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Q: WHAT’S THIS ABOUT?
A: Home Design Standards - Home Building Standards, 2Q07 Ed.: Custom Home Design Guide and Custom Home Construction Guide by Before The Architect, 570-page how-to e-book.
It’s offered as a one of a kind design/build e-book in desktop published .doc and .pdf formats. On custom home design and construction, it’s a how-to e-book and it’s also about sharing why and why not, what and what-not. Text includes an extensive Table of Contents, Table of Figures, and Index. Its 570 pages are prepared to print on 16# stock at 8 ½"x11" for ring binding with left-hand hole punch are available via a title browse or the author (see bio). Emphases: safety; durability; convenience. Entertaining, informative, experience-rich.
Q: HOW’D IT GET HERE?
A: Took decades.
Before The Architect is the business of Ralph and Jean Pressel who, since the ‘60s, have worked together on custom home design, drafting, repair; on home design and construction consulting; and on custom home construction in every major trade. Home Design Standards - Home Building Standards (HDSHBS) collects their experiences, opinions, and observations down all the years. They refer to this document directly in crafting custom home designs and plans, and add to it from time-to-time based on their on-the-job learning. Relevant paragraph by paragraph goes from the Word .doc to the Autocad drawing file as text – footnotes, specifications, details, annotations – thereat, adapted to given design and construction aspects.
Q: WHAT’S IT MADE OF?
A: Substantial contents.
Sixteen chapters with over 100 graphics form the e-book’s core. Core topics include construction design standards for: conduct on site; conformance to formal; materials; fastening; layout; foundation; framing; electrical; plumbing; venting; HVAC; finishing; adaptable house; schedules; details; and safety.
HDSHBS holds lots of extras: insightful sidebars; colorful background; supplements on designing curved stairs and the cardinal 19 Deadly Sins of Before The Architect’s terminal prospects and clients.
Q: FOR WHOM?
A: Two communities
HDSHBS aims at two communities: at folks who want to know better and at both custom home designers and custom home builders who want to do better about custom home design and construction – looking to benefit from two who are going-on a half-century going at it hands-on already. No double-talk, no nonsense. Builder’s language. Been there, done that common sense and practice.
Q: WHAT’S NEW ABOUT IT?
A: A lot.
- Core format mixes rigorous outline of subject matter with conversational commentary for context and collateral considerations
- Quotes about custom home design and custom home construction vary from pithy to poignant
- Passion for detail, discernment, and deliberation pervade
- The extent to which policy and practice come together seems one of a kind, such as, the presentations on lighting design for aging eyes and adaptable house design
- Some custom home design and custom home construction standards openly buck both conventional house design policy and construction practice, for example, insistence not to set electrical receptacles on the sides of a kitchen island and the extraordinary lengths to which a slab-on-grade is conditioned to stay where it’s placed, respectively; however, in these and similar instances, coherent rationales step forward
- On occasion, guidance is purely novel, for example, guidance in developing house perimeters with old, old rules of proportion and interior stairway and house elevator fire safety guidelines.
- It’s passing unusual, too, to point out certain products without endorsement; however, years and years of dependable performance get their due.
- Firsts and honorable mentions in Before The Architect’s opinion, include among them -
- Pilasters systematically between footings and a slab-on-grade
- Grade beam axially below more than a garage slab-on-grade
- Some house building materials regarded as prohibited
- The Pressel-Ballard joist brace
- Electrical wiring standards like no others altogether
- House fastening schedule for metal fasteners and building adhesives demonstrably way past others
- Detailed siting of below-slab-on-grade DWV plumbing conduit penetrations
- Sacred geometry and other regulating harmonies in residential design
- General contractor sign-off on truss design shop drawings before manufacture
- Truss manufacturers load path analysis that carries down to include foundation design amendments
- What it takes in learning and doing to design custom homes better
- Structural knee braces below a deck everywhere they can fit
- Tough standards of fastening a deck stringer to house structure
- Formal standards relevant to residential construction from ASTM, AASHTO, ACI, CRSI, USDC, etc.
- Conservative attic and crawlspace ventilation
- Adaptable house design and construction brought together
- Home fire safety design and construction methodology for residential, interior stair and house elevators
- About 4-dozen building schedules and construction details, most of which are self-styled and novel in custom home design and custom home construction
- Methodology for light flutter avoidance from ceiling fan blades
- Lighting design for aging eyes
Q: WHAT’S NOT SO HOT ABOUT IT?
A: Not much.
- Size alone can put one off. If you’re not seriously interested in making your own determination about knowing more and doing better at home design and home construction, there are lighter books to set on your library shelf, if not so many for home design, then a host for house construction. On the other hand, the straightforward Table of Contents and substantial Index welcome the appreciative reader with easier access. Furthermore, Before The Architect offers major chapters separately.
- While some topics come thick – foundation design standards at 70+ pages – others come thin – HVAC at a small handful. The author clearly thinks that there’s more to a house foundation than sits under most houses these days. As to HVAC, aside from a few, critical house building materials and house construction methods pitiably only rarely applied and, thus, to the benefit of energy suppliers and not homeowners, the subject is a career unto its own.
- There’s nearly nothing about site planning, grading, low voltage electrical, engineering (performance prescripts aside), some specifics of lighting layout, interior decorating, kitchen design specifics at the cabinetry and appliance level, closet design detail, and landscaping particulars – all subjects about which Before The Architect does little day-to-day. They’re all left to full-time pros in their respective fields, some by common practice, some by common pragmatism. And, ultimately, all these professional constituents are bounded by the custom home design plan itself.
- One size doesn’t fit all necessarily. Design standards should endure well, modified by lifestyles. Construction standards always need local adaptations: labor pool; materials, natural and (sometimes) regulatory environment, etc. Best uses for HDSHBS: owners’ unvarnished reference for major topics of custom home design and custom home construction (HDSHBS terminology: make yourself the big dog on the porch); topical and substantive bases for crucial communication with custom home designers and custom home builders; a means to focus on better custom home designers and custom home builders who most often can and do operate at similarly higher standards of performance, and will not run from you or your HDSHBS as though their hair was aflame. Finally, Before The Architect admonishes that whatever the custom home design plans, be sure that local authorities having jurisdiction are advised openly and fully.
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