Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show

Learn how coordinated architectural plans, site-specific structural engineering, and civil drainage calculations bridge the gap between initial concepts and municipal permit approvals. We discuss why hiring an expensive independent architect is unnecessary when an integrated provider unifies preliminary concepts, mechanical layouts, and structural load calculations into a single buildable package. Discover how building departments calculate setbacks from exterior wall sheathing, roof overhangs, or gutter lines, and how strict Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) access rules and natural lot contours shape the placement of driveways, foundations, and septic systems. Explore how high-altitude snowmelt runoff and microclimate snow loads—ranging from 20 PSF in standard flatlands to over 175 PSF in alpine elevations—require targeted truss calculations and raised finished floors. Finally, see how taking your napkin ideas to design your own custom home ensures your blueprint package matches our precision panelized building system.

A: No, owner-builders do not need an independent architect to design a custom home or obtain building permits. An integrated panelized provider fulfills the role of architect, structural engineer, and energy consultant under a single design process, drafting complete architectural blueprints, foundation layouts, and engineer-stamped calculations tailored directly to local municipal building codes at a fraction of an architect’s fee.

A: Municipal setback regulations vary considerably regarding where the physical boundary measurement terminates. While some jurisdictions measure setback clearances directly from the exterior wall studs, others measure strictly to the edge of the roof eave overhang or the outer lip of the rain gutter. Overlooking a 12-to-24-inch roof overhang can cause a wide footprint to encroach on side-yard buffer zones, requiring costly structural plan revisions prior to permit issuance.

A: In mountainous and alpine regions, snow-load engineering formulas are determined by specific site elevations rather than broad county boundaries. A building parcel at an elevation of 5,500 feet may carry a baseline requirement of 50 pounds per square foot (PSF), while a site located only a half-mile away at 6,500 feet can jump to 80 or even 175 PSF, requiring heavier structural ridge beams, denser truss plates, and reinforced foundation footers to bear the load.

A: A civil engineer evaluates site topography to establish an accessible driveway grade, locate water and septic utilities, and manage surface water drainage. In areas subject to rapid spring snowmelt or heavy storms, the civil grading plan dictates critical architectural details—such as raising the finished floor elevation two feet above the natural grade or installing drainage swales—to divert rushing surface runoff away from foundation walls.

A: Uncoordinated plans from separate designers often create hidden conflicts, such as specifying structural floor beams that physically block required ceiling insulation depths, or locating main water entries on the opposite side of interior plumbing drops. A unified plan set cross-references architectural layouts, structural cross-sections, and MEP pathways on paper before components are cut, preventing costly field retrofits and inspection delays.

Interviewer: Hey everybody. Welcome to the Landmark Home and Land Company’s Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building show. With me as always is the President and Founder of the Landmark Home and Land Company Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you doing today my friend?

Steve Landmark: Yeah, it’s an excellent day. I think we’ve got some interesting questions. What do we figure out? We’re going to talk about the most interesting questions that people have asked or common questions.

Interviewer: Yeah, that’s what I thought we would get into today. A lot of customers, potential customers write in, looking to know what Landmark is all about and how they can help them with their new home building process. So I thought I would just start and go through some of the questions you guys have gotten lately regarding home building and panelized homes.

The first question came in the other day that’s basically, “Landmark, if I work with you, do I have to use your plans or can I draw up my own plans?”

Steve Landmark: Well, this is an interesting thing. A lot of people ask around the country because not everyone understands that plans aren’t just showing them walls or windows. There’s a lot of details in there to show how the home is to get built or what the house is going to look like or what materials are.

So yes, you can draw your own plans. You can get the ideas together. Let us know what you want. But in general, most people don’t have the full knowledge to do a full architectural set of plans. So what we suggest is if you want to draw your own plans, maybe start with the concepts. Say, “Hey, I need a 1500-square-foot ranch with a two-car garage.” If you want to sketch it out or go online to one of the websites where you can do drafting, you could do things like that or maybe you can just draw it up and send it to us in a text, a fax or an email.

Then we can review those ideas. But generally at some point, we would probably have to go and expand on your ideas, to make sure that room sizes are right, doorway openings are right, code issues are taken care of. You know, egress on windows, foundations are drawn in and all the technical side.

So it’s definitely easy to work off the plans that you have and then go through to finalize them in a format so that they can be used to get permits.

What’s interesting is around the country, there are still some building departments that don’t even review plans or you can sketch them on a napkin and turn them in and they will give you a permit. Then there’s also Steven building departments where you have to cross every “T,” dot every “I,” have every single detail to the nth degree.

So sometimes people say, “Well, I will actually just be able to turn these in for permits.” Well, maybe you can and maybe you can’t and you don’t know what the follow-up situation is. So it’s not just the concept of drawing the plans up. It’s making sure that the plans are good for homeowners’ associations if one is there for your permits. They also need to be used as a communication method with your financing source, your bank, your contractor, your subcontractors, yourself to know what’s getting built in us, so that it’s very clear what’s there.

So you’ve got to have an accurate set of plans and that’s how we’re able to work with you to take your concept and then detail it so that it’s usable for your particular building department. Also your building site and then also how you’re going to build, if you’re going to contract it yourself using subcontractors or the contractor to get it built or even be involved completely with yourself, friends and family to build own homes.

So we’re able to work with it. What’s really interesting about this is we’re now able to get in 3D renderings or the colored photo realistic renderings.

Interviewer: Oh, that’s great.

Steve Landmark: Different details, so someone could really get into the process. So that’s where we can help is the technical understand and the details necessary, so that you can completely envision your project and that’s something that people generally don’t have their own knowledge. So they need someone like us to go through and make sure that it’s done properly and not just that. Once it’s done, the building department may have questions. If someone is drawing their own hand-sketched plans up and they say, “Hey, how are you building the foundation properly?” chances are they don’t have the knowledge where we do.

We’re ready to go. We have the answers. We will provide them on the plan and make it easy for them to move forward.

Interviewer: Yeah. I have a follow-up question of my own for that. If someone decides after they’ve put their first initial plans together, if they want to change their plans in any way, is that even doable? Well, that’s exactly the situation where we can help. We’ve got on computer systems.

So a lot of people Steven will go through and say, “Hey, you know what? I want a 22-by-22 garage and then I want a family room of this size. I want a kitchen of this size. I want a peninsula in my kitchen.”

So we draw that up and then they think about it and they go, “The peninsula is right. But for family get-togethers, we sit around an island.” So once they see it drawn, suddenly they’re like, “Hey, wait a second. Let’s do this,” or someone might say, “Hey, wait. We need bigger than a garage. We have a pool in the yard. We’re on a lake. We need a place for a canoe. We need this.”

So once they kind of figure out hey, they might need a bigger garage, we can go through and change it or if there’s someone that has a view, we can go through and add bigger windows or decks or patios or whatever they would need to do it.

So it’s not a situation where we expect you to know everything the first time on the first set of plans of one set of changes. That’s one of the benefits. We will work with you through the process to make sure that these details, as they evolve in your mind and through the development of your project,that you end up with a house that you want. That’s the key to this. The idea is not to say, “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Here’s a house. Enjoy it.”

The idea is to say, “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. What do you want in your house? Let’s put it together.” Spend a little bit of time designing it, doing some changes, so you’re completely happy with the design. It’s very easy to change it on paper. It’s also less expensive. It’s quicker. It’s faster and it’s a smarter way to go.

So changes are an important part of the evolution of the process, to make sure that you’re spending your money properly and getting the house you want and also making sure it fits on the land. That’s a key point.

Interviewer: There’s a question from a lady here. She says, “If I work with Landmark, can you guys help me deal with my local building department?” That seems like a pretty important question. How involved does Landmark get in that sort of situation?

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s the key element of what we do. A lot of people have like a standard plan and they’re of the opinion that this set of plans is good for any building department. Well, it may be in one place and it may not be in the other. Every building department is different. Some, as I mentioned, will just say, “Hey, sketch something on a napkin and turn it in.” In some places, there aren’t even building departments. It’s kind of odd to think that but that’s the case. Then other building departments will literally have a list of 500, 600, 700 items that need to be on the plans.

These aren’t simple thing like, hey, put a window and put a door knob. They want to know that your handrail is strong enough to hold a 200-pound person. They want to know that the nutrition in the soil is good enough for the landscape design that you have and some of those are pretty in-depth.

This is the key of what we do is we make sure that the plans are good for what you want. But it also fits on the land. It also works with the building department. They also have the proper information to go build the home and we do that literally by getting the information from your building department and then going through that list of items and making sure that they’re there.

What’s interesting is they’re not all the same. So you can go do a project in Wisconsin and they will go through and say, “Hey, we need these 50 items.” General, you know, elevations, floor plans, foundation details, roof load. You know, maybe a roof design, maybe a plumbing, electric layout and further other details.

You take that exact same home to Newport Beach, California, the list goes on and on and on and on. So that’s where we’re able to help is we can go through and justify the details, the structural details, energy code, any green code, any architectural details, any plumbing details, any electrical details, heating and air conditioning details and that’s the key element to it.

You don’t have to be the genius to be able to figure out what pipe size you need to go to your – for the gas pipe to your house. You don’t have to necessarily be the person to interpret a grading and drainage plan and see if your car garage door is in the right location.

Those are things that we can help with and as building departments get more and more sophisticated, as codes get tighter and tighter, you kind of need someone that is very experienced in these situations. Since we’ve worked all over the country and then some international projects, we’ve got a broad-based knowledge to help someone go through.

So we can help you – in the concept, everyone says, “Hey, how do you get me from A to Z?” Well, we will get you from A to Z. But we will fill in the B, C, D, E, you know, all the way through the process to go through. So you don’t have to totally understand an electrical layout. You just need to know that it’s there. The information is there. So you can go get the house properly wired or insulated or cooled or roofing system on.

So that’s how we’re able to help and that is a key element because it can get very complex.

Interviewer: OK. So that brings up another question. We’ve talked about building departments. How extensive does Landmark get helping with plans for let’s say homeowners’ associations or architectural review boards? Can you run us through that?

Steve Landmark: It’s a very similar situation. We will develop the plans and send them to you, so you could submit to either the building department or the homeowner’s association. But the homeowner’s association generally keeps the neighborhood to a certain standard. They’re not checking for codes and safety issues. They’re more checking to make sure the house is of a certain look, a certain quality, a certain size, certain colors, whatever it may be.

So some of them are very simple. Some of them will say, “Hey, you need to have a 1200-square-foot home plus a two-car garage.” Others will get detailed where they need to know the types of materials, the looks, the textures, the architectural background and they want to know everything about the exterior look and the size of the home, certain calculations, calculations of how much space the house takes on the land, how much space the sidewalks, the driveways take and different details, different colors, different details that need to be put on the plans.

So yes, we’re able to do something. We’ve worked with some extremely tough ones and just like tough building departments, you get the details, what they need. We supply the information. We help you get – gather it and get it and we put it on the plans. So then it’s clear.

You always want the homeowner’s association approval before you submit for permits. So a lot of building departments will request that that’s approved before you submit to them. So they’re not approving a home later to find out that the homeowner’s association won’t approve it.

But again, that depends on how stringent they are in their guidelines. But yes, homeowners’ associations, architectural review boards, we’re completely capable and set-up to develop the plants to the details that they need, so that they can approve – review and approve the plans. It’s a relatively simple process for us.

Interviewer: Well, that’s good. So you guys are pretty involved all the way around, helping to build it. That’s pretty amazing. Here’s a gentleman that says he has friends who are currently working with architects.

“I hear architects are expensive. Do I even need one?”

Steve Landmark: You don’t need an architect as such. What you need is the proper set of plans. So a lot of people go through and work – they think they need to work with a local architect because they’ve been told that by someone. But there’s no requirement that you need an architect and what people sometimes find is they go through and develop a set of plans. They go in and say, “Hey, I want to have a house of a certain price range,” and then the plans get to be bigger or they’re out of the budget or sometimes they have structural issues.

