Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show

Learn the complete step-by-step process of turning a custom kit home concept into permit-approved blueprints and a job-site delivery. We discuss the difference between basic structural reviews and formal engineer-stamped calculations, explaining how licensed engineering addresses regional snow, wind, and seismic codes across all 50 states. Discover how site topography and zoning setbacks dictate foundation choices—such as walkout basements versus concrete slabs—to keep excavation budgets under control. Explore how to navigate municipal plan-check checklists and plan-review curveballs, and learn the logistics of receiving, staging, and unloading flatbed truck deliveries using an extended-reach forklift and assembly drawings.

A: An engineer review verifies that joist sizes, wall stud spacing, and roof truss layouts meet general structural building codes. An engineer-stamped plan set includes formal structural calculations, point-load diagrams, specific fastener schedules, and a state-licensed professional engineer’s physical or digital seal required by strict municipal building departments.

A: Designing a flat concrete slab on a sloping parcel requires massive, expensive earthwork and retaining walls that risk severe drainage failures. Evaluating site slope during initial drafting allows designers to step the foundation naturally, integrating cost-effective walkout or daylight basements that match the terrain without inflating site-preparation costs.

A: When municipal plan examiners issue a correction checklist, the kit home company updates the digital CAD drawings and structural calculations to address the specific items. A full-service design firm communicates directly with plan examiners, providing revised sheets, local code documentation, or civil drainage details until the building permit is issued.

A: Framing packages arrive on 53-foot flatbed semi-trucks with wall panels banded in bundles of eight to ten and roof trusses stacked together. Job sites require a rough-terrain forklift equipped with long fork extensions and a small ground crew to safely lift, inventory, and stage the labeled components around the foundation perimeter.

A: Manufacturing begins once building permits are approved, establishing an estimated four-week production and delivery schedule. The delivery date is finalized as on-site concrete work wraps up, ensuring the foundation is fully stripped, backfilled, and cured before flatbed trucks arrive for framing crews to begin assembly immediately.

Interviewer: Hello everyone. Welcome to episode 31 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me again in the studio is the President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993, Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you doing?

Steve Landmark: I’m doing great. It’s a great day as always and staying busy helping people design some cool houses in cool places. It’s pretty fun.

Interviewer: I thought today we might do one of our step-by-step conversations. People seem to enjoy that a lot and talk about how a customer – well, let’s say get his or her new home plans from the idea, which is often just a vision in someone’s head to an actual on-the-page set of plans. So if you’re up for that, can we talk about how my new panelized home actually gets put together? Can you go over the steps involved in all of that?

Steve Landmark: Yeah. We can talk about the details and the planning, the delivery, the whole kind of process, the – well, I think the main essential points are the plans, the architectural plans, how we work with the customers, then the permitting plans and then the delivery of the package. Those are the essential points where customers are always kind of wondering about. So do you have some scenarios to go over?

Interviewer: Let’s start with say putting my idea into an actually working plan and how Landmark can get me there. While we’re at it, Landmark has a huge selection of prepared plans that your customers can choose from by going over to your website and checking it out. I mean there’s a lot of them. So let’s go over the process of picking one of those. So let’s say I go on to your website. I see a house that I might like to build. Where do I go from there?

Steve Landmark: Well, what’s interesting is we can actually start from zero if someone wants to sketch something up on a piece of paper and send it to us. We can do it that way. We can work with the plans that we have on our website. We have thousands of them. Sometimes people have their own plans. So basically, you’re asking about the selection. So how do you pick your plan?

Interviewer: Right. And like you said, there’s a lot – like on your website, there are thousands of them, right?

Steve Landmark: Yeah. What I found is customers generally have an idea of what they want. They might not know every detail but they know that they want a three-bedroom ranch, about 1800 square feet and a basement, with a two-car attached garage or they want a two-story or maybe they’re in the mountains somewhere, a rustic area, and they want more of a chalet type of a design. So we’re able to work with them if they haven’t figured out a plan that they like. We’re able to work with them to fine-tune a plan that may work because customers are generally looking at the, “Hey, I need 1800 square feet, three-bedroom, two-bath, two-car garage.” We’re looking at the, “Hey, how do we target it in their price range? How do we make it work for the building department? How do we make it work in the building site requirements, different setbacks or requirements there?” So we kind of put a little bit of help on there to make sure that the project moves in a positive fashion. But I think to answer your question, most people have a pretty strong understanding as to what they want. They just haven’t seen an exact and that’s how we’re able to work with them on the planning process and making a design that suits your specific needs.

