Frequently Asked Questions
Drawing Packages
These drawings provide pictorial views of the overall concept of the building design and the room configurations. These drawings are called schematic drawings because they show the schematic design of the house and are used for evaluation purposes to become more familiar with the design and to help decide on specific livability characteristics. Design Concept sets include three dimensional artistic sketches showing renderings of the design from several viewpoints to help better understand room configurations and spatial associations.
These drawings will demonstrate the inherent characteristics of many design features and amenities of the house design such as architectural features or sculptural qualities when viewed from a particular point of view. The quality and feel of the prints will be similar to what you have seen here on the web site. Sometimes the concept nature of the design drawings exists because we have not yet developed design sets or construction sets. Sometimes the details just need to be worked out.
These drawings provide a more refined architectural look of the building design to help demonstrate enough information to communicate with a contractor and assist in preliminary pricing and project feasibility. Design sets show the floor plan of the house, and the exterior views, but none of the technical content required for actual construction of the house. Some of the perspective views used in the design concept drawings are included in this set as well. These drawings are particularly useful in interviewing builders and contractors.
– scaled floor plans – showing room layouts and sizes, doors, windows, decks, and porches. Use these drawings to help determine how the house design integrates with your property and topography. Might be a good idea to have a preliminary meeting with the zoning department.
– elevations – front view with window and door locations and showing approximate building height. This is also helpful for preliminary zoning review.
– interior building section – showing ceiling heights, and an idea of any predominant vaulted conditions.
– artists’ rendering plus detailed square footage for interior and exterior living areas. The rendering views are what really help people envision what the completed project will look like. These renderings are somewhat artistic in nature because, well, they take less time to generate and mainly because photo-realistic renderings tend to encourage people to focus on the details of the image rather than the concept of the design.
These drawings describe and depict the means and methods of construction depict the house design in sufficient detail to allow contractors to price the project reliably, for plan examiners to review the house for permit, and for the builder to eventually construct the house. There are no drawings for heating, air conditioning, or plumbing work. The heating and cooling layout need to be designed and sized locally as climatic conditions vary. This is normally supplied by the HVAC subcontractor as part of their job. Most plans provide an interior place for the unit, however a crawl space location is recommended if conditions in your area do not prohibit this. These drawings are 24″x36″ and are intended to be printed in black ink on white bond.
– Cover sheet – sort of your introduction to the project with a perspective view and miscellaneous project specifications, standards, and definitions.
– Foundation plan – the gruntwork of the project. The information here includes all information and specifications needed to form and place the footings and foundations with detailed information about concrete or masonry walls, footings, pads, posts, beams, bearing walls, and foundation notes. Foundation details and cross sections are included on additional sheets. Unless we are hired to make customizations, the foundations will be designed for a relatively level flat site with 24” tall stemwalls.
– Floor framing – the information on the floor framing plans includes material specifications, joist and header sizing and configuration, hangers, fasteners, shearwall and bearing points, notes and necessary dimensions. Framing details and sections are typically located on additional sheets in the drawing package. The floor framing information usually needs to be verified with the framing contractor or joist manufacturer.
– Wall plans – commonly called floor plans they are actually plans to lay out and construct the walls of the house. These drawings delineate the locations of all interior and exterior walls, door and window locations, point loads, shear or load bearing walls, cabinets, fixtures appliances, stairs, and notes, dimensions, key marks for referencing sections, details, and interior elevations.
– Roof framing Some plans contain roof framing plans, however because of the wide variation in local requirements, many plans do not. If you buy a plan without a roof framing plan, you will need an engineer familiar with local building codes to create a plan to build your roof. Even if your plan does contain a roof framing plan, we recommend that a local engineer review the plan to verify that it will met local codes.
– Building, wall sections and framing details – these drawing views are enlarged and are intended to show in greater detail pertinent methods of assembly of the foundation, interior walls, exterior walls, floors, stairways, and roof assemblies. Cross-sections may show specific construction details in floor, ceiling, or roof height, or the relationship of one level to another. Extremely useful during construction, these sections and details show contractors how the various elements of the building are to be assembled. Additional sheets may include enlarged wall plans.