So, no, you don’t need an architect. We actually work as the combination of the architect, the structural engineer, mechanical people and energy codes and supplying the panelized home package. So through one contact, you’re able to take care of all those disciplines to make sure that it’s put together and we will work with you on the changes, revisions. Not just on the revisions for architectural but also make sure that they follow through the complete plan set.

So for example, Steve, let’s just say you were doing a set of plans and you moved a wall and that wall happened to have an electric socket in it. Well, obviously your electrical plan then needs to change. It could change your foundation plan. It could make a variety of different revisions or create the need for a variety of different revisions.

So the architect is not required. Why people find us to be of value is we act as the architect. We do all the architectural work. Wrap it into one cost with one contact, so it’s easier for you to design, manage and understand your project and also your budget. It will save you a considerable amount of money with the process that we have. I think that’s the reason why people like us is we can go through and wear multiple hats and take care of the issue and control that design cost.

When you look at the design cost and now the building cost, that’s where we really, really excel.

Interviewer: Here’s a question from a man who says, “Can Landmark get me through all the building permit requirement …”

Here’s a gentleman who asked an interesting question. Can Landmark get me through all the building permit requirements, application and checklists?”

Steve Landmark: That’s an interesting one and not a lot of people realize this. Some building departments, like I said, are simple. You go in there. You give them a set of plans. You can walk out with a permit. Others need a day or two to review. Others do an in-depth, thorough review of everything.

So some building departments will have a very detailed list. Yes, we can help with that as we reviewed just a few minutes ago and then we can also take care of checklist items. The checklist items are if they come back and say, “Hey, we need further clarification about this,” or “Hey, we need further clarification.”

That is part of our process and it’s not an additional cost to respond to those for the building permit, to go through to make sure that it’s there. So if they ask a question and say, “Hey, can you verify that the bedroom windows are egress?” we will show that the dimensions that are already on the plans do match egress or, you know, maybe they’ve got questions about HVAC or an electric circuit or roof loading or this or this or that.

We can go through and do it, so you don’t – you as the customer don’t suddenly have to be an electrical engineer, an HVAC engineer, a foundation engineer, a structural engineer. You can just send it to us and we take care of the issues.

Now the actual application, we mail the plans to our customers because the building department requires that a homeowner or landowner supplies – that they need a bunch of information and probably pay some fees. So we will mail the plan set, the complete plan set or however many sets of plans they need to the customer.

Some building departments need two. Some need seven. We will send a complete plan set, so they can take it and walk right in and apply for their permits.

Interviewer: Here’s a guy who wants to know, “How do I know my plans are designed properly to match the complete plan set to the panelized home package?” Can you tackle that one for us?

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s an interesting thing. These questions are coming from people that have really spent some time looking at it because a lot of people think that all plans are the same and they’re not. It’s not like a gallon of milk where you could say, “Hey, a gallon of Vitamin D milk has a certain standard.”

I’m sure there are differences within milk but generally are considered to be the same. But in plans, just because it looks good – you know, you’ve got windows and doors and different things. That doesn’t mean it matches the structural plan. That doesn’t mean it matches the energy requirements.

We’ve seen this many, many times in people. This is a very common problem, no matter if you got them from the local kid in high school that drew your plans or someone that won – has won a lot of awards in your neighborhood. It’s that we’ve seen things where they need a certain level of insulation in the wall and there’s no space for the insulation or that happens a lot in roof systems.

So we’ve seen situations where people have designed certain sized beams that are bigger than the floor system that they’re supposed to fit in and they create different architectural issues. So these are things that it’s important to make sure that the architectural plans match your structural plans, match the energy codes, match any green code considerations, to make sure that the panelized package is built right. That makes it easier for permitting. It makes it easier for actual building because you’re not solving problems in the field.

You’re solving them on paper. We’re solving them for you as part of our service and it also helps you control your budget because if you go through – you know, the insulation is one of the prime things. If you go through and it says you need to have R-48 insulation in your roof and there isn’t space for R-48 insulation in your roof and you find that out when your house is framed.

Interviewer: You got a problem.

Steve Landmark: It creates a little kind of like, “Uh-oh!” You know, scratch your head for a while. So that’s why we think it’s important to have an understanding of a unified plan set because you don’t want to end up stuck in the corner through the building thing. It’s going to end up costing you money and it’s going to be a hassle. It’s going to be a delay. It’s just one of these situations that you want to avoid. That’s the key element as to why we say, “Hey, work with us on the plans,” because we can make sure those elements are taken care of properly. We can make sure it’s put together.

One of the common ones is someone came through to us and said, “Steve, I got this great plumbing plan from this standard plan company and they were just so great.” So they plumb the house and then later, they found out their water supply was on the other side of the house. So they had to rerun it. Very simple situation to avoid. Very simple. But in that case, it took an extra day or two of plumbing and an extra cost to reroute plumbing.

Interviewer: It’s an expensive little problem that could have been fixed early on.

Steve Landmark: Right. So it’s what I call do your homework upfront.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: You know, make sure you know what you’re doing. Think it through. You know, sometimes little things come up here and there. But the reality is, is you want to go through, make the process happen. Have a good design, so you don’t end up with changed orders. You don’t end up with delays. You don’t end up with budget problems. That’s the way to keep it on track.

Do the thinking upfront and that’s what we work with you, to make sure it’s good for what you need, your building department, your contractor, homeowner’s association and we take it from there. We do also support our projects all the way through.

So let’s just say you end up with a situation where you need to do a change and the house is half-built. We will still hang in there with you and figure out what needs to be done to go through it. Somewhere someone said panelized homes can’t be changed. I’m not quite sure where they get that idea. But we’re fully capable of making revisions. We want to avoid it. But if someone had to have some change for some reason, we will gladly help our customers through the process.

Interviewer: Right. Here’s the simplest question we’ve got. But I will bet you, it’s one of the most important. How do I know my home design will even fit on the lot I purchased?

Steve Landmark: That’s an interesting one because we’ve actually – that can become complicated. You end up in situations where people say, “Hey, I got a 50-foot wide lot. But then I got this beautiful set of plans for a house that’s 60-feet wide. Well, that’s a pretty obvious situation. But I think where that question is really going is sometimes there are zoning issues. Sometimes there are setback issues and sometimes those setback issues are a little more complicated than they appear to be because we’ve seen situations, you know, more on the East Coast where people say, “Hey, I could have a 10-foot setback on each side, 20 on the front, 20 on the back,” and then you find out they’re in a historic district.

Well, back in 1770, they didn’t exactly have zoning and all of these things. So – and then maybe lots change or people cut land off to give to a relative or whatever. So the key to that is the understanding of how to interpret these things in the setback and also where the setback goes.

We have had situations. Let’s just say Steve a 50-foot lot, a city lot, five-foot setbacks on each side. For 10 feet of setback, there’s 40 feet. Some building departments take – allow that 40 feet to go to the edge of the wall of the house.

Others want it to go to the overhang and still others are a little more specific, want it to go to the edge of the gutter.

Interviewer: Right, right.

Steve Landmark: OK. If you don’t know that, you can say, “Hey, I’m going to put my 40-foot wide house here,” and then find out that no, you got to redesign the house because you have a foot over hanging four feet of gutters. You’re 28 inches to – now it sounds goofy and it kind of is. It doesn’t happen a lot but it’s better to check that out before you’ve designed and done it. So it’s easier to go through and get that put together and there’s a lot of situations, especially for our customers in the West. We’ve all heard about the fires.

A lot of these setbacks aren’t just there to keep you from – you know, your homes to be too close. It’s make sure firemen can get around or easements for utilities and stuff like that. So sometimes there’s conflicting situations where your building department wants this. But your fire department wants that and you’ve got to interpret it on how it goes.

In a lot of places, there are height restrictions. You know, a lot of the mountain areas, they don’t want you building a house to block your neighbor or to look like a sore thumb in the community. So there’s – it’s not just how will it fit within the footprint, but how will it fit the driveway, the sidewalk, fireman’s access and also height restrictions and how those height restrictions are calculated.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So there’s a lot of interesting ways that building departments can come into, to determine if your house is a certain height. Some take the average of the four corners. Some take the average of a high and a low. Some take the average of the undisturbed soil. Some take the average of the proposed soil. So there’s a lot of stuff.

Now it’s not a big deal for us to work with it. I wouldn’t get hung up on it. I just want to tell people that it’s something to look at. It can affect the design of your home and we’re here to help you walk through that process.

Interviewer: Here’s a question from someone. Dear Landmark, I hear a lot about structural engineering. What is a structural engineer and do I need one?

Steve Landmark: A structural engineer is someone – you know, in simple terms, make sure your house stands up and not just stands up by itself. But if you’re in an earthquake area, make sure it can withstand the shaking of the earthquake and if you’re in the high snow load area, make sure that it can support the roof loads. If you’re in a wind area, like hurricane area, make sure that there’s – it will take the forces of the wind and then also there are areas that have expansive soil that can change and uplift your foundation.

So depending on the situation and where you’re building and your building department requirements, this answer may be different. So there are different ways to verify that the structure is right. But we are fully capable of doing full engineer-stamped, structural engineering for any house in the country to go through and make sure that it meets or exceeds the requirements for the design criteria that are at its particular building site.

What people have to really watch – let’s just take snowloads. That’s like the weight of snow or any weight on your roof. If you take a mountainous area, you can have some areas that have a thousand two or three-foot rise or drop within a couple of miles, within half a mile.

So sometimes people go through and say, “Oh my neighbor, he had a 50-pound snow load.” Well, he’s at 5500 feet and your house half a mile away is at 6500 feet. But you might have an 80-pound snow load. So some of these areas are special areas where you’ve got to not just call the building department, but you’ve got to interpret by the elevation where it is and what the snow load can be.

It could be extremely significant. We’ve got some 150, 175-pound snow loads. If they built on the other side of town, it would have been 120. Just to give you an idea, most areas in the US are 20, 30 pounds.

Interviewer: Wow.

Steve Landmark: That probably covers 70 or 80 percent of America. It’s more when you get into the Rockies, the Sierras, the – where you end up in 100 plus snow loads. A lot of Northern – like Northern Midwest, you might end up 60, 70. That’s all stuff that we can work into it because it affects the beams, the connections, the trusses, the walls, the foundation design.

So it’s very important to make sure that the house is structurally adequate for the area that you choose to build. You can’t go take a standard plan and say, “Hey, I want to go build it in the deep desert where there’s essentially zero snow load because it doesn’t snow,” and I go take that same plan up to Vail, Colorado or Lake Tahoe and thing that it’s going to support. It isn’t. It’s a different structure. The house may look the same or extremely similar, but it’s different.

Interviewer: So you have time for one more question?

Steve Landmark: Yeah, let’s do it.

Interviewer: OK. So someone writes in and they want to know if Landmark can work with their civil engineer for grading and drainage plans.

Steve Landmark: Yes. That’s becoming more and more popular is you hear of different floods or you hear of different situations and people build in more unique areas. Building departments and also you – this isn’t just a game of hey, let’s do what the building department needs. There’s a certain sense. If you’re in an area where there are floods or different situations, you don’t want your house to be affected by it.

So the drainage is very important. Generally what happens is we may have a design concept that we’ve put together and the customer could work with their civil engineer to develop this grading and drainage plan.

So the concept being that you might be in a certain area where the house has to be oriented a certain way. Let’s just take a mountain area for some reason. There may really only be one area to legally put a driveway. There might only be one reasonable area to put a driveway to access the house and there might only be one reasonable area of where to place the house, so that it doesn’t end up in a – you know, with other concerns, landslides, whatever situations there are.