So someone could go through and say, “I want a three-bedroom, two-bath ranch home.” Well, that can mean a lot of different layouts. Are all the bedrooms on one side? Is there a master suite? Is it a great room? Is there a formal dining room? You know, different details. Do they want a porch? So what we’re able to do is talk to them about details. You know, maybe based off of a plan we have on our website or a brand new concept so that we can draw it up and that’s what I call getting the design together and getting a starting point, getting it on – getting our designers there to put it on the CAD system so that there’s an actual we could send to them so that it’s very clear what this house looks like.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: What’s nice about it is with our processes, we can make revisions. So there are times where people say, “Hey, I want a 15 by 15 master bedroom.” But then they see it and they’re like, “Hey, wait a second. I like that. But I want a patio door going out to a back deck, add a window here, add a window there.” So once you see the actual drawn-up set of plans, we’re able to make adjustments to go through to fine-tune the design. So it’s exactly the way our customers want it.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: That’s a key element. Build a house you want.

Interviewer: Well, that – so let’s go back and just be clear about this. So let’s say I go on to the Landmark website. I have an idea in my mind. Do you kind of – are you guys able to kind of lead me to – I say, “Oh, Steve, I want a ranch style house. You know, this number of bedrooms with a great room or a big main room with a big fireplace,” and you can kind of lead me to a set of plans that’s already there that we can adapt. Is that how it works?

Steve Landmark: It works that way. But a lot of our customers actually spend the time to go through the website to look at a plan and they will say, “Hey, I like this particular plan,” and then we fine-tune it. Customers are pretty good at searching the website. But if someone does need that help, we’re more than glad to help them and search something out and work with them. We have worked with people that have had vision impairments or different impairments where they’re not able to use a computer as well but they’re able to talk or email or do whatever it would be. So we will do whatever we can do help a customer do it because it’s – every customer has a different perspective in a sense. They know the three-bedroom, two-bath. Other people say, “This is what I want it to look like. Can you make a floor plan?” So we can kind of approach it in a way that’s comfortable for the customer.

Interviewer: But you would say probably the vast majority of people have a pretty good idea of what they want before they come to you. I would imagine people have been doing some research before they call.

Steve Landmark: Right. They have a pretty good idea and the general ideas and then we kind of work with them to fine-tune it. So the house design ends up being exactly the way they want it.

Interviewer: Right. You know, we’ve talked a lot in the show about engineered plans. But do engineers actually review my plans when I’m in the – from phase one all the way through it or do they look at the end product? What does that involve?

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s interesting because engineered plans can mean a lot. It’s kind of a vague word. So we do have engineers that review the plans, look at them, make sure that things work out and then there’s also some people or building departments that require engineered stamped plans. There’s a difference there. So an engineer reviewing it would go through and make sure the floor system is of the right sized members, the right types of materials. The wall studs are proper, the roof truss layout is right. They gave it a review. Make sure it works. Get everything prepared and then we give the plans to the customer to submit to the building department. So it’s the level of documentation I would say. So engineer stamped plans generally have a lot more details on connections, nailing patterns and calculations just defying why a structure is designed a certain way. So yes, with us, an engineer always looks at the plans or someone with a structural background that reviews the plans to make sure that everything is fine and – but if they need an engineer-stamped plan, we’ve got engineers licensed in all 50 states and a few foreign countries, so that we can go through and develop the actual calculation. So pretty much anything that someone would need for a typical residential building department, we’re able to supply the building plan set for them.

Interviewer: Now what about fitting my design to my property? I mean do you take into consideration things like setbacks, topography, et cetera when I – when you’re helping me through the design process?

