EVstudio is asked quite frequently to perform structural evaluations of cracked foundation walls. These cracks are often due to settlement. Modern design philosophy (and most geotechnical reports) calls for the original structural engineer to design foundation walls to clear span ten to fifteen feet to account for soft patches of bearing soil or soils that may be become saturated and hydro-consolidate (shrink in volume when wet). Older homes are more susceptible to damage because they were typically not designed with this in mind. This is not to say they were designed poorly, there were just different design philosophies and industry standards at the time they were constructed.

Installed Resistance Pier Bracket

How a resistance pier works is quite simple. First, a steel bracket is fastened to your foundation, typically at the footing. Then a hydraulic ram is installed on the bracket which drives a steel pier into the ground. Using the hydraulic forces in combination with the weight of the structure above, the steel pier is driven down through the softer soils (which are causing the settlement problem) until bedrock or suitably firm soils are reached. Once the pier reaches competent bearing, the foundation is stabilized and in some instances can even be raised back into a level position.

EVstudio works closely with Pinnacle Structural Services in the evaluation of foundation repairs utilizing the resistance piers as one of many considered solutions.

For more information on resistance piers please watch this informative video.

Originally posted 2011-09-24 00:49:33.

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1. Foundation Settlement: The Push Pier Alternative
2. Helical Pier Foundations
3. Foundation Stabilization For Rehabilitation Center Completed Using 145 Helical Piers

Here, I have created an example of calculating areas for siding materials on this garage elevation using Design Review. There is other software out there for the specific purpose of generating area take-offs, but this method is an easy way for an owner or someone not in the building industry to get an estimate on their own.

In Design Review, I simply used the "area" tool for generating the square footage of three different siding materials, a stone veneer in green, horizontal wood siding in red, and a corrugated metal siding in yellow. The "area" tool is coupled with the “measure” tool, which looks like a ruler, under it's drop down menu. I simply picked corners or vertices that define the areas needed. As each point is picked the area value keeps updating within the geographical center of that space. When all the points have been selected, I hit the esc. key to complete that particular defined area. For clarity and as a possible method to generate a siding area schedule to compile the data, I chose to apply a color for each material type. For instances where there are windows within an area another area box is needed around them and can then be subtracted from the gross wall area to get the net area of the siding. This same method could also be used in floor plans to generate areas for floor finish materials or a hardscape patio for example.

Originally posted 2010-08-22 00:01:37.

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We've done some other small affordable rental house designs for him in the past so I wanted to give him a plan that showed the minimum and keep it in a ranch house without a basement. I drew this quick sketch to show that you don't have to put the bedrooms side by side in a 2 bedroom.I also wanted to give access to the backyard that would be more than 30" wide.

As it turns out, the lot is actually wider than the 25' so we have even more options for the actual plan.

Originally posted 2010-10-14 18:09:22.

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1. Floor Plan for Small 1,200 sf House with 3 Bedrooms and 2 Bathrooms
2. Designing Your House – Part 4
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The primary method is through openings in the exterior walls with a minimum of 1 square foot of opening per 150 square feet of under floor area. Each corner of the building needs an opening within three feet. The vents must be protected with an approved perforated material.

Another option that does not require these exterior openings is covering the exposed earth with a continuous vapor retarder that extends at least 6" up the wall. Even with the vapor retarder the space must be mechanically ventilated, conditioned or used as a plenum space.

Originally posted 2009-10-23 00:01:45.

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Just to admit bias to new readers, EVstudio is an architecture and engineering company, we participate in many projects titled "design-build".

Design-build can be a great setup where you have a company that has experts and licensed professionals working on both the architecture and construction portions of the project. They can typically deliver a project on budget and they may be able to reduce your upfront design fees because they bury them in your total project cost.

Unfortunately, what often happens is that the design-build team is an outgrowth of only one profession. You frequently have a general contractor who has decided that they can do the design work as well. Suddenly you are hiring someone to design your home who is only marginally qualified and yet you are paying enough for the service to hire a full time architect. With this approach you are also hiring someone to design the project who is often most concerned about the simplest details and is likely to give you reasons that you can't have something more complex.