So what they do, the civil engineer does, is work to come up with an economical method to make sure the driveway will work. The house can sit. Wells and septic can fit properly. Any other setbacks for building departments or design criteria are there, so that you’ve got an efficient home. That’s very important in more complicated building areas, so that you end up building a house that is sensible even in a big rain or the thaw of a big snow. We just did a – we’re working on a project in Colorado. We had to raise the house two feet just because the snowmelt creates such a rush, that we had to end up with a situation of diverting it around the house and it’s very important.

Again, it’s easy to do it on paper. It’s easy to do it on the computer. It’s very hard to move a house once it’s built. So yes, we will work with your local civil engineer on any grading drainages, use whatever are there. Also that brings up geotechnical reports, structural engineers. That’s a question that I usually bring up to people is, “Do you have a geotechnical report?” because that tells us the strengths of the soil. That’s generally in areas where you need engineer-stamped plans where there’s more complicated situations around mountains, earthquake areas, things like that where the geotechnical reports are important to tell us the strength of the soils, so that we can make sure that the house is supported properly by the strength of the soil below it.

Then sometimes we get into geology reports of what is down there. Are you over an earthquake area or what types of rocks are actually under there? What could happen in a landslide situation? So we’re completely capable of working with your local professionals on that, to make sure that the design is proper and make sure everything comes together properly.

Interviewer: So give us the lowdown on how someone interested in finding out more about Landmark Home and Land Company and the panelized home-building process. How do people go about contacting you?

Steve Landmark: Well, we’re readily available. You can check out our – a lot of people will kind of preview our website, which is www.LHLC.com. That’s basically the letters for Landmark Home Land Company. We’re actually called Landmark Home and Land Company, but www.LHLC.com is the website and you can call us at 800-830-9788. It’s always good to look at the website, get an understanding. But we’re always available to talk about what you need and what your project is and how well this comes together.

This isn’t a cookie cutter situation of, hey, take a house. Put it on your land and hope it works. It’s a, “Let’s plan it out. Make sure it’s right,” so your home is energy-efficient, structurally-sound. The design you want, it works on the land and that altogether makes it an enjoyable home to own.

Interviewer: And people going to the website, what can they expect to find there?

Steve Landmark: Oh, we’ve got a lot of details there. We’ve got different plans. We’ve got different details on what owner builders do, the panelization process. We’ve got some animations that explain stuff and then we’ve got these podcasts. So there’s a lot of information there. So you might have to visit it once or twice to let it sink in and like I say, we’re always available. You can email us there. You could ask us specific questions, set up time to call and talk. You can give us a call, 800-830-9788 and you can contact us. So whatever is convenient for you, whatever method it takes for you to allow us to help you through the process. We’re there to help you and make it easy and enjoy the process.

Interviewer: Well, great. Well, fortunately, we’re about out of time for this episode. This has been fun. Once again, a real treat to delve into what Landmark Home and Land Company does and to pick Steve’s brain a bit regarding the process of panelized home building. So for Steve and myself, you’ve been listening to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building show from Landmark Home and Land Company and we will see you next time.

Steve Landmark: Thank you.

Learn how owner-builders maintain financial control, schedule efficiency, and structural quality by managing their own home construction rather than settling for generic tract layouts. We examine how construction loan interest compounds daily during framing delays, illustrating why precision off-site fabrication accelerates dry-in time to minimize carrying costs and protect owner-builder cash flow. Discover how factory jig assembly delivers square, plumb wall panels built to tighter tolerances than site-stick framing exposed to mud and weather. We detail how owner-builders generate substantial sweat equity by sourcing high-end finishes like granite countertops and specialty plumbing fixtures locally while keeping framing labor low. Finally, explore how custom architectural planning accommodates heavy vehicle lifts, acoustic music rooms, and water sports storage, ensuring your project seamlessly aligns with our owner-builder kit home packages and precision panelized framing package.

A: Construction loans accrue interest based on active monthly draw balances disbursed throughout the build. Weather delays, slow on-site framing, and subcontractor scheduling conflicts extend the construction timeline, causing carrying costs to tick away and consume project contingency funds. Using a pre-manufactured framing system allows owner-builders to erect the weather-tight shell in days, significantly lowering the total interest paid before converting to a permanent mortgage.

A: Traditional on-site stick framing forces carpenters to square, nail, and sheet walls on rough or muddy subfloors subject to rain, warping lumber, and human measuring errors. A factory-controlled panelized facility utilizes computerized linear saws and precision flat assembly jigs, ensuring every stud cavity, top plate, and structural sheathing panel is perfectly square to fractions of an inch before arriving on the jobsite.

A: Standard residential garages lack the vertical clearance and concrete slab strength required for heavy vehicle lifts. During the preliminary architectural design phase, blueprints must be customized with taller plate heights or scissor trusses to provide the required 12-to-14-foot overhead clearance. Additionally, structural engineers specify thickened 6-inch 4,000-PSI concrete footings and high-strength anchor bolts directly beneath the lift’s post locations to safely support the vehicle’s weight.

A: Bundling finishing items like cabinets, faucets, light fixtures, and countertops into a prefabricated package forces homeowners to pay freight surcharges and markup on generic, builder-grade catalog options. Sourcing finishes directly from local suppliers gives owner-builders hands-on control to touch, test, and purchase high-end items or discounted closeouts, directly increasing the equity gained upon final appraisal.

A: General contractors typically add a 15% to 25% overhead and profit margin onto every phase of a custom build. By managing the schedule, purchasing finishing materials directly, and handling tasks like project management, cleanup, or interior painting themselves, owner-builders capture that profit margin as immediate built-in equity the day the certificate of occupancy is issued.

Interviewer: Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. I’m Stephen Savage, your host, and with me as always is my buddy Steve Tuma, President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes the way they wanted, where they want it, since 1993.

Steve, how’s your day?

Steve Landmark: It’s an excellent day. It’s a great day to talk about panelized homes too.

Interviewer: Fantastic. Well, that’s what we’re here for and I thought today we would start off just getting right down to the brass tacks here. Are you ready for this one? Why build a Landmark panelized home?

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s kind of interesting. A lot of people go, “Oh, you know, I just want to build a house. When I get the best price, I want to do this. I want to do that.” The reality is if you’re going to be an owner/builder, it’s nice to know what you’re doing instead of just, hey, have a house show up and take what’s given to you. It’s kind of a process where you can go through, you can design the house you want, make sure it fits on your land properly. You can control the quality of the home, control the features of the home and control the schedule of building it and also work on the budget.

I think that’s the key element that our process of Landmark were to help people go through and understand what they’re doing, so they can get the best home possible.

Panelized homes have been around a while. We’ve been doing it for about – since 1993 and it’s basically a more efficient method of stick-building a home. Stick-building meaning you get a bunch of two-by-fours, nail them together, make a wall, put a roof system up and kind of conventional building.

So it’s a lot different than modular where kind of the two halves are brought out and sent together. Panelized, you can customize it, but it’s built in a controlled environment in a production facility, so that walls are square. Things are just built to better tolerances than if they’re done on site, in the weather in muddy fields. So it’s – that’s the key for the actual panelized product, but the whole designing and understanding and controlling your project and knowing what’s going into it.

A lot of our people just want to see their house get built and they want to know that it’s built to a certain specification and when they have control of the project, they can know and verify it and know that it’s done right. It’s also a pride of ownership, pride of building. You did it and then the big kicker is the equity position that can be obtained.

Why pay someone else for something you can do? You can lower the cost of your home, so it’s more affordable to you or you could put features into it that normally you wouldn’t be able to get in other building methods.

Interviewer: Your website talks a lot about control. You’ve mentioned control here a couple of times. Control of the budget, the quality of the build, even control of the schedule and knowing what you’re getting.

Kind of go through that step by step. How does Landmark help me control my project?

Steve Landmark: Well basically through the building. First of all in the control is we can work with you to design the home you want. It’s not limited to 10 plans and hey, you should like this house and someone convincing you that you should build – that you should live in a house that they want to sell you.

You can go through and say, “No, I want the kitchen a little bigger. I need a bigger garage. I like this look. I want a steep pitch. I want a porch in the back. You know, I want to do this and by the way, I want to build it in my land. I want to build it in Texas or Colorado or New York or California,” wherever it is someone chooses to build.

So you’re able to spend money on what you choose to buy instead of being told what is good for you. So that’s the point. The quality, you can go through and determine what you want. If you want gold faucets and it works in your budget, put them in.

If you’re someone that’s really into cooking and family get-togethers, you’re probably going to emphasize your kitchen a little more. If you’re someone that works on your own car, we’ve got a couple of customers restoring cars, having fun. They’re just car guys. They’re building their man-cave. That’s important to them. They can go through. We can make the garage big enough, so that their car lift goes in there.

There’s a variety of situations, a lot of properties around recreational areas, lakes, mountains. So we can set things up. So you’re really increasing the bang for the buck that you’re getting because you’re getting what you choose to build and what you choose to spend your money on.

Interviewer: Well, yeah, continue on that a little bit. Now I’m looking at a schedule. I’m looking at the website and it’s saying you can control your schedule. I would like to know a lot more about that because I think cost overruns a lot of times in home building just take the form of schedule was just too long or ran over or whatever. How do you help control that?

Steve Landmark: Right. That’s something where we could work with a design and by having the proper set of plans, they can get approved by your building department. Those set of plans are then the key to communication in your subcontractors and the people involved in building your home, whether they’re designing cabinets or pouring a foundation or installing the electric.

By that clean communication and understanding that our plans provide, people know what they can do. They know what it takes to do a job. They can show up, do their job and then move on, so that the next crew can come in. With that process, also with the panelized process, since the assembly is much quicker, than conventional stick building, we can work in areas that have a limited building season or if there’s rainy seasons and not just that. You want to get me your house. You want to take the time to build it properly. It’s not a race. But you do want to build it properly and you don’t want to have situations where it’s delayed or things like that.

If you have a construction loan, the construction interest is ticking away. So you want to have control of the schedule, so you know what’s going. So our planning process, the panelization allows you to understand what’s going on but also control the process of actually building your home.

A lot of people might call and say, “Hey, how much does this cost? How much does that cost?” and cost is important. But knowing what you’re getting and making sure it gets built right and the right schedule is just as important.

Interviewer: You were talking about design and how – you were talking about man caves and garages and I would imagine that for some people, some home builders, this becomes even a family project because if you’ve got kids who are growing up, you want a house that’s kind of adaptable to them, to their kids as well and this just all seems interesting that these designs are so adaptable to every family’s individual needs.

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s the key element. A lot of people ask us. It’s like, wow, you’ve been doing this since 1993. That’s a long time. They’re like, “Isn’t it just a job?” Like no, it’s fun. It’s important. When you see what a family can do – let me just take an example. We had a man that is retired and he plays in an orchestra.

He designed in a music room into his house where he could practice his instruments, do those things. It’s a passion. So here’s a retired person that built a house that is now enhancing his life. We’re working with a family that I believe is going to start building with us in Colorado. The grandfather, the son and the grandson, they’re all out there working on their cars, restoring a hot rod, building this, doing that.

Just to see that the families are working on getting the design. So it’s not just the process of hey, let’s get you a house. Let’s get you moved in. It’s look at what’s happening with it. Some people look at these projects as hey, I’ve got a young son and daughter. They need to know how to manage money. They need to know how to manage a crew. They need to have a starting point and an ending point with a goal. Then there’s a lot of people who do it just for the self-satisfaction. I want to know what I’m getting. I’m working hard for my money. I want to make sure I get the best house possible.

I’m going to live here for 20 years. So there’s a lot of motivation as to how we do it and we support that. So if someone says, “Hey, I need to go through and redesign this kitchen a couple of times. It’s not quite there,” we will take that time. We actually worked with a lady and her husband, 78 years old. He always told her he’s going to get her a brand new home and at that time, he was ready to do it and able to do it.

Apparently his wife cooks the most amazing pies in the planet. We designed a kitchen, so that it was perfect for her. So she could see him working in the yard with the grandkids and doing stuff. But she could still have the windows, the stoves, the refrigerators, the sinks so that she can bake pies. That was extremely important to that family.