Steve Landmark: Oh, definitely because we want to check a few details upfront to make sure that things will work out. So we’ve kind of discussed building setbacks in other times. If you have a 50-foot wide lot with five-foot setback to each side, that gives you 40 feet to build. It’s not likely you’re going to build a 60-foot house on that type of thing. So we want to just kind of check a few things out. You know, talk to the customer. Is their lot flat? Is there a slope? Is it the side of a cliff? Is it a beachfront? Is it – you know, what is it? Is it on a farmland? What is it? So that we can kind of work their plans for the situation that they’re at. That’s very important because sometimes setbacks can vary. Your zoning will say one thing but then your homeowner’s association might be more restrictive. Topography, this is a real funny one but that topography is basically the lay of the land. Is it sloped? Is it flat? Is it – so you go to someone that lives in the Rockies and you have a slight slope to the land and they would call it flat. But someone in Iowa would say that’s a hill.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: You know, so we’ve got to work to make sure that we’re designing the house right and a lot of people will say, “Well, how does it really matter?” Well, it matters on kind of simple things like getting your car into your driveway, making sure your door is good on the land. If you have a basement, can you add a walkout basement or a lookout basement? So understanding that allows us to fit the house to the land and the important thing about that is that controls your cost because you don’t want to go out there and plan a slab on the side of a cliff.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: It’s just not going to work. So we’ve – that’s a very important part of the planning to make sure that someone could properly schedule and budget their project.

Interviewer: So we were talking about local building departments in an earlier episode. But I would like to kind of go back to that because we’re talking about adapting plans and changing plans around to suit our needs. How can I be sure that my plans will comply with my local building department? I mean I might – it seems like it might get overwhelming on the face of it. Do you deal directly with building departments?

Steve Landmark: Yes, we do. We work very directly. We communicate with them. We find out exactly what we need and then we put the details together to supply them. The key to that is exactly what you said. You asked if we do it. Yeah, we will call and find out what the building department needs or look at their website and get the information to go forward.

Interviewer: That’s what I was wondering. Would Landmark actually – do you guys actually – are you able to make those connections if need be to help us through that process?

Steve Landmark: Yes, and that’s the key. We kind of speak the same language as building departments. We can understand things. Some building departments know how to communicate better than others.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Others just don’t communicate and in some places, there aren’t building departments. You get in certain areas where the population is slow. There just aren’t building departments. So people are like, “Hey, what’s my snow load in this area of Montana?” and we figure it out. You call the building department. You find out there isn’t one there. So that’s what we’re able to do with our engineers and support system is to be able to go through and look at what your building department requires or should require and supply the information. Now someone might say, “Well, aren’t the building codes the same?” Well, yes, the codes are the same but they’re applied differently and interpreted differently by different building departments. Every once in a while, you get a building department that has their own little quirk. They just need to see this and need to see that. No other building departments ever asked for it. But they think it’s important. So that’s not a problem. We work to provide the information. That’s a key thing to know that your plans are properly done so they’re approved properly. But also when the inspections happen, that you will pass the inspection as long as you follow the plans.  So that’s what we want to do is go through and get this taken care of. We would rather do all the work upfront when it’s on paper than to have to change the house after it’s framed up.

Interviewer: So I’m assuming that even if they have odd or special requests, Landmark can be there to walk – help us walk through that process because I’m sure there’s – you know, every area has its own little – like you said, its own little quirks.

Steve Landmark: Right. We’ve been doing this 25 years and we think we’ve seen all the odd and quirky little requests and every once in a while, there’s a building department that has an even odder one. But we’ve gotten through every single one of them. We’ve helped every single customer. They’ve obtained permits and the project moves on. A lot of times the building department isn’t very clear in communicating. So we’re able to go through and clarify so that we can develop the plans that provide – we provide to the customer so they can get it to the building plan checker to have a successful plan review. Most building departments are very cooperative. Every once in a while, you run into one that’s not as cooperative, but we’ve been able to get through every single one so far and big, large, populated areas, remote areas, anything. So it’s not a problem with Landmark. We can do it.