What I would advise all clients entering a design-build setup to do is make sure that you know who is actually doing the designing on the project. You should be meeting with the architect directly and be pleased with the design work that you are receiving. When we participate in design-build we meet with clients directly for the design and the contractor meets directly for the build. They only pay one bill but it is distributed according to the work involved. The architect is your advocate and more able to provide solutions based on years of full time design experience rather than excuses.

Another solution that works well for the client is hiring an architect and a contractor at the same time and working as a team throughout the project. We do this with many of our favorite contractors and it is a rewarding way to bring experienced professionals and still give the client an integrated project. While it is not truly design-build it offers many of the advantages.

There are a large number of project delivery methods in architecture and construction, please ask questions or give us a call.

Originally posted 2010-01-20 00:01:06.

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Buying a home can be scary.  Especially if your dream home has signs of possible foundation problems.  Many times the cracks and signs of possible movement are nothing to worry about.  As long as you understand the issues you can monitor the structure and even prevent future movement.  Our office takes pride in providing high quality structural engineering services but also takes the time to educate the homeowners about the situation.  Concrete cracks and mother nature is going to do her best to destroy your house.   We'll tell it to you straight, why there is or isn't a problem.  How the problem happened and how it can be repaired.  We will also teach you how to monitor your house for future movement.

The best way to calm your nerves about worrying over possible expensive structural repairs is straight from a structural engineer and NOT over the internet or a contractor.

We recently visited a home that our client was thinking of purchasing.  This house had obvious problems so we were asked to visit early on in the buying process.  We found a few unique descriptions by the previous homeowner of the foundation cracks.

Originally posted 2011-09-20 01:42:48.

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Typically residential units are 20' wide or wider but on occasion we design units that are much narrower. The example above is only 13' wide (4 meters) with a total living area of 1,200 square feet or about 120 square meters. This is a townhome unit and would be bordered by other units on both sides. With a comfortable size room being at least 10 feet (3 meters) wide this configuration leads to four rooms that can have windows. Typically that means the living room, kitchen/dining and two bedrooms. This unit is set up with a shared upstairs bathroom that would work better if the second bedroom was primarily used as an office.

This unit is about the same size but slightly wider and less deep. It has two bathrooms upstairs and is slightly more efficent.

The difficulty with these small units is that the stair is not terribly efficient, it takes up a lot of space per unit. This client wanted townhome type condo units but if we had been able to use two common area stairs and 1,200 square foot flat units we would have had more options in the unit plans. A townhome unit also tends to necessitate an additional powder room per unit to avoid having guests using the upstairs bathrooms.

The narrowest that you can make a room in the International Building Code is 7' which provides a minimum unit width but a unit that narrow would be very hard to make inviting.

Originally posted 2009-12-26 00:50:16.

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Although the deck's structure is hidden from view in the above example, this was a project in Clear Creek County that EVstudio designed a deck addition for which the owner had a small existing deck above his garage and wanted to retrofit the home to accommodate a hot tub.

Well right off the bat it should be known that water itself is relatively heavy, being 8.35 lb per gallon or 62.43 lb per cubic foot. Then there is the weight of the empty hot tub itself, which can range quite a bit depending on the manufacturer. For this example I’ll use a larger than average size tub of 8’x8’ that can accommodate 6 people and weighs 550 lb when empty. And the volume of water for this tub is 500 gallons. So the water alone weighs a total of 4,175 lb.  Then you have to include the live load of people.  Yes, the hot tub was intended for 6-8 people, but you must still consider the situation of people overloading the intended occupancy, therefor use the floor live load used for the rest of the deck, typically 40psf for residential.  If the hot tub occupancy is overloaded, the volume of water would be displaced and possibly reduced if the water spills over the edge.  Be careful assuming this and reduce the water load or live load at your own discretion.  The total anticipated weight of the tub and water equals 4,725 lb.  So given that the tub is 8’x8’ a value of almost 74 lb per square foot (psf) plus the floor live load of 40psf for a total of 114psf is the basis for which one would need to design the deck. Most hot tub manufacturers should be able to supply you, your engineer or architect with a pound per square foot value of the tub and water, but probably would not include the occupant load.