Interviewer: And that’s very specific. It’s great to be able to deliver that.

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s the point about it. So instead of saying, “Hey, here’s a house. I hope you like it,” we get to say, “Hey, what do you want? What’s important to you?” If you’re into building a big garage, let’s do it. If you’re into cooking, let’s do it. If you need separate bedrooms and you have six kids, let’s do it. People have put slides in their house for their kids to slide down. You know what I mean?

Interviewer: That’s funny.

Steve Landmark: They put hot tubs in. They put different types of kitchens. They put different types of bathrooms, different types of showers and that’s the key – we’re helping one family do a house in an island off – in Washington State and they’re into kayaking. So they want to know that in their walk-out basement, they could get all their water sports equipment in and out. That’s why you work with us because we will take the time to design it, sort these details out and make sure it works, so that you understand what’s going on. This isn’t a situation of hey, we’re going to tell you the house you want. You’re going to tell us the house that you want. We’re going to work on the design, make sure structurally it’s sound, make sure it’s a good house. Then you move forward to build it. It’s your project.

Interviewer: Kind of run us through why and how a panelized home is more cost-effective for me, the new home builder, as opposed to a traditional stick-built home.

Steve Landmark: Well, I think the main thing is understanding of what you’re doing through our design process, the quality control and the specifications that we provide. Then along with the efficiencies of building, the speed of building and then tying the whole project together. It’s not real easy to say, “Hey, let’s go get an architect. Let’s go get a structural engineer. Let’s go do this,” and have all these people on the same page and then make sure it gets built right. There’s a lot of different details that have to be put together. So I think that’s the key element is the designing, the engineering, the delivery of the panelized home packages. I think the word is – you know, a couple of words, “one-stop shop”. That kind of helps make it easier for you to get things taken care of and that I think is a – is the important part.

But I should emphasize the panels. I mean it’s a greener process because there’s limited waste. You’re not buying a bunch of materials and typically if there’s an eight-foot board and someone needs a two-foot board, they throw six feet away. In our process, in the production facility, that extra board is used someplace else.

I think everything down to a two-inch board is reused in somewhere else in the home and then even the two-inch board is ground up and then it’s used for animal bedding in some of the agricultural areas around the plant. So it’s a green process and then just the nature of the design, the computer-controlled saws can figure out the best way to cut materials, so that there’s minimized waste.

Panels are made on a flat jig, so that it’s a higher quality assembly. We deliver them on a flat bedrock directly to your building site. The assembly of the house package is more controlled. Quality of labor in general has gone down. So you can have a main-framing guy and two laborers, maybe three, that put the wall up. No one is out there doing build calculations and angles and this and that.

We supply a very clear and accurate set of assembly plans that show where each component gets placed, where each wall panel goes, where each roof truss goes. So it’s not really a puzzle because we give you the answer and how to put it together. But it shows you how to go through. So it’s that control and understanding and the efficiency in building that allows our customers to retain control of their project and understand what’s going on.

Interviewer: Now you had mentioned features earlier, things like gold faucets or countertops, things like that. How extensive is Landmark’s involvement with the overall design, but also those little personal touches? How much consultation do you guys put in on that?

Steve Landmark: Well, this is the interesting thing because we generally get involved with the design, the structural engineering and the delivery of the panelized package. Our customer base appreciates being able to personalize their own home. So they want to spend their money on the home that they want and they want their family to be represented in there.

So if someone wants expensive gold faucets, they can buy them. They could design it in. They can include it and that’s something that they typically would get locally. They could touch it, feel it, smell it, use it.

Interviewer: That really gives everybody a hands-on feel to building the house. That’s great.

Steve Landmark: Right, instead of going somewhere and saying, “Hey, here’s a choice of three. Which one do you want?” and you really don’t want any. You’re just kind of deducing down until there’s only one left. You’re able to go through and say, “Hey, I want this type of siding,” or “Hey, I want this type of window.”

I think that that’s very important. People don’t see the structure. We can take care of that to make sure the house is sound. But the personalization, hey, do you want carpet? Do you want tiled? Do you want hardwood? How are you going to trim around your windows? How is the kitchen going to be laid out? What kind of countertop? Those are those personal things that you’re going to run into every day and literally in some of these cases, it seems like the choices are limitless. That’s the key thing.

So if people were to say, “Hey, I want a granite countertop with an island. You know, do a level island, so that when the family comes over, we can all sit around and watch a little TV, be by the kitchen. Everyone can hang out together,” we can design that and then they can determine the finishes that they want.

So if that want a granite or Formica or cement or wood or whatever kind of countertops, we can design it right in there and work with them and the details.

That’s the key element because this stuff doesn’t always cost more. It just takes a little bit of thought to say, “Hey, this is what I want,” and we could put it on the plans. Then they – our customers end up with more of a house. They end up with a house they want.

Interviewer: I think the overall that I’m hearing throughout all these episodes of the Panelized Home Show is that Landmark Home and Land Company, the design and panelization process that you guys have come up with, it just seems that it makes it quicker and generally easier to take care of the tougher portions of building a new home and anything that the new home owner is going to come across, you guys seem to have that knowledge base to pretty much answer any question.

Steve Landmark: Right, and that’s the situation. We kind of look at ourselves as an additional resource. So in the management of a project, there’s different people. There are excavators. There are foundation people. There are heating guys. We’re kind of the people developing the plan and the structure for the house. So we’re kind of like a right-hand man, an extra arm, an extra mind, so that someone could leverage their time and still go to work, still stay sane, still spend time with their family. You know, just do all these things and it’s very important to have a trusted, knowledgeable resource like Landmark, so that you know you’re getting taken care of.

That I think is the key element of what people say about us is you took care of us. We got a testimonial. It was – you know, a lot of people, you would think you would say, “Hey, you got a great house. You showed up on time.” That’s great.

But when they said, “And you care,” that was pretty heartwarming to us. So I think that’s the element there that we’re able to put together is listen to what you want and go through to work towards getting the house properly designed. So you build a house that makes sense for you. That’s the reason.

Interviewer: We had mentioned a few times that you started your company in 1993 and when I think of 1993, I think, “Oh, yeah, 15 years ago or so.” In a few years, that’s going to be 30 years. Oh my god.

Steve Landmark: Isn’t that wild? Yeah.

Interviewer: It drives me nuts to think about that. But yeah, 30 – you’re close to 30 years in business. That’s pretty amazing.

Steve Landmark: The coolest thing Steve is when someone from 20 years ago says, “Hey, you remember me?” and I said, “Oh, yeah. You built in Fairplay, Colorado,” and they say, “My son wants to do one.” We’ve actually worked with families where we’ve helped every adult in the family build a house. Some families will come back every couple of years and build a house. Some families will recommend us to someone 10 years down the road. You hear about that and that’s the ultimate pat on the back of, “Hey, good job.” That’s what we’re about. It’s helping you. But we know when we help someone, that when their friend calls up, we know we did our job.

Interviewer: Well, we’re about out of time for this episode. If you wouldn’t mind Steve, can you give us the contact info for Landmark Home and Land Company?

Steve Landmark: I would say give a call at 800-830-9788 and then our website at  www.LHLC.com. That’s basically the initials of the Landmark Home Land Company. It’s actually Landmark Home and Land Company. But the letters for the website are L as in “land,” H as in “home” – or sorry, L as in “Landmark,” H as in “home,” L as in “land,” C as in “company,” dot com,  www.LHLC.com.

Interviewer: Well, once again, it has been a real pleasure and I want to thank everybody for tuning in to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show and we will see you next time.

Learn how site-specific structural engineering and certified load calculations protect custom homes from foundation settling, sagging floor systems, and catastrophic lateral wind failures. We examine why stacking two 10-foot framed walls to create a 20-foot great room creates a dangerous structural hinge that causes interior drywall cracking under high winds—and how continuous engineered studs resolve this vulnerability in tall view walls commonly found in mountain chalet cabin plans. Discover how geotechnical soil borings establish true soil bearing capacity to prevent sloping porches, out-of-square door frames, and expansive clay foundation heaving. Finally, explore why generic internet blueprints fail modern municipal plan checks, and see how fully coordinated, engineer-stamped documentation pairs with a precision panelized building system to ensure code compliance across any microclimate.

A: When builders stack two 10-foot framed walls on top of one another to achieve a 20-foot great room wall, the horizontal joint between the top plate of the lower wall and bottom plate of the upper wall acts as a weak hinge point. When external lateral wind pressures push against the exterior sheathing, that unreinforced connection bends and flexes, causing severe structural deflection, continuous drywall joint cracking, and potential wall blowout unless framed with full-height, continuous engineered tall studs or balloon-framed structural posts.

A: A geotechnical engineer drills deep soil borings to measure the ground’s allowable bearing capacity, typically rated in pounds per square foot (such as 1,500 or 2,000 PSF). If the structural engineer finds softer, unconsolidated soils or high water tables, standard prescriptive footing sizes will sink under the building’s dead load, requiring widened concrete spread footings, additional rebar reinforcement, or drilled concrete piers to distribute the home’s weight safely.

A: Standard residential floor systems are engineered to support uniform live loads of approximately 30 to 40 pounds per square foot. Concentrated dead weights—such as a 3,000-pound grand piano or a 500-gallon aquarium—create severe point loads that can cause standard floor joists to sag, bounce, or crack finishes over time. Structural engineers must reinforce these designated floor bays by doubling up joists, decreasing spacing to 12 inches on center, or installing engineered LVL structural beams directly below the point loads.

A: An engineer’s professional stamp represents a legally binding certification backed by comprehensive mathematical calculations verifying that every structural component—from roof truss hold-downs and lateral shear wall schedules down to anchor bolt spacing—meets or exceeds local building code forces. Engineers assume legal liability for the home’s structural integrity, which is why municipal building departments reject unverified stock plans and mandate site-specific calculation packets before issuing a permit.

A: An identical architectural floor plan built in different regions faces vastly different environmental load forces. In high-altitude mountain zones, engineering focuses on resisting 100-to-150-pound ground snow loads on roof framing, whereas a coastal site requires heavy-duty hurricane straps, shear nailing patterns, and impact-resistant wall assemblies to survive 130+ mph wind pressures and coastal storm surges without structural displacement.

Interviewer: Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of The Panelized Home Show. I’m your host Stephen Savage and with me as always is Steve Tuma, Owner and Founder of the Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build the new home they want where they want since 1993. Steve, how are you my friend?

Steve Landmark: It’s an excellent day. You want to talk about some engineering?

Interviewer: Yeah. I was hoping you might be ready for that. I would like to discuss something we’ve briefly touched on in previous episodes and that is structural engineering and my first question is a very simple one. Why do I need engineering in my new home?

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s a relatively simple answer. It’s just to make sure it stands up and it’s structurally sound. A lot of people go through and they will say, “Well, I put this two by four over here in this other house and it didn’t fail.” Well, maybe that’s true and maybe it just hasn’t failed yet or maybe it’s in the process of failing.

But the key to it is a lot more building departments are getting more sophisticated in enforcing the code and because of the complexity, they want an engineer to review the plans and justify that floor systems are designed right, roof systems are designed right, beams are designed right and the connections between all the components of the house and the foundation down to the ground are out properly built. So it – the house doesn’t sag or crack or can’t resist the forces that are brought against it such as high winds or snow loads or expansive soils or hurricanes, earthquakes or a combination of all of those.

Interviewer: All those fun things. When I think of an engineer, I think most of us think about a huge bridge or infrastructure projects or dams, things like that. But when it comes to building my simple, humble, little home, what exactly does an engineer do in that process?

Steve Landmark: Well, I think the simplest thing that people would understand is it makes sure that the house is solid. All of us have walked through a house where you’re walking through the house and the china cabinet shakes or the floor bounces or you hear different squeaks or an overhang is leaning or you go on the front porch and it’s kind of sloped down.