Interviewer: Like you’re telling me there are some government entities that may be not real clear with their communication. It’s shocking.

Steve Landmark: Isn’t that an odd one? Wouldn’t that be strange?

Interviewer: So let’s talk about the – after the plans are done, does Landmark provide me with paper copies of my plans or my permit applications or is that just simply digital copies? How does that work?

Steve Landmark: Well, more building departments are becoming more sophisticated. So we can supply whatever the building department needs. Some want paper copy. Some want digital. Now some want both. Sometimes they want digital in two formats. Sometimes they want paper in two formats.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So we look at their requirements and we supply the plans to the specification. That’s all part of our service and we don’t go charging extra because they need three sets of plans instead of two or whatever. We just – that’s just part of what we supply is make it easy for the customer.

Interviewer: Yeah, that’s pretty nice. Now I’ve heard that building departments sometimes do request files for electronic submission and so you’re saying Landmark can help take care of all of that.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. We can send the PDF files out to you and have them labeled so you know what they are and then the customer can – sometimes building departments ask for them just to be submitted to a website. Other times, it’s a thumb drive or DVD. But whatever it is, we can get the files so that the customer can submit. Now the customer will actually go to the building department and if they need to do permanent paperwork or whatever, they will either do that on the website or physically at the building department.

Interviewer: Now a friend of mine was building a new home a few years back and he was sent a building department checklist. How do you deal with a situation like that?

Steve Landmark: Well, the checklist is interesting because a building department may have a list of what’s required to obtain permits and you could supply all those items. But they may have further questions or request clarification. So generally what that is, is a list of items that they provide to you in writing. You could just send that to us and we will go through and take care of the – that ends up pertaining to the building permit. So they might come back and ask for details on drainage. If that’s the situation, you might have to get a local civil engineer to do that. They may ask just for additional structural details or energy calculation things or whatever it is just because they’re asking for further, deeper details. We always supply what they request and what is typical. But at times, they do it and in some states, in building departments, it’s extremely common. You go into parts of Colorado or most of Colorado, all of California, it’s extremely common to get checklist items. But that’s just part of our service is taking care of all of those until the customer gets the permit. We don’t charge extra because a building department decides to add to their original list or they ask kind of curveball questions. It’s just part of our job to get the customer taken care of.

Interviewer: OK. So let’s get down to the nuts and bolts of this thing with panelized home building. So once we have all of the permits in order and cleared and – how does a new panelized home actually get delivered to my site? What does that look like?

Steve Landmark: It’s actually pretty simple. We deliver them on flatbed trucks just like you see on the highway every day. You know, a 53-foot flatbed with a tractor truck in front of it. Wall panels are stacked like pancakes, bundled up and eight to ten wall panels and trusses are banded together and stacked up and loose materials like OSB, different joists and rafters would be bundled together. So it’s put together on a semi-truck and delivered right to the site and then the customer would get a – we suggest equipment. People have manually unloaded trucks but it’s – I’ve done it. It’s a workout. If you ever want to look like Hercules after a day or lose 20 pounds, unload it. So we always tell people it’s safer and faster to use like a forklift or an extended reach forklift to unload the panels and then they’re all labeled. So you will know where they need to go around the house. We supply assembly plans. So you will be able to see hey, bundle one has these walls there for the back of the house, so you can bring them to the back of the house and get going. So we schedule our deliveries. We got a great delivery record and we work along and people can inventory the items, take a look at everything and move on to get the home built. But the delivery – let me throw something else in here. It’s not just the delivery of hey, make sure the truck shows up. We’re always there if a customer needs help saying, “Hey, what about this?” or “Hey, what does this truss look like?” or “Hey, my framer has got a little question.” We’re always available to support the product and our customer’s project as well.

Interviewer: So let’s talk about the – again, back to the nuts and bolts. So obviously I’ve got to provide a foundation. I’ve got to have that poured and installed and the building site needs to be prepared. How do I then coordinate the delivery of my house to my site?

