Best Practices For Setting Up Floor Stem Wall And Ceiling Heights Plus Questions

[tahoebrian5]

The room height dbx (structures tab) is giving me fits. I'm doing a garage. I want the plate height to be 8'-6" above the top of stem wall (concrete). I want the garage floor slab to be 8" below the top of stem wall. So top of slab to plate height will be 9'. Please advise the best way to set these things up.

Also I've got another issue coming up. For a raised floor type foundation I have one area where grade is above finish floor. How would I go about raising a single foundation wall up a few feet for a ledger type system?

Thanks!

[glennw]

I think the first thing to do is check your maths.

[tahoebrian5]

What I'm really asking is which settings to use. It seems like there is a couple different ways to go about it. None of which seem very intuitive.

[chuck_g]

Attached plan so you can review the settings. It's hard to understand exactly what you want. Posting the plan would be helpful. I'm sure Glenn is right and you are probably "fighting" the elevations from one level to another. I have the auto foundation set to hang the first floor inside of the foundation. If you only want one wall you will to pull the wall up in a section view.

Untitled 1.plan

[tahoebrian5]

Thanks Chuck, I will take a look at your settings in about an hour here when I get to work. Now that I've slept and my brain is not fried I think I can state my question better. What I don't understand is why there is more than one absolute dimension. It seem logically that you would want one absolute dimension, ideally finish floor, and once set it is locked. All the other heights would be relative to this. Also there needs to be independent settings for top of stem wall, and bottom of stem wall or footing. Okay enough with dreaming, the reality is I don't understand which setting to start with. I'll take a look at chucks plan though.

[tahoebrian5]

Attached is a pdf with images showing my structures dbx settings, and the resulting dimensions in section cut. They don't match. Very confusing!

structures dbx.pdf

[Alaskan_Son]

I think you're going to need to attach a plan.

[tahoebrian5]

Ok, I've attached my plan. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get the heights correct. I want the top of slab 8" below top of stem wall, and the top of stem wall to top of plate height to be 8'-6". If anyone has time to take a look would be much appreciated.

heit garage CA.plan

[Alaskan_Son]

Here's a quick crappy video.  Took forever to upload...

 

http://screencast.com/t/lYKRyStXxc3

[dshall]

Here's a quick crappy video.  Took forever to upload...

 

http://screencast.com/t/lYKRyStXxc3

I bet mine is crappier than yours:

 

https://youtu.be/tVhxveNksgc

[Rich_Winsor]

I don't know if it's a Mac thing or just

a case of user error, but this is how I

get the Jing videos to run in full screen

mode on my PC.

[dshall]

I don't know if it's a Mac thing or just

a case of user error, but this is how I

get the Jing videos to run in full screen

mode on my PC.

Thanks Rich,  that was it.

[tahoebrian5]

Thank you all so much for the help and your time. I have not had time to dig into your responses as my wife has gone into labor and we are heading to the hospital to have a baby this morning. I guess that takes precedence over Chief I, looking forward to figuring out where I went wrong and will post back soon.

[Rashid_Garuba]

Here's a quick crappy video.  Took forever to upload...

 

http://screencast.com/t/lYKRyStXxc3

Michael,

 

Doesn't a part of you want to put in a negative number to LOWER the slab?..

[tahoebrian5]

Ok, I did have a few mins and wathced the first video. I think my main problem is I was not understanding that there are two different rooms to deal with. I was trying to do everything from the floor 1 room.

[keithhe]

Thank you all so much for the help and your time. I have not had time to dig into your responses as my wife has gone into labor and we are heading to the hospital to have a baby this morning. I guess that takes precedence over Chief I, looking forward to figuring out where I went wrong and will post back soon.

What??? Where are your priorities at sir? Baby's are a nearly automated process these days, Chief takes time. Stick with the program man. :) 

 

Congratulations Brian to you and the wife

[DRAWZILLA]

Thank you all so much for the help and your time. I have not had time to dig into your responses as my wife has gone into labor and we are heading to the hospital to have a baby this morning. I guess that takes precedence over Chief I, looking forward to figuring out where I went wrong and will post back soon.

You know it does, go have that kid. I have 13 grandkids, and this time of year, we're out being Santa. Family first, business next. Chief will even be better when you get back to it. Congrat's. wait till they grow up, it's gets harder.

[tahoebrian5]

Well I got a few mins while we are waiting for the doc. I'm kind of excited that this appears to work better than I thought due to my conceptual misunderstanding. Anyone care to take a shot at explaining how the 2 levels (floors) for 1 space works. For example I created a garage space by drawing four walls. Chief automatically created a room at floor 1, and unknowingly to me a room at floor zero below. Watching the video above by Alaskan Son, he set the floor height at floor zero structures dbx, and the ceiling height at floor 1 structures dbx. Is this just bcause it's a garage? Or do you do the same thing with a raised floor where crawl space is set by the floor below? Mainly looking to try to fully understand this so I can quit spinning my wheels.

Thanks a bunch for the help and the family wishes.

[glennw]

Chief auto builds the foundation (Level 0) if Automatically Build Foundation is toggled on in the Build Foundation dbx.

 

 he set the floor height at floor zero structures dbx, and the ceiling height at floor 1 structures dbx. Is this just because it's a garage?

 

 

Chief automatically defines a Garage room as having the floor provided by the floor below (it is a characteristic of the Room Type, of which there are several - look up room types in the help) - but you can manually change this later.

In this case, yes, the ceiling height is set on Level 1 and because the floor is being provided from the floor below (Level 0), it's floor height is set on Level 0.

 

If a room isn't defined as having it's floor provided by the floor below, the floor is created on the same level as the room and then you can create a normal foundation (either a mono slab or walls+footings) - you can set Chief to build these automatically.

 

http://screencast.com/t/AMQFUWpHZbk

[tahoebrian5]

It's all making a whole lot more sense. Now say I wanted to move the entire structure up a couple feet to do some sort of split level. Is there an easy way to move the whole thing or would I need to set all the heights again in the structure dbx?