That’s a result of something not being designed properly. Now if it’s on a 150-year-old home, you could kind of understand he didn’t know things back then. But we’re concerned about maintaining the value of the home and a nice home, a well-built home is representative of a community that will also retain its value.

But fundamentally, it’s just to make sure that it is. A lot of people go through and say, “Well, I just want to build my house. We could put this floor system down. Someone told me we can use this,” and then let’s just say you bring in your 500-gallon fish tank and your grand piano. Suddenly the floor system is not designed to hold something that weighs 3000 pounds in a specific area.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So that creates a problem. So the structural engineer would go through and make sure that the house can support the snow loads. You know, if you’re in a desert area, you don’t really have a big snow load. The roof loading would be 15 pounds. You get up in a big mountain area. It could be 100 pounds, 150 pounds of snow that would be on that roof in a square foot.

So what they have to do is make sure that the roof system will support it, the roof sheathing, the rafters or trusses. Going down through any beams or posts or headers that it would be so that it goes through.

Steve, have you ever been in an older home where the door doesn’t close?

Interviewer: I grew up in those houses.

Steve Landmark: That’s because something settled.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: OK. The header wasn’t the right size. Maybe the ground was soft and the house sank a little bit. It’s avoiding things like that.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And that’s what it’s about. So what’s happening is I think a lot of building departments are requesting that homes be engineered so that it could be justified what’s there. So on the process of the engineering is the actual calculations and the design and the details and the specifications of materials, the specifications of connectors. What’s connecting the roof truss to the wall? What’s connecting the wall to the floor? What’s connecting the floor to the foundation? Is the foundation designed properly to support the complete home? That’s the basic essence of it, making sure that it’s a solid structure for what it’s intended – the home is intended to do.

One thing that I want to bring up is a lot of people think engineering is just getting a stamp. That’s a fallacy. People say, “Oh, I will just drop a set of plans on my kitchen table and give an engineer a couple of hundred bucks and he will stamp and –”

Interviewer: You mean not – just not anyone can stamp my plans?

Steve Landmark: Yeah. No. I mean maybe 10 years ago, certain places would accept that. I know that there are companies out there that – there are people that think that that’s the way it is. The reality is proper engineering should be a full set of documentation, the plans, the details and the calculations justifying why the house is designed as it is.

So if they say, “Hey, we need to have a certain LVL beam as a header,” there’s a calculation that justifies why that’s there. It’s also shear wall considerations, making sure that the house can take forces from wind or pushing it, situations where you’ve got a wall. Say you’ve got a wall that’s 20 feet tall in your house. You know, with some big glass in there. Make sure that that can not only hold the weight of the roof but also resist the wind that pushes against it.

There’s a lot of different details. We’ve helped people build a lot of chalets and they might have a 20-foot wall overlooking a beautiful scene in the mountains. Then they go, “I will just get a 20-foot two-by-six, nail it up there.”

Well, no, there’s a lot of forces or sometimes people think, “Hey, I will just make two ten-foot walls and stack them.” They don’t realize that where those two walls join, that’s kind of a hinge. So the wind would push against it and create cracking and drywall, a repeated maintenance issue that you want to believe – or you want to avoid. Sorry about that.

But that’s the point. You want to make sure that it’s done properly and in that process, you will end up with a lot more connectors, upgraded beams, walls being framed in different ways and then the load pass being delineated and that it will also detail out the foundation design.

So it’s a complete thing. I relate it to people. You want to be born with a strong leg, a strong back, a strong neck. That’s what holds you up. That’s what we’re doing with your house is make sure that it’s done right and then make sure it complies with the codes, the building department requirements and the details for your land because – I mentioned this before.

If you took a house and chose to build it somewhere in Iowa and they said, “No, I’m going to go move to the Rockies,” and they said, “No, I want to go build a house in Key West,” “No, I want to go to Los Angeles,” the house may look pretty close the same, but the structure will be different.

Interviewer: So I can’t just take those plans under my arm and go to any state I want.

Steve Landmark: Right. You brought up a perfect point because a lot of people will go online and say, “Hey, I bought these plans and they’re engineered and they told me that they’re engineered for anywhere in California.” I’m like, “Oh, really?” because we have to do site-specific engineering.

Let’s just say you take a place like California or Colorado where there’s low flatlands. There’s also mountains. There’s snow. It’s a different application of the code for each of those situations. So if you – let’s say California. If you were to build a house in the Sierras where they get a big snow load, that’s going to have a little bit different structure than if you took it down to San Diego where there’s an earthquake concern. It doesn’t have the snow load but it still has – it has a larger earthquake concern than in the mountains.

Interviewer: So that’s a different set of issues.

Steve Landmark: It’s the same code applied a different way. One of them is going to be a snow load with earthquake. The other one is going to be more earthquake than if you decided to say, “No, I want to move that same house and build it in Key West.” It’s going to have a high wind and storm surge situation.

So that’s the element. It needs different strengths in different areas and then other places, expansive soils, soils that actually expand and can lift your foundation. It leads to cracking and other issues.

Interviewer: Right, right.

Steve Landmark: So that’s why we’ve got to check different details like that to make sure it’s built right for the condition you’re building in. When I want to delineate, people think that, “Hey, I will just get some engineer. He will stamp the plan.” No. You’re not paying for the stamp. You’re paying for the knowledge and the proper design and the stamping is the engineer’s certification that what he has done is right.

Interviewer: Got it. It makes sense.

Steve Landmark: He’s taking responsibility. It’s not just stamping plans as a lot of people are led to believe.

Interviewer: Right. Now, we’re talking about structural engineering today and I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about geotechnical reports. Explain to me what that is exactly and why is it important to me as a home builder.

Steve Landmark: It’s very important. The simplest way that I like to put it is if you’ve ever walked on say cement, it’s very solid. OK? But if you’ve ever been at the edge of a pond where plants have rotted and died, a typical person could walk to the edge of the water and sink. So the geotechnical report goes through and tells us the strength of the soils.

So it will go through and say, “Hey, you’ve got 1500 or you’ve got 2000. It will tell us the strength,” or they will say, “Hey, there are expansive soils.”

We’ve heard about landslides. We’ve heard about houses sinking. We’ve heard of different situations. So you need a geotechnical engineer to go out and take a boring of the soil. Get the soil conditions. Test it and create a report to say that in this area, you should build this type of a foundation to this strength. Our structural engineers can then go through to size the footers properly, to size the whole foundation design, so that your house doesn’t sink. It’s kind of the relation of – like I said, if you’re building on softer soils, your house can’t sink.

Like I talked about earlier, the front porch that’s leaning. That’s probably because the soil is underneath it. It has settled over time.

Interviewer: You had talked about this on our very first episode a little bit. But I would really like to kind of just for a moment delve in a little bit to the history of Landmark because the information you give on these programs is extensive. It’s pretty amazing.

Just the base of knowledge that you and your company have, I mean it’s – I would be so comfortable calling you up and saying, “Hey, this is what I’m looking for,” and knowing that I’m going to get the right answer.

So just for the sake of our new listeners, give us a little bit of background on Landmark.

Steve Landmark: Well, we started the company in 1993 and grew across – nationwide and then we also do international projects. So we’ve always been really interested in it. This isn’t a job to us where we go there to get a paycheck. This is a passion. It’s something that we enjoy doing. It’s just kind of in our blood type of a situation.

I think with working, we’ve got a great customer base of interesting people that are doing – building their homes for different reasons. Some are retirement. Some are family estate. Some of them are first homes. Some of them are third homes. You know, whatever it may be. Through the process of working with these great people, you just get really involved with the project.

Each of those projects is different. So even though we might have been doing it since 1993, there’s something different about every single home. Where it’s built, why it’s built, the energy codes, the green codes, the structural concerns, the design elements. Is it on a basement? Is it – does the family need something special? Do they have special needs for the design? Is it an ADA design? Are the people super active, where they don’t really want to be in the house? They just want to go there to eat and sleep and then get up and go surf or mountain climb or whatever they do. Are they people who want to stay home and they have big family get-togethers?

That’s the interesting part of it. Through that process, over the time, you have all these different experiences and building in different places. That’s how you see all these different details and how they work. So it’s just passion and experience. It’s really the way to put it. We enjoy it. We enjoy working with our customers and we ask them to let us know if we can ever do anything to help and to go through because you can buy a piece of wood anywhere. You could nail it together and call it a house.

But the way it’s done, you know, affordably, effectively and with clean communication, a good relationship, so they end up with a good house. It really matters. It makes a difference in the end result of the home and not just that. The enjoyment of the process. Building a home can be stressful. It’s stressful because you’re working with the wrong people and you don’t understand what you’re doing.

If you have help, a proper set of plans, a good panelized home package, a support team that if you need something, they’re there when you need them, it becomes enjoyable. It’s really cool. A story, something happened. Between last Thanksgiving and Christmas, we had six customers call us that built with us between 10 and 14 years ago, to say, “We want to do it again,” or “We have a friend,” or “Hey. Now, it’s my son’s turn.”

Interviewer: Oh, that’s great.

Steve Landmark: Or my – you know, when you get that, that’s just cool. It’s like that ultimate pat on the back of, “Hey, good job,” and I guess that just fuels us to go do it and people want to build a good home. They just don’t always know how. They don’t know always know where to get a straight answer. They don’t always know if they will get an answer. Well, in our case, we can go through and justify and help them understand why it makes sense to do something.

Interviewer: It’s customer service. I’ve been through your website. I’ve seen some great videos on there, some really cool animations. But the one thing that really stands out about the website is the customer service, the follow-up, the follow-through, the ability to get on the phone, make a phone call and get – and actually get a person who will help you with the problem that you’re having at that moment. That’s one of the best things I think about, about your company.

Steve Landmark: Great. That’s the key is the customer service support. We do answer your phone call. We do talk directly to you. We do answer your questions, so that you can understand what –

Interviewer: So I’m not talking to somebody in a foreign country when I call the number.

Steve Landmark: No. It’s me or Mike and we can go through and help you through the process and we will take care of it. That’s the key thing because – like you brought up geotechnical report. Some people say, “Why do I want to do that? It’s $1500. I would rather get a bigger fireplace.” I say, “Well, I would rather make sure your house stands up.” You can always add the fireplace.

So when people understand what the geotechnical report or what an engineer-stamped set of plans or what energy calculations are, they’ve learned and then they could then apply it and say, “Yes, that does make sense to do it.”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And that’s the key to it is understanding what you’re doing, so that you can go through and effectively build a house. This isn’t just, hey, let’s throw a bunch of wood together. Let’s put a roof on it, put some windows in it. No. This is let’s develop a plan, literally a set of plans for the house. But also a method so that you can go through and build the house that makes sense for you and your family.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: That’s through proper design, engineering, our support and our custom panelized home delivered to your building site.

Interviewer: Now you mentioned Mike. That’s your brother and you guys are truly one of those – the three words that are getting harder to hear nowadays and that’s “family-owned business,” which I think is great.

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s that and it’s customer service and it’s dedication. We’ve been here since day one. We’re going to be here until we’re not here and that’s the key to it. We don’t hand you off to other people, Steve.

So have you ever been in a situation where it’s like, hey, you talked to rep number one. He hands you to rep number two.

Interviewer: No, I don’t even want to talk about it.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. Then your rep number five who doesn’t even know what’s going on. Well, in our case, Mike would work with you upfront, get you positioned. You know, find out what you need. Then I would work with you throughout the whole project from beginning to end, so that there’s a clean relationship, clean communication and understanding, so that the ball doesn’t get dropped along the way.

That’s the key element is being on the right team to help you through the process. You know, someone that’s going to be there to help you. If you run into a situation, they’re going to help and support you and pull you back up to get it going.