Steve Landmark: Oh, that’s very simple. After you get permits, we place the home in production. Generally we deliver in right about four weeks. So we would target a four-week delivery date. Now that’s just a target. That can adjust. Sometimes weather happens, scheduling issues or some people have little more complex sites where they need more time. So a couple of weeks into that process, we would communicate with a customer and say, “Hey, are you still looking at that one date or do we need to push it back?” A lot of customers, because of weather and we’re very fast at delivering, they will ask us to hold it back. So we don’t just show up with a truck and say, “Hey, surprise!” It’s all predetermined. Everyone knows it’s showing up and when it’s showing up and where it’s showing up. Ultimately, you want your foundation to be done – the foundation crew leave. Our trucks show up. Your framing crew unloads the truck, starts framing the house. It’s just a cleaner, smoother operation.

Interviewer: Like you said, basically you have a big, flatbed semi-truck, right?

Steve Landmark: Right.

Interviewer: Is it just one truck or a couple of trucks? I guess that would depend on how big my house is that I’m building.

Steve Landmark: Right. It depends on how big and the design of the home. But yeah, it’s – generally most homes are on one or two trucks. Every once in a while, you get one that’s in the three and four trucks, if it’s a very large complex home. But most homes are one to two trucks.

Interviewer: And aside from – you had said having a forklift there. How else would I prepare for delivery? Any other special equipment I would need to provide – you know, just to – not just unload. But any other part of the process that I would need to be prepared for?

Steve Landmark: Yes. You should try to get fork extensions on the forklift that it’s easier to balance the wall panels with that. You know, a crew, a couple of guys to help kind of guide things and move it along and that’s about it.

Interviewer: I’ve seen pictures of your – of Landmark Home and Land Company’s homes in process and – in progress and I’ve seen pictures of cranes. Is that often used or is that something that you don’t need a lot or …?

Steve Landmark: Cranes are kind of interesting. They cost a lot more. Generally the cost of a crane for one day is what a forklift would be for a week. So the forklift is available. Generally cranes are only used if they happen to own one or they have a friend that’s giving them like a friend deal or there’s something with the site where there’s some access issue where they need the reach and swing of a crane.

Interviewer: Got you.

Steve Landmark: But I would say 98 percent of people do it with a forklift.

Interviewer: Right. Well, fantastic. We’re just about out of time here for this episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show and I want to thank you all for listening in once again. But before we go, I want to give Steve a chance to let people know how to get in touch with Landmark.

Steve Landmark: Well, the best way is you could – we talked about plans earlier today. Look at our website at  www.lhlc.com. It’s kind of the initials of Landmark Home Land Company www.lhlc.com. You can look at our website there. We’re also on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook. You can also just email us. I’m  [email protected]. You can also call us at 1-800-830-9788 and Mike will answer the phone. That’s the key to this. We’re very responsive. We answer the phone. If for some reason on the rare chance you get our voicemail, we will call you back right away. We are proactive. We take care of our customers and we enjoy doing so.

Interviewer: I would encourage all of our listeners to go to the website. Again that’s www.lhlc.com and check out all the great information there and we’re using the “www” less and less in the world now. So I got to get used to that too,  www.lhlc.com, and there are some very informative videos as well as a bevy of other great information.

So for Steve Tuma and myself, thank you again for joining us on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show and we will see you next time.

Steve Landmark: Well, thank you.

Learn how building a custom kit home differs across urban infill lots, established suburban communities, and large rural acreage. We discuss how to navigate Homeowners Associations (HOAs) and Architectural Review Boards to satisfy exterior aesthetic standards, color palettes, and square footage covenants without giving up interior customization. Discover the site-planning logistics required for large rural properties, including how to properly locate septic soil perk tests and coordinate utility line extensions or off-grid solar designs. Explore architectural strategies for blending modern construction into protected historic districts, and learn how establishing your finished floor elevation above mandatory flood levels lowers annual homeowner flood insurance premiums while supporting coastal pier and breakaway wall foundations.

A: HOAs and Architectural Review Boards enforce recorded deed covenants that regulate exterior building characteristics, including minimum square footage thresholds, garage vehicle capacities, exterior siding materials, and approved color palettes. Custom home plans can be detailed during the preliminary drafting stage with exact exterior elevations and material schedules to secure formal association approval before permit submission.