– Exterior elevations – most people are familiar with these exterior views of buildings. These are scaled orthographic drawings depicting a flat-on view of the exterior surfaces of the house. Drawn to scale these are extremely useful to the contractors in estimating material quantities and for communicating details during construction.
– Garage plans & details (optional) – some of the designs have detached garages and people may elect to only purchase the plans for the house.
– Interior elevations (optional) – we try to include cabinet elevations whenever possible. These are useful when shopping for cabinets and millwork and in laying out cabinet door and drawer configurations.
– Optional lighting and electrical plan The electrical plan offers suggested locations with notes for all lighting, outlets, switches, and circuits. A layout is provided for each level, as well as basements, garages, or other structures. This plan does not contain diagrams detailing how all wiring should be run, or how circuits should be engineered. These details should be designed by your electrician. NOTE: A majority of our plans include electrical plans but some do not. To determine if a plan includes these details click on the “What’s Included” tab on the plan detail page.
– Specifications – describes the materials and methods of construction. This may or may not be part of the construction set of drawings. May be a separate amendment document that is useful for selecting and specifying interior finishes, plumbing fixtures, appliances, etc.
Optional Services
A variety of factors affects placement of a home on the site and may include topography or grade changes and elevation, views, orientation towards the sun, existing vegetation and trees.
Basic site plans may be provided and billed on an hourly basis. Basic site plans show the house on the site, with distance to lot lines, exterior buildings, and basic driveways and sidewalks. A survey that shows lot dimensions, existing trees, and land contours and all pertinent zoning and setback requirements must be provided. Grading plans or planting plans may also be provided.
Here, houses are about personality and creativity. It is common to purchase stock plans as a starting point, then add personal touches. We are open to modifications especially if we feel the modified design can be incorporated into our library of designs. Historically, modified plans retain a significant amount of the original base plan. By taking advantage of a base plan, you realize a huge savings over the budget of designing a custom home from scratch. In comparison to designing new from scratch, the cost of modifying a base plan is often very cost effective.
The basic structural engineering necessary to meet the code requirements for most of country for gravity loading in floors and roofs as well as design to resist wind loading has already been incorporated into the construction drawings. These requirements may not meet your specific local conditions. If you need minor structural revisions to meet your specific local conditions, contact us to inquire whether we might be able to help you. We work with structural engineers familiar with several regions of the country and if modifications are minor it might make sense to just make necessary modifications to the original drawings.
The house plans designed here are typically provided with crawlspace foundations. Let us know If you have an interest in a full or partial basement design to be incorporated into the house plans. These modifications be addressed on a per project basis and may depend on how the idea works with the original plan design and if we think the modifications will enhance the building design. incur additional design fees.
With the wonders of modern CAD systems reverse plans are relatively simple procedure. If you think you need a reversed plan contact us and fill us in on the specifics. If it is easy we may just make the reverse plan and include in our portfolio. It might be helpful for us to know about the site, or any other conditions that are inspiring the idea to reverse the plan.
If you like the designs available here but don’t see one that speaks to you, custom design services are still available through the office offering full custom design services as David Bearss Architect. Many of the designs here started out as custom and then evolved onto the designs seen here. If we think the design might be a good candidate for the portfolio here at Planworks, it may still be quite favorable to consider a full custom approach or a hybrid design service approach option.
Cost estimating can be difficult and time consuming but the information gathered can be extremely useful. Accurate costs estimates are best prepared by someone familiar with the local conditions and possessing residential cost estimating experience and be in regular interaction and familiar with the trades and material suppliers. Preliminary cost estimates can be prepared here with some basic information about the regional characteristics and then interpolated for specific project and construction requirements. This information can be useful when beginning the budget analysis, shopping for lender financing, interviewing potential contractors, and projecting ahead for any unforeseen expenses or costs. Unfortunately many people forge ahead into a construction without even a basic outline of costs and they often miss or forget major expenses. We offer the service of preparing a preliminary cost estimate and project checklist that is tailored to your specific project conditions. Used as a reference to compare to local conditions or as a basis for your contractor to launch their own preliminary cost evaluation, many have found this option quite useful thru out the building process.