I think that that’s where we really help people and the key to it is design it right, plan it right and then execute it right instead of guessing along the way and tripping along the way. The key is do it right, plan it right and continue on with a logical – a process to building your home.

Interviewer: Great. So once again, these podcasts just go by so fast. It’s ridiculous. Go ahead and give us a rundown of how we can connect with Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Landmark: The simple way is just give us a call. Our 800 number is 800-830-9788 and then our website is always up. You can look at it. I think there’s a lot of nice videos. There’s some information on there, some plan selections and that’s at the initials,   www.LHLC.com. So it’s L as in landmark, H as in home, L as in land, C as in company, dot com and you can get ideas. Give us a call. Send us a message through the website and we will do all we can to help you move along and enjoy the process.

Interviewer: And there you go. That’s going to do it for this episode of The Panelized Home Show. As always, for Steve Tuma. I’m Stephen Savage and thank you guys for listening. We will

Learn how to navigate stringent municipal building departments, changing regional energy codes, and mandatory green building compliance when permitting a custom residential build. We examine the structural and logistical importance of unified plan sets—explaining why uncoordinated architectural cross-sections, structural engineering sheets, and thermal calculations trigger permit rejections, stair headroom violations, and on-site framing conflicts. Discover how green codes regulate low-VOC material off-gassing, jobsite construction waste diversion, and smart vacancy lighting sensors. Explore how seasonal sun angle studies and passive site orientation use natural breezes, calculated roof overhangs, and deciduous landscaping to drastically lower heating and air conditioning bills. Finally, see how pairing these planning strategies with a precision panelized kit home and our panelized building kits ensures smooth plan reviews, fast inspections, and lasting home value.

A: A unified plan set is a fully coordinated blueprint package where architectural drawings, structural engineering calculations, energy compliance models, and MEP layouts directly cross-reference one another. When independent designers draft plans separately, discrepancies frequently emerge—such as architectural elevations specifying standard rafters while energy calculations demand deep R-38 roof insulation, or structural beams encroaching on required stairwell headroom clearances. Unifying every discipline before submission ensures code officials and framing contractors work from identical dimensions and details.

A: While energy codes focus strictly on thermal envelope performance, HVAC efficiency, and seasonal heat loss/gain, green building codes (such as California’s CALGreen) regulate the environmental and occupant health impact of construction. Green codes enforce standards for non-toxic, low-VOC interior building materials to prevent chemical off-gassing, require certified construction waste diversion to keep debris out of landfills, and mandate smart electrical occupancy and vacancy lighting sensors to eliminate phantom electrical loads.

A: A solar sun path analysis models seasonal solar azimuth and elevation angles specific to the building parcel’s geographic coordinates. By evaluating daylight patterns, designers position primary view windows, eave depths, and interior spaces to absorb free radiant heat when the sun sits low in winter, while completely shading window glazing during high-angle summer months to prevent mechanical air conditioning systems from fighting excess ambient heat gain.

A: Municipal building departments are under increasing state and regional mandates to guarantee structural resilience against climate disasters (such as high-wind hurricane zones, heavy alpine snow loads, and active seismic fault lines) while enforcing strict carbon-reduction targets. Plan examiners no longer accept generic hand sketches; they require fully documented engineering calculations, specific connector schedules, and certified energy compliance reports to ensure every structure is safe, insurable, and built to current codes.

A: Incorporating passive solar design into residential site planning utilizes natural elements like deciduous shade trees planted along southern and western exposures. During summer, dense leaf canopies block intense radiant sunlight from penetrating exterior window assemblies, lowering cooling loads. In winter, deciduous trees drop their foliage, allowing low-angle sunlight to pass directly through window glass to naturally warm interior rooms and reduce furnace runtimes.

Interviewer: Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. As always, I’m your host Stephen Savage and with me is the President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build the new home that they want where they want it since 1993 and that is my good friend Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you doing?

Steve Landmark: Excellent. It’s another great day.

Interviewer: So I’ve been kind of going over what I wanted to run by you in this episode and I think I would really like to start here talking about permitting processes.

Now I’ve been hearing that building departments are tightening up not just in California where I live but really across the nation. Tougher regulations, more stringent codes, et cetera. I’m kind of wondering, how can Landmark Home and Land Company help me deal with these tougher regulations?

Steve Landmark: Well, basically, we do it every day and we’ve been doing it every day since 1993. So through that, we get experience. We have an understanding of the code and we understand the processes that are necessary to achieve all the code requirements. So a lot of people think the code is something there that someone put there to hassle you. But most of these are there for safety reasons.

You want to make sure that the beams are sized right. So roofs don’t sag or floor systems don’t sag. You want to make sure windows are the right size, so that you can get out of them in case of an emergency. Now in some areas, they’re asking for sprinkler systems just because a sprinkler system will put a fire out very quickly in relation to the time that it takes a fire department to come through.

So yes, building codes are tightening up and not just the code but the enforcement by the building departments. That’s the interesting thing because they do get complex and building departments are learning how to enforce the codes better. It’s not always just a money grab that some people think. Sometimes it’s just there to enforce it because some builders don’t know what it is.

So what we do is we develop a set of plans that’s complete and detailed to the building department requirements. The customer turns them in and works to obtain it. So the tighter requirements aren’t a big deal. We’ve worked all over the country. Some jurisdictions are lenient. Some are extremely tight.

So we combine all that experience over –since 1993 and we end up with a knowledge base where we’re able to take care of it. Whether you’re building in a city, if you’re building on an ocean say Key West or along the East Coast where there are hurricanes. If you’re going into Colorado with high snow loads or expansive soils and high wind conditions or if you’re going say in the West Coast, specifically California with earthquakes.

California is unique. You know, it has got beaches. It has got mountains. It has got deserts. So there’s a whole blend of opportunity to design a house properly there and I think that that’s an extremely important part that people don’t understand is the codes are there to make sure that your house is safe and usable and not just that. It maintains its value.

All of us have driven through communities where there are houses that are a little dilapidated. You know, maybe they just weren’t built right.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And that’s why they’re falling apart and where better built communities retain their value.

Interviewer: You guys have built in every state and the experience you’ve had seems to me like that’s something that as a new customer, I would find extremely gratifying to know that somebody on the other end of the phone to – is there to walk me through some of these processes.

Like for instance, let’s say I’m a first-time home builder. I mean how do I even know? Where do I go to find out what the regulations and codes are that I need to adhere to?

Steve Landmark: Well, generally, your building department will provide that information. Now some of them are better at communicating it than others. Some of them will just say, “Hey, just bring your plans in and we will tell you what’s wrong,” and others will have a detailed list.

So either way, we have the experience and we think it’s a good idea for you to preview what the building department needs. But some of the technical parts were probably suited to go through and help you refine the details, so that we can develop a set of plans so that the plans are complete and easy to obtain permits in and then easy to build.

So generally, what we do is someone would go through and say, “Hey, I’ve got a family and I want to build this 2000-square-foot ranch on a basement, a walk-out basement in the mountains in Southern California. I want to have a couple of car garage and I want to build next spring.”

So we could work with them to take that concept, review the building department details. Make sure the first set of plans is properly done so that the essential elements at that point are covered. Then we go through and develop the set of plans.

So a lot of this is basically just our knowledge and applying it for what the customer wants to design, so that they can build it. But also make sure that it fits in the guidelines. It’s just knowledge experience and then the right attitude to do it properly.

Interviewer: Right. I’ve heard you talk in the past about unified plans. Can you just go over that phrase for me and tell me exactly what that is?

Steve Landmark: Yeah, it’s kind of a word that I created. I was trying to – well, I didn’t create the word. I created the use for plans.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: But a lot of people are of this idea that, “Oh, OK, I’ve got a friend. He has got a CAD program and 30 years ago in high school, he won an award. You know, he will draw this plan up and then we will just go take that to the building department to get permits.”

Interviewer: Does that happen a lot for you?

Steve Landmark: Every once in a while it happens and it’s well intentioned and – but a lot of the details, that could be a good starting point. But there’s a certain point that their codes – unless people have really kept up with the codes and good design practices, that they need to be fine-tuned. So then you go to the building department and they say, “Hey, we need energy codes. We need structural engineering. Where’s your site plan? Where’s your plumbing layout? Where’s your electrical riser diagram?” You’re kind of like, “Wow!”

So the concept with the unified plans is you need to make sure that all those details match. So the simplest thing that I know how to relate it to is like an energy code. A lot of people say, “Well, I’m going to go do this. I’m going to put R-21 insulation on my wall,” and I’m like, “Well, that’s pretty nice.”

But the energy codes look at the value of the overall home. So if you have an R-21 wall and an R-21 roof, someone might say, “Hey, he goes through the roof. Let’s beef up the roof and the insulation.”

So the calculations will show, hey, let’s put an R-38 insulation in the roof, an R-21 in the wall. Let’s have windows that have a certain performance value. Let’s make sure the hot water heating is a certain energy-efficient method and then the heating and cooling of the home is energy-efficient. The unified part of that is let’s make sure all of this fits.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So if someone says, “Hey, you need an R-38 insulation in the roof,” let’s make sure they’re spaced for the R-28 insulation. Little details like that. It’s kind of funny.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: But people don’t think of it. We do stuff like that. So the unified is make sure that the architectural plans – generally the layout, where the bedrooms are, where the windows are, what the house looks like. That matches the energy codes. That also matches the structural concerns. We get a lot of plans from different places where they’re nice drawings. But the house won’t stand up or their energy efficiency won’t work and people don’t realize this, that sometimes there are standard plans that they could buy in certain places that look good. They look good to them. But when looked at with a trained eye, the information isn’t accurate.

So I kind of jokingly tell people it’s kind of like going to a shoe store saying, “Give me a shoe,” instead of saying, “Hey, I need a size 10 running shoe,” or “Hey, I need a size 10 dress shoe to go to work.”

So we want to make sure that the intent of the home matches what you want to live in. But it also works for the codes, for the energy efficiency, for the structural concerns, your site plan, electrical layouts, plumbing layouts, mechanical layouts and details like that because not all plans are the same. Our plans are complete. We make sure that the insulation matches. We make sure if there are electrical layouts or it’s uniform for us. We make sure if their structural details – that the plans actually work and the architectural plan as well.

We’ve actually seen plans where people put different size beams in places, so the head room isn’t right. So you go down the stair and yeah, there’s a nice beam and then you hit your head on it. No one has paid attention to that. We do want to make sure that it gets approved, built. But it’s also a sensible home.

So the unification is tying the architectural, the structural, the site plan, the energy efficiency, the plumbing, electric, heat, green codes and all details, so that the information is uniform and unified across all plan sets. So that if you look at the cross-section of the architectural plan, it will show the right insulation, so that there aren’t problems on the building side.

It will also show the right size beam and other details. So some – so you don’t end up in a situation where someone says, “Hey, there’s conflicting information. In the architectural plan, this is shown. The structural plan, that’s shown. The energy codes show something different. What am I supposed to do?”

So the clean communication and the unified plans is what makes it easier for someone to know what they’re building. It’s easier to communicate with the contractor and it’s also easier for the building department to understand and approve the plans.

Interviewer: Now you brought up briefly green codes. I live in California. That’s something I hear a lot. They always talk about building and green codes and it seems like maybe California is more stringent than other places. But explain green codes and how they change from state to state. What are they exactly?

Steve Landmark: Well, California kind of leads it. Some states don’t have it. Other states are thinking about it. It’s basically going through and making sure that you’re doing something sustainable. You know, make sure that you’re not building an energy-efficient home and then put – bringing an exotic wood for your front door.

You know, making sure that you’re not putting materials in there that off gas too much. You’ve probably gone and you’ve gone in our trailer or something and it just got a smell. That kind of gets to you and gives you a headache. That’s sometimes off-gassing.

Also other stuff that seems kind of common sense but people don’t take care of it. It’s like hey, this house is in the process of building. There’s going to be a certain amount of waste. Make sure it’s properly disposed.