A: Before scheduling a geotechnical perk test on large acreage, the owner-builder must stake out the exact desired building footprint. Testing the soil directly adjacent to the planned house location prevents septic engineers from designing an expensive drain field hundreds of feet away, avoiding excessive utility trenching and complex pumping systems.

A: Historic preservation boards require new construction to visually harmonize with surrounding period architecture—such as Victorian, Craftsman, or Saltbox styles—through matching roof pitches, window proportions, and exterior trim profiles. Modern building materials, like fiber-cement siding or engineered wood trim, are typically permitted as long as the exterior profile preserves neighborhood character while meeting modern energy and life-safety codes.

A: While municipal building codes mandate elevating the finished floor to the local Base Flood Elevation (BFE), adding extra elevation height (freeboard) provides significant financial benefits. Elevating the structure one to two feet above the minimum regulatory flood level reduces the risk of water intrusion from storm surges or river flooding, resulting in substantial long-term discounts on flood insurance policies.

A: Building in coastal flood zones or hurricane-prone velocity zones requires deep pilings, reinforced concrete piers, or stem walls designed to elevate the primary living space above high-water storm surges. Ground-level enclosures beneath the raised floor must incorporate certified hydrostatic flood vents or engineered breakaway walls that safely collapse under wave action without compromising the home’s main support structure.

Interviewer: Hello everyone. And welcome to Episode 30 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me in the studio is Steve Tuma, President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993. Steve, how are you my friend?

Steve Tuma: Hey! Another – it’s another good day. We’ve always got interesting projects coming, people building in different parts of the country doing different things, sometimes building in same parts of the country just under different conditions and it’s kind of interesting to see of how you could just see the different challenges and how we are able to help customers work in different locations, different municipalities with different code enforcement, different geographic concerns. It’s kind of fun. It’s a lot of fun.

Interviewer: As I said, you’ve been doing this since 1993, that’s 25 years now. You should about have this down but I’m sure you still run into some unique sort of issues that you have to deal with with your customers.

Steve Tuma: But that’s why we are here. We can get through them.

Interviewer: Yes.

Steve Tuma: All the issues we’ve got, the knowledge and the experience to sort things out. If for some reason some building department has something, it’s really a curve ball. We’ve been doing it long enough where it’s pretty weird that we get stomped but we are always there to make it happen.

Interviewer: Well, speaking of being thrown curve balls and I thought for this episode, we might talk a bit about unique building sites and get into some of the details of what you should know when you start building a new home project on what might be considered not your normal property or your normal build project. Are you up for that?

Steve Tuma: Yeah. Let’s do it! So what do you have today?

Interviewer: I’ve got a question that sort of has been on my mind for a while because I know a lot of people when they are thinking about building on certain – if you are building in the city or you are in an urban location or in the suburbs, in different environments, it has got to be – you’ve got to be running to difficulties in all of these areas but I would say in a more unique sort of environments, there must be a lot of problems. How do you handle those?

Steve Tuma: Well, it’s not necessarily a problem. There are just different code enforcement situations. So like if you are in a city and then there are county areas, there are suburban areas, generally if it’s an incorporated city, they have a more sophisticated building department.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: The county areas can be very sophisticated but generally, they are a little more lax than the city right next to them. But it depends on the size. You get in to Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, New York, those are very, very stringent programs. We work in those areas. We can help a customer do it. But let’s just say you were in Chicago building and then you went 60 miles west into DuPage County, some of those – the building departments are stringent but they are a little bit less stringent than the big city. And then say you went 60 miles even farther west than there. You could be in a pure rural area where it’s very, very simple. So it gets into the selective enforcement of each of these different areas and how they choose to enforce it. So, I don’t want to make it sound terrible but we can get through all the building departments. We’ve done it. We’ve worked with all the details. We can make it happen and we’ve worked with some of the strictest ones out there.