To provide some perspective on this 114 psf value, decks without a hot tub are designed with a floor live load of at least 40psf or the snow load for a particular locale if greater than 40psf, which can be obtained by contacting your local building department.  For example, a residence in a particular area of Evergreen, CO needs to be designed with a 50 psf snow load (greater than the live load of 40psf), otherwise known as roof snow load. So, to add a hot tub to the equation, one would need to add the 74psf hot tub load to the 50 psf of the snow load for a toal load of 124 psf. You must still consider snow load on top of the hot tub.  However you don't have to consider the 50psf snow load and the floor live load at the same time.

If the local building department allows load duration factors you can value engineer the deck using a load duration of 1.15 for the snow load, but you must still use a factor of 1.0 for the floor live loads and hot tub.

Another thing to be careful of is the location of the hot tub on the deck.  Keep in mind you may design a specific area for a hot tub, but how is the homeowner to know he/she can't move the hot tub to the other side of the deck.

Something to consider when incorporating a hot tub in your deck.

Originally posted 2010-06-14 00:01:26.

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Pros:

• It can go faster because it moves the design time for MEP into the construction phase.
• There may be cost savings on the engineering fees when they are bundled with the install
• The contractor will attempt to pick their most cost effective solution

Cons:

• The biggest con is that contractors are pricing a guess and the bids are not easily comparable
• You may be getting a price for the cheapest system rather than the right system
• If the systems require changes to the architecture you'll face additional services
• Some jurisdictions will not allow it

I think that both delivery methods have their place, you just need to make sure that you're picking a delivery method that is in line with your priorities.

Originally posted 2009-11-14 00:01:08.

Related posts:

1. The Design-Build Project Delivery Process – Architect Led
2. Potential Difficulties of the Design Bid Build Project Delivery Process
3. When Should You Contact an Architect? What Phases of Your Project Can an Architect Help With?

One of my Architecture professors once told me that the materials and methods you use to express your design will also affect the design itself.

For example, building a model out of clay pushes your design towards a more monolithic structure, while using paper tends to lean the building toward a thinner more surface based design.

Even more dramatic is the difference in design that results from not building a model at all. A purely 2D design vs. a 3D approach.   Keeping up with time sensitive, budget sensitive projects doesn't often allow for physical models but using the Computer modeling tools we employ as part of our basic design and production philosophy at EV Studio gives our clients big and small the benefits of 3D Design.

So what are these benefits for the client?

1. The most important is the ability to clearly see what your project will look like.
2. The designer also sees deeper into the design, or "around the corner" as I like to say.  Look around you at buildings and if you look closely you can see where a 2D approach was used and the details just don't quite go "around the corner".
3. Automation of repetitive tasks:  Elevations, Sections, plans and schedules that are linked allow us to explore and tweak the design without the dreaded ripple effect that forces us to work backward into the design and inevitably results in mistakes and lost time in the schedule.

Despite all these advantages many designers often make the mistake of thinking 3D Design or Building Information Modeling is just for big projects.   They see the 3D model as an extra service only warranted for large projects.  But we see that the benefits for a small addition in terms of design can be every bit as distinct and while there is a little extra time up front, the automation of tasks evens the equation by project end.

Add to those advantages the quick flexibility and intuitive touch of a hand sketch and the client really wins.

On one recent project I enjoyed moving back and forth between hand sketch and computer methods while solving design problems and communicating them with our clients. I  let the computer crunch the numbers to produce just the right perspective allowing me to spend my time on sketching out several options for the client to choose from.

Originally posted 2011-06-23 09:45:44.

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1. Why Hire an Architect When a Contractor Offers to Design-Build
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