So it’s just making sure that it’s “green” and that green washing, so it sounds good. But making sure that it’s actually done properly and that’s some of the key elements in some of these building department requirements.

Green codes are just going to start. California started them. It will eventually roll across the country. The bigger part is energy codes because that’s where people can see it in their pocketbook. They can say, “Hey, my friend in his old home is spending 500 a month for utilities. I’m spending a fraction of it.”

That’s the key element. So we can go through and do the theoretical calculations to show that hey, you should have a certain amount of insulation on your foundation and your floor or your walls. Your windows should have a certain performance factor. Your furnace and air conditioning system should be a certain way. Your hot water heating system should be a certain way, even down to light switches, occupancy switches.

In some cases, you have to walk in a room. You turn the light on. But when you leave, it senses and it turns off.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So it’s doing all these little things. I’ve been guilty of that. You leave a light on. You walk to the other side of the house. You get wrapped up. Suddenly you got two lights on when you don’t need them.

So that’s an energy efficiency type of a concept that gets into it. That’s something that people understand, but they don’t always pay attention to and it’s something that your – you know, your monthly utility bills, that’s a recurring bill.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: As long as you live in the house.

Interviewer: You brought up an interesting point. This is kind of a new age, all the – you know, it’s the digital age now and I’m sure that has had an effect on home building. I mean people now have things in their houses that automatically turn off, turn on. That you – since 1993, when you first started, those things didn’t exist. How prepared is Landmark now to move into this new world or have you guys been setting trends already?

Steve Landmark: Oh, we’ve been working on it for a while. It’s one of our understandings. Not all customers understand it. But we will gladly talk to them about it. Some of these houses and the design, I kind of look at it as organic design. You know, take advantage of the sun, the breeze, the wind. You know, natural things that are out there, so that your mechanical heating and cooling systems aren’t fighting them.

That’s very important and we’re getting involved with more and more customers that choose to do that. So I think what’s happening is people are more conscious of that. You know, your electric bill gets expensive. Your gas bill, your – the fuel costs in our life are getting to be more and more expensive as a percentage of people’s income.

So if you can control that and stay warm, it makes sense. It also helps the resale value of your home.

Interviewer: Ah, there you go.

Steve Landmark: So how deeply will get into it? We’ve got a couple of projects right now where we’re actually doing – we’re drawing the house plan up, setting it on to land and then doing sun analysis of it to see how the sun will affect it.

Interviewer: It’s great.

Steve Landmark: So the concept being that – and this can even get done in your landscaping plan, Steve. If you’ve got deciduous trees that lose leaves in winter, the sun can come through and heat your house. Well, in summer, the leaves grow. The sun doesn’t get through. It helps keep the house cool.

So in some of these places, we’ve got to work on orienting the house, so that the sun helps when it’s requested and the sun gets blocked at certain times when we want to control the cooling cost. So this can get into the design of the home, where the windows are placed, the types of insulation, eaves, you know, protecting the sun from coming in.

The selection of the piece of land and it can go on and on and on. The key to that is not just designing it right, but making sure it’s built right. So you’ve got to have someone that understands it.

Interviewer: To me, I listen to you talk and you’re such a – your knowledge and the information that you have in your brain is just so vast that I would feel so comfortable calling Landmark because to be honest with you, this just – it seems so daunting and to have somebody a phone call away to help you out, I mean I just commend you guys on that. It’s amazing.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. Well, thanks. We understand why it’s daunting. But to us, it’s everyday work. It’s what we do. So if you’re building your first home or your fifth home or even your tenth or fifteenth home, there’s still something new to be learned because times change. The codes change. You know, people’s understanding of the situation and I think that that’s where we can – that’s where we can help and to model these details out upfront. So that someone has got a realistic and usable set of plans to obtain their permits and follow through and build a home.

Also we’re a knowledge base where we can help people through the process. So if they need help, they don’t have to spend hours searching for an answer. They can get an answer that makes sense. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. There’s a lot of shows that sell advertising and they feel they need to say something. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it isn’t.

The reality is we’re in the business of helping people build their house successfully and move into it and enjoy it. That I think is a big difference. You know, what’s the end result of all these things? That’s what we want to do is help you design a home that’s sensible for you to build on your land and also takes care of your family’s needs.

Interviewer: You know, this Panelized Home Show podcasts go by so fast. It seems like we just sat down and started talking. Before we say good-bye for this episode, give us a rundown of the website and contact information, phone number and all that stuff.

Steve Landmark: Well, we can be contacted multiple ways. The easiest is pick up the phone and just give us a call. It’s 800-830-9788 and then our website, it’s always available. You can review it. There are videos. These podcasts will be on there and then just written details and some pictures. It’s www.LHLC.com. So it’s L as in landmark, H as in home, L as in land, C as in company, dot com.

There’s a wealth of information there. You could send us a message through there. Call us and we will spend the time to understand what you need, so that we can both make sure we’re the right fit, so we can move forward and help you get the right house.

Interviewer: I understand there’s also a lot of cool videos on the website too. That can be very helpful.

Steve Landmark: Oh, yeah. We’ve got some animations there that explain the processes. You can get the little minute, minute, 15-second kind of rundown on different things. You know, building in different markets, build – you know, different situations on designing your home and going from there. So we try to make it action-packed so that people can look at it and say, “Hey, this makes sense. Let’s give a call.” If it doesn’t, that’s fine. But I think there’s a certain customer base that understands, knowing that their house is designed right will also get built right and ultimately at the right price.

Interviewer: As usual, it has been fun and that’s going to do it for us on the Panelized Home Show and for Steve Tuma. I’m your host Stephen Savage and we will catch you next time.

Learn how to take initial napkin sketches, conceptual ideas, or generic internet layouts and develop them into fully coordinated, permit-ready construction blueprints. We examine the financial risks of using online stock plan services, which routinely place legal disclaimers requiring buyers to hire third-party engineers to adapt unbuildable flat-lot drawings to real terrain. Discover how a unified preliminary design process allows owner-builders to distribute dimensioned layouts to local subcontractors for verified material and labor bids—locking in construction budgets before ground is broken. Explore why municipal plan examiners labeled as “tough” or overly stringent are usually reacting to incomplete third-party submittals that lack lateral shear engineering, utility trench alignments, or regional code compliance. Finally, see how taking your napkin ideas to design your own custom home ensures your blueprint package matches our precision panelized building system.

A: Online plan catalogs sell generalized 2D drawings drafted for hypothetical flat parcels, making it impossible for them to account for regional microclimates or local municipal zoning laws. Their disclaimers legally protect them from liability when local building departments reject the plans for lacking location-specific lateral shear calculations, regional snow and wind load ratings, stamped foundation engineering, or localized energy code compliance documentation.

A: Preliminary blueprints provide exact wall dimensions, window and door schedules, and structural framing specifications before structural engineering calculations are finalized. Owner-builders can send these dimensioned preliminary sets to local trade subcontractors for firm, apples-to-apples bids on concrete, HVAC, cabinetry, and electrical rough-ins, allowing the design to be value-engineered on paper if initial quotes exceed the project budget.

A: Plan examiners earn a reputation for being difficult largely because they are inundated with amateur sketches, uncoordinated drawings, and un-engineered stock plans that omit critical life-safety details. When presented with a complete, professionally unified plan set that cross-references architectural cross-sections, structural load paths, and local code checklists, reviewers can quickly verify compliance and approve permits with minimal corrections.

A: While rural jurisdictions may only verify basic front and side boundary setbacks, sophisticated building departments require exhaustive site plans documenting natural topography, finished grade elevations, and civil drainage patterns. They frequently mandate exact locations of municipal utility tie-ins, private septic fields, neighbor well separation radii, overhead easements, and dedicated emergency vehicle access corridors.

A: When independent architects, structural engineers, and energy consultants work in silos, a minor adjustment requested by a building department—such as moving an exterior wall or resizing a header—triggers a costly chain reaction of billable redesign hours and conflicting blame. An integrated provider manages the architectural drafting, structural engineering calculations, and component fabrication in-house, updating all affected plan sheets simultaneously to maintain complete document uniformity.

Interviewer: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Landmark Home and Land Company’s Panelized Home Show. With us as always is the President and Founder of the Landmark Home and Land Company, Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you doing?

Steve Landmark: Excellent. It’s a nice day. It’s a busy day today. We had a lot of people calling in, asking how to design their homes and get projects going. The season is coming up and I guess people are excited.

Interviewer: I wanted to ask today about plans for a new panelized home. Let’s just start with this. How does one go about drawing up plans for a new panelized home project? Do I just get out a pencil and a napkin and start designing plans myself? What’s the best way to get started?

Steve Landmark: Well, there’s a variety of ways to start. But generally it all starts with a concept. Someone may not have thought their whole plan process through. But they know what they want. They know that they want a ranch home with a two-car garage and three bedrooms, two baths, a big great room for the family to get together or maybe if they’re in a – building in a mountain area. They need something to take advantage of a view or if they’re building a lakeside, they want another place that has access to bring their toys, kayaks, canoes in and out of the house and have the home properly designed for it.

So generally it starts with a concept and people will have a rough idea of what they need. I think what we’re talking about is how do you take that idea from someone’s mind and get it on a piece of paper. Stephen, it has been pretty interesting. We’ve had people that just call us up and say, “Hey, I want a house about 40 feet wide, 2 bedrooms, 3 baths.” We draw a sketch-up and get it to them. Some people have literally been out to dinner, draw it on a napkin. They take a picture of it and text it to us or they fax it or email it some other way.

So there’s a whole variety of different ways. The key to it is that we have the capability of listening and looking at what you want and then drawing it into a set of preliminary plans. So everything is sized properly because you can have walls that are a certain thickness. Windows have to be certain sizes. There are just certain code details that when you draw it on a sketch or with a pencil, the dimensions and things don’t work out.

But our people will draw it up to make sure that it works with the codes. It works within the setbacks. It works within the ceiling that you want, the window locations, how you want a kitchen laid out, where you want your garage, how you want your basement crawl space, whatever it is, what type of roof lines if you want a porch.

So I think the best thing to do is get in touch with us and let us know what you’re thinking and then you can email us the details on the plans and we would take it from there and we do have the capability of getting preliminary plans going and even out for preliminary concepts, developing budget ideas so that people know that they’re working towards a project that makes sense for what they intend to do and the budget that they want to stay within.

Interviewer: Now, what if I already have a set of plans from my own designer or say from like an online plan service? Then what?

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s an interesting concept because codes are getting tighter. Building departments are getting stricter. So it all depends on the quality of plans. We get a lot of plans from different – where customers get them from their local designer friend or they draw them themselves or even an online service and although they might be good-looking plans, they don’t always have the details.

So we would have to go look to see how it is. If you go online and generally purchase a set of plans from a service, they generally have the disclaimers on there that you need to bring in a local engineer or local design person that knows to apply for it because they can’t possibly design the home to fit every single building department or every type of terrain in the land.

So you’ve got to check the quality of those and I know a lot of people will have the opinion. Hey, my friend is a good guy. He won an award and that’s excellent. But we need to know how the house fits on your land for your property within your building department’s guidelines and there are a lot of people that understand how to draw. But they don’t understand structure to make sure the house is significant. They don’t always understand the codes and they don’t always understand just architectural details and how they’re put together.

So the bottom line is if you have a quality set of plans with the proper details, we can help with that or fill in the gaps to get it put together. Fundamentally, with our process, because we like to give a guaranteed price, have control of the engineering, the energy calculations, the electrical layouts and all these things, if you work within our system, we can develop and control the changes on your plans. So we can get this taken care of quickly.

So like if their building department has a question and they say, “Hey, is this window big enough to be egress?” in our system, we would note it on there. But if it was a follow-up question, I could get the answer right away and do it. If you work with a plan service or an outside designer, we’re at the mercy of when they choose to respond.

