to 11" instead of 7-1/4".   Now I'm at exactly 9 feet.

 

Last.  Just because your exterior is wrapped in 11" fascia doesn't mean your roof is 11". 

Every picture you've shown me looks at most to be 2x8 framing.  The porch wall is 9' tall, but the room inside is only 100"? How do the interior 11" floor rafters bear?  Look at Picture 5 - the top plate of the french door wall runs under the electrical wire, no where near 11" below the subfloor. 

 

Same picture #5, look to the upper right rafters. those tails appear to rest on the outer edge of the subfloor.  If we came back plumb with the inside wall below and measured up from the subfloor those rafters appear to be 2-1/2" above the subfloor. (the height of the bonus room that made the roof work.)

 

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

 

  

[meanwhile]

Made a video for this one, thought it might be clearer/more complete :-)

It's a bit long, goes over the whole thing, so no worries if you don't have the time. Figured I'd give it another shot just in case, tried to keep it snappy and concise.

 

 

Edited yesterday at 10:35 AM by meanwhile

[meanwhile]

Holy guacamole, I've nearly got it. I went back and meticulously redid your process, this time even more from scratch and changing a bunch of auto-roof parametrs to match some real-world measurements of the rafters, west roof pitch, eaves/fascia/soffits, etc. Still not completely clear on the exact height at which the rafters bear IRL or precisely how that works, but I've learned a lot about roofs.

 

The last little snag I'm hitting is a weird hole in the corner from the exterior to the living room, see below. Any idea what might be causing that?

 

Technically the patio overhang paneling should fill the entire triangular ceiling space as well. No big deal, but if there's an easy way to do that, please let me know.

 

Here's an updated project file.

 

Thanks!

Edited 9 hours ago by meanwhile

[JiAngelo]

Here's a response I started yesterday.  It is incomplete, but i just saw your reply this morning and it appears you have caught on to some of the problems I discuss.

 

YESTERDAY

Overall you are doing great.  I'm also seeing where some of my instructions were vague or incomplete. 

 

On your drawing, the exterior side of the main wall framing that you draw should match up and the exterior surfaces fall outside of that match up. 

Imagine you were framing a continuous wall with different exteriors of varying thickness, like stucco vs. cultured stone vs. vinyl siding.  All three can be present on one continuous wall with different material regions applied along different sections, however, most often we break this into 3 different wall types with each aligned on the same side.  This is also generally true if interior finish  thicknesses change, and across all levels, including foundation.  

 

 

Here's an example using several of your wall styles.  Notice they all line up to the top end (exterior side).  Some exteriors stick out farther than others, and some interiors are thicker than others.

 

Except for stairwells and two story vaulted areas, It doesn't matter as much on the inside which way the wall exterior is facing.  But when you draw the overall building, the exterior foundation, first floor and second floor measurements to framing should all be identical, unless there is a cantilever or some other feature that changes that rule.  They need to stack for siding to be continuous per floor.  You'll also discover that varying thicknesses across floors can lead to errors at intersections of various walls (see further below.)

 

From this photo and your commentary, I understand now why you framed the lower 2x4 walls flanking the 2x6 invisible wall.  

However the 6" beam is acting as a band board (rim joist).  I would have used the 6" invisible wall here entirely and replaced the rim joist with the proper beam size or plies.  I would reverse the wall so that its exterior side is to the garage door side and it lines up with the exterior siding wall above. 

 

I normally draw my beams with a 4" blue angle hatch with a transparent background so that I can see the posts, pier pads & framing underneath.  I also change them to pressure treated lumber so that I can see them in 3D framing view.  If you drew this floor beam to match the exterior side of your 6" invisible wall, then raised it 11", and made it 11" tall and 6" thick.  Then you can add 4" columns on either end.  Chief doesn't let me copy studs to an invisible wall, so copy the columns and make them 1-1/2" thick like a stud.  Place the first stud against the column, this one has the bolts, then place a second "stud" beside this one.  If you drill 2" holes centered on the nuts you will find it fits perfectly and allows drywall to be hung without the bolts interfering.   Change the 4x4 column to steel and to paint it red, I temporarily placed a "lally column" to copy the color to the steel columns.  I was tempted to use the lally column for their baseplates, but the pipes are round.  Here's the 3D framing view.

Notice my steel beam, which is over the invisible wall is in line with the patio invisible wall.

Next problem is on the exterior view you will find these 4 walls have exterior surfaces that don't line up.

One reason is the porch hip roof needs to extend back to the garage roof.

Creating that detail I'd save until I was done with auto roofs & exterior wall framing.  Then I'd break the plane and extend it to intersect the garage roof.  I'm pretty sure the facia/roof plane below it 45's back to the french door wall, but I don't have that picture. (left picture below)  Pretty sure these roofs and cladding differentials is why these artifacts are occurring.

 

Initially I thought you were doing this to remodel the upstairs and downstairs rooms and the 42" vs 52" was impacting your interior photos/plans of what you intended to do.  Now it feels like you are just running Chief through its paces comparing what you draw to a real world scenario for practice. That is a good way to learn.  I've often wished Architects and Engineers were required to frame in the field 5 years like plumbers and electricians are before getting licensure.  For what it is worth, here's a few tips that work for me.

 

1. Dimension to framing/foundation, not finish surfaces.  You can do that later if you really need it, but knowing your framing all matches up is critical.   

 

2. Have a single common consistent theme of wall thicknesses.  You have 3-3/8, 3-1/2 and 4-9/16 for what I'd call a 4" wall.   You have 5-5/16, 5-7/16, 5-1/2, for what I'd call a 6" wall.  If its not in the wall label, and the walls aren't lined up on a consistent side, visually how are you to know if any contiguous wall has its framing offset from another or with the wall above/below it?  Personally I have an aversion to these odd measurements.  When I first started drafting projects I drew to the nominals. 4" 6" 8" walls.  This carried over to Generic Cadd and then Chief Architect back in the 90's.  I did my own framing back then and I knew various rooms actually ended up 1/2 - 1" bigger depending on which side the dimensioning favored.  I dimension walls to the inside of stairwells and 2 story areas so that framing stacked, and inside of bathroom tub or shower walls to ensure fixtures fit.     

 

3. Field adjust.  Plans may be drawn precise then you find your foundation is slightly out of square.  Or the house you are adding an addition to is 1/2" out of plumb.  Field conditions require us to adapt and overcome.  Framers never frame as tightly as trim carpenters.     

 

TODAY

I'm going to stop here and review your reply and new model.

 

[JiAngelo]

In your new model, select the wall plane and you will see why the gap is there.  I moved it left initially to cleaned up.  But was still getting a gap on the exterior views.

 

 

I switched to the exterior view and assuming you are done moving exterior walls, turned off autoroof and broke the planes and extended them to match your picture.  This changed the interior wall plane.

 

I see you cleaned up the corner wall upstairs by keeping it the same 3-3/8" "Attic Divider Wall" and adding an exterior surface to a new wall definition.  That works.  Now you need to work on your stair hole  

 

Glad I could help.  Good luck.