Interviewer: Oh, got it.

Steve Landmark: And in many of those places, they could be a little delayed or just not have the detail themselves. So sometimes those methods of developing plans are good to get the concept going and then we would have to work through it to make sure it fits the land.

For example, the plans from plan services, they generally are drawn on a flat piece of land. So, if you decided to say, “Hey, I found this beautiful piece of land in Vail, Colorado,” that probably isn’t a flat piece of land up there. You’re building on the side of the hill. So how do you adjust it?

Someone has got to do the foundation design, change the elevations. I think that that’s where we can come in to take the idea from the concept of if you bought plans, had your designer friend or if you just sketched it up yourself with your family. I think that’s a key element is we’re very flexible in doing it since 1993 to go through and take your idea, put it on paper, make sure it complies with the details and move forward.

Interviewer: Yeah. It sounds like Landmark is pretty much, as we’ve said in the past, a one-stop shop. But –

Steve Landmark: That’s a key element. You brought something up there because if you have one designer, one structural engineer, one energy code person, a green code person, a foundation designer, a site plan person and you need to get a question, sometimes you end up in a finger point situation.

With us, you say, “Hey Steve, I need an adjustment here,” and I could carry it through every single one of those phases. So it’s a lot easier for you. You’re not trying to juggle five people.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: You just call us, email us, let us know what you need and we will get it taken care of and push it through, so that your plans are uniform. That’s extremely important during the permitting phases and the building phases.

Interviewer: And how does Landmark’s planning process actually help me stay within my budget?

Steve Landmark: Well, that gets into the preliminary plan phase and that’s why it’s good to work with us on the preliminary plans because let’s just say you had a house and your target budget was $300,000. So we can go through and do some general ball parking of a design to say, “Hey, you can do this type of design and size,” based off of the ideas you tell us. We could do a preliminary set of plans and that preliminary set, which we can still make adjustments to, you can then take to your contractors or your material supplier.

So you can take it to your window guy, get the cost for windows. You know, take it to your cabinet people, your carpeting people, your tile people, et cetera, through the whole budget and then add those numbers up to see if it works.

If for some reason you can spend a little more money or you need to cut back, we’re still doing it on paper, so you can make those adjustments to target your budget properly, to make sure that you’re proceeding. You want to do all your changes upfront while it’s on paper. Then when you’re actually digging, excavating, pouring the foundation, framing the house, you want to continue on with the plan. You don’t want to do changes. That will kill the budget and also just the nature of our designing, engineering and panelization process is – we will give you a guaranteed cost for what we’re supplying upfront.

So it’s not a situation where one person is drawing plans and then you’re talking to someone else on wood and someone is drawing a plan, not even knowing the cost of the materials.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So it’s kind of built-in. It’s kind of a little bit of a check. We’re not going to intentionally draw a set of plans that doesn’t work with your budget. So that’s the good part of it, one of the biggest components of your house project. We can control the cost when we develop the plans and we do the engineering and we supply the panelized home package. That’s extremely important.

Interviewer: Well, OK. Let’s say I put my budget together and I’m ready to design a house. Do I need an architect?

Steve Landmark: You don’t necessarily need an architect. It’s not a law that you need an architect to get a building permit and also the word “architect,” it kind of varies. Sometimes people with a pencil and a piece of paper consider them an architect.

An architect is more – you know, design professionals. In a lot of places, they’re licensed. But what we’re able to do beyond what an architect typically does is actually work with you on those revisions in a process. We have the structural engineers, the energy code people, all the people together to develop the final set of plans, to make sure that we’re drawing in the architectural phases a house that can be structurally significant and yet is not expensive to build.

So if you run into a situation – sometimes people will go online or just see houses. You know, they will see a $5 million home and then they will want to put it in their $500,000 home. Well, sometimes those features don’t match up with budgets. We’re able to go through to work it out. So that if we have a question about the structure, I can find out from the structural engineer right away.

So sometimes when you separate it and have an architect draw it up, they will do the plans. It later goes to the structural engineer. Well, you’ve already paid the architect. If the structural engineer comes back and things are expensive and you’re over budget, you then have to pay to redo the plans where with us, we can work together as a unit to get all of these details put together, the structural engineering and all the details. So if you ask a question, we can get you a comprehensive answer towards your project instead of a, “Oh, I’m just the architect. You will have to talk to someone else.”

Somehow, you don’t need an architect. You can be the architect on the concept and then we, with our knowledge of the codes, the structural details, the energy calculations, we can go through and take your ideas and put them on paper, so they make sense for your project budget and also the building department.

Interviewer: Right. Let me ask you. Can Landmark like fit my house to my property? Let’s say like what if I’m building on the side of a mountain or even just a narrow plot of land. Can Landmark work around my unique building situations?

Steve Landmark: And that’s one of the most important things about doing the proper set of plans because we will get into what your lot looks like. You know, sometimes there are restrictions. Stephen, if you were building in a city lot, say a 50 by 100 lot, there might be a ten-foot setback on each side. So 50 less 10 on each side, 50 less 20 is 30. You can only build a 30-foot wide house in that area.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So sometimes people come in with a 40-foot wide house. We got to redo the design. Let’s just say you took that same house and you put it on the front of a lake and you had 100 feet of lake front. You might be like, “Hey, I want to make the house wider, to put more windows to take advantage of the view.”

Now let’s just say you end up on a mountain. Suddenly you have a sloped lot and you want a walk-out basement or we need to crawl the foundation down the side of the hill. That’s the key element is that we can fit your house to the lot, so it makes sense, getting how the driveway comes in, how the house is going to fit, where your views are, where the access is. That’s the key thing. It’s not just the design of the house. It’s the design of the environment that the house is going to be within.

That’s why we don’t always like to work with standardized plans because they’re generally set for flat land and not everyone is building on flat land. So we can help you through the process with that to make sure that it’s all set for your building site, which then allows us to do the final set of plans for permitting that are accurate to your site.

Then the building department will understand your project more and therefore make it easier to get through the building department, obtain the proper permits and then also it’s easier for inspections because everything has been approved. You’re not doing changes on site.

Interviewer: You’re right, which can get kind of sticky. How do I know my new plans will be in compliance with like the different requirements of local building codes, et cetera?

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s the interesting thing because every building department is different. Different plan checkers in the same building department will be different. What we do is we get the information from the building department as far as what is required. So they will generally have details on whatever structural details, architectural details, site plans and this and that.

Now not all plans are the same. Not all site plans are – that are requested are the same. So for example, you can go to some areas and in their site plan, they just want to know where the house is fitting on the lot. So if you have a 50 by 100 lot and you have a 30-foot house, so you just want to know how far it is from the front, sides, rear, everything, where your sidewalk is, where your driveways is going to be.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Then there are other building departments. They want to know how close it is to any drainage, ditches, where the utilities come in, where the sewer, the septic, where your neighbor’s well and septic are at, where your neighbor’s electrical connections are, where your neighbor’s houses are, any outbuildings. They can get pretty detailed. They can get in the topographical details and just endless details.

That’s the important part because when we check with your building department to see what’s required, we can then fill in all the details, which makes it easier for you to get permits and then it also allows you to understand your building – the building site better, so you could plan your project and therefore properly budgeted.

So we work with the building department to get the information that you need, so that it’s properly put on to plans. Now in some cases, you may have to go get some details. You would have to work with our septic designer or if they request a grading plan or a drainage plan, you might have to get a local licensed civil engineer for that. But we can interface with them to get the details together, to move it forward. That is a key element.

That’s a great question because a lot of people think, “Well, I bought these plans online. They said I could just turn them in to the building department.” I’m like, “Well, you could probably turn them in. But their desire to accept them and give you a permit is the situation.”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: That’s what we do because there’s a lot of different codes. There’s selective enforcement, meaning some building departments want this, other don’t, irrespective of what the code requests. By the way, it’s a national code. It’s the application to your particular building site that’s different.

So, let’s just say you were a guy and you were getting transferred around the country and you first started building your house in South Florida. We could design the home for the hurricanes. OK? But let’s just say halfway through the project, you get transferred to Colorado and you’re going to be up in Leadville at 11,000 feet. Suddenly hurricanes aren’t the big issues. You still have high winds but you’re going to have high snow loads and maybe some expansive soil situations.

We would then contact that building department, find out what’s going on, make the adjustments and then let’s just say again you got transferred to Los Angeles where it’s earthquake country. We could then design for that particular building department.

So our understanding of the structural details, the requirements for a building department is extensive and we’ve been in situations where people transfer midway through a project and we just apply the building – the plans to their new site and the building department.

So it’s – to answer your question, it’s legwork that we do to make it easy for you to make sure that your plans are complete for this specific building department and this specific building site that you’re choosing to build on. That’s extremely important and people don’t always understand that the plans have to be done properly.

Interviewer: Let’s say – let’s get even more specific. Let’s say I’ve done my homework around the property I’m going to build on and people have told me that the building department in my area is pretty stringent. How can Landmark help me work around say a tough building inspector?

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s pretty interesting because I hear that a lot. A lot of customers will comment that they heard their building department is really tough and this and that. The reality of it is we found that they’re really tough because there’s a lot of people turning bad plans in.

Interviewer: Ah, right.

Steve Landmark: OK. So yes, if you turn in a bad set of plans, they’re going to tell you to do it right. If you turn in a good set of plans, it’s amazing of how they’re not that stringent because we did the plans right. So with our process, we’ve done work all over the country and internationally. We’ve got a strong understanding of what a building department needs and a complete and thorough set of plans. That’s for the purpose of permitting, for the purpose of us building the right panelized package after the plans are approved and then also for your contractor to know what’s going on.

Our plans are communication device among your customer, the building department, the contractor and us. So it’s clear. So the more complete and accurate set of plans, the easier it’s going to be. I generally say that 80 percent of building departments ask for the same stuff or I should say 80 percent of the information they ask for is the same. The 20 percent is the difference.

They usually outline that and listen, if it comes back in a checklist, we just supply the materials. We have had some extremely unique and sometimes just crazy requests by building departments. But we’ve taken care of all of them and all of our customers have gotten permits. So we’re capable of doing it. We have the knowledge base. We have the experience. We know how to do it. That’s the key element of taking care of a building inspector that you think is just picky. He’s probably picky because he has gotten bad sets of plans previously and you will probably appreciate it.

We’ve actually had building inspectors comment that we’ve got a complete set of plans and have been easy to get it taken care of. Some of the toughest areas, you know, South Florida, Hurricane Alley, Southern – well, anywhere in California with earthquakes, Colorado with the snow loads, New York, they can get interesting. Washington State, Illinois. You know, there’s – we’re able to do it. We actually find the “tougher” building inspectors are actually the better ones to work with because they’re more organized and they understand they want it done right, which is the same thing we want to do.

Interviewer: Well, once again, it sounds like Landmark Home and Land Company is a one-stop shop. You guys, you know what you’re doing and I think a lot of people are going to be looking out to see how Landmark can help them with their new projects. So what’s the best way to contact you? Give us some info on the website.

Steve Landmark: Well, our website is basically kind of the initials of our company. The company is Landmark Home and Land Company. www.LHLC.com. So L as in landmark, H as in home, L as in land, C as in company dot com, www.LHLC.com. We’re on Facebook. You can also give us a call at 800-830-9788 and Mike will answer the phone and take care of you.

You could also email at [email protected] or you can email me at  [email protected] and we will do all we can to talk to you about your project and an understanding of what your needs are, what your goals are and kind of get the lay of the land as such to help you develop a plan for the actual house, but also a plan to move your project forward successfully. So you can move in to a very nice home.

Interviewer: And the website is full of information and even a lot of great videos I’ve seen. So it’s something to check out. So that’s going to do it today for the Landmark Home and Land Company’s Panelized Home Show for the President of Landmark Steve Tuma and myself. Thanks for joining us and we will see you again.

Steve Landmark: Thank you.