So beyond the actual permit application and documentation that you will have to come into to get a permit, there’s also just the actual working in a city. If you are working in an older city, you might have skinnier roads with cars parked on both sides.

Interviewer: Right. Yeah.

Steve Tuma: So sometimes the actual maneuvering around, maybe around the city lot and it’s a 50×100 lot. So sometimes the actual space to work in in a city lot is restricted just because the size of the lot where if you go out into the country and you have half an acre, an acre, 2 acres, 20 acres, there’s just a lot of space to work around and make it happen where we are currently working on a project in Phoenix, Arizona where we’ve got to sit here and do details where pipes come in, where water supply lines, where different utilities come in because it’s such a restricted space. You have to lay out to make sure that there is space for each of these items to go through. So, that’s one of the situations you get in the cities. Generally, the lots are smaller than if you are in a more rural area. But people should live where they want to live and we are able to help them work through the guidelines, the issues with the lot, if it’s a smaller space or larger space and then different details of how we can work through to help them plan so that they get the right permit, the inspections are done properly, and then they end up with a nice house.

Interviewer: Yeah. Well, speaking about enforcement, HOA, Homeowners Associations, let’s talk about that. I mean they can be great. They can be not so great. But how much do they really need to be involved or how much do I need to involve them in my building project?

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s interesting. Homeowners Associations can also be architectural review boards, architectural control boards. It’s the same thing. There are typically in some areas some covenants and restrictions that can go through and say, “Hey, you can do this. You can’t do that.” So if you have an active Homeowners Association that has a recorded set of covenants and restrictions, you are bound to them and you should know about those when you purchase the land. It should be clear in your title what they are.

Now, some of those restrictions could be relatively simple. They might say, “Hey, you have to have an 1800-square foot house minimum and 2-car garage.” Others may say something as simple as you have to keep your lawn cut. And then others can be extremely restrictive to say you can’t have a car in your driveway for than a minute. Your driveway has to be this size. Your house has to be this color. Your house – you got to use these types of materials. Your house has to be reviewed and approved by our architectural committee. And some of them can be very restrictive and very, very controlling.

Now, that’s the extreme. In all the time we’ve been doing this, we’ve only run into one or two that are extremely controlling. Most of them, what they are doing and I think the people see what they are doing, they are trying to maintain a certain quality on the neighborhood. OK? So that you don’t go through and build a nice home and your neighbor builds a nice home and there are ten nice homes around. And then someone shows up and makes their house hot pink with bright green polka dots.

Interviewer: And we’ve seen that, right?

Steve Tuma: It happens. Every once in a while, you see someone out there that’s – it will make the paper. And you see the point. So yeah, you don’t want everyone telling you how to live but on the other side, you don’t want someone doing something that’s going to devalue your neighborhood. So what they want to do is make sure that house are built to a certain standard, make sure the colors are right, make sure it works. Most homeowners associations, they want to know that the house is a certain size. They want to know that they are keeping modulars or different types of homes out. They want to know that there’s a certain quality built. They want to know that colors are uniformed in the area.

So most of them, they are guidelines that you can fit in. I would say 99 of 100 that we get just what the customers want to do. They automatically fit in the guideline. They want a color that matches the neighborhood. They want to use certain materials. Every once in a while, there would be something where they say, “Hey, we have to have a certain amount of brick or a certain color on the house and that has got to get approved.”

But it really hasn’t created an issue for people. Most of them like I say are just there to maintain a certain quality in the neighborhood so that your neighbor doesn’t do something to devalue your home and they want to know that the community is kept to a certain standard, the lawns are kept up, houses are clean so that the value is in. It’s an enjoyable place to live.

Interviewer: I know that part of this next question probably doesn’t have a lot to do with what Landmark does but Landmark I’m sure could be very helpful with this, let’s say I want – I’ve decided to buy a property in a very remote or rural area. Let’s say I want like 10 or 20 acres and there are no utilities on that property at all, no power, no water. How does Landmark help tackle a situation like that?

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s pretty interesting because there are a couple of facets to that answer. So if you have 10 or 20 acres and you’re somewhere where power is going right down the road or is readily available most of the time, they will request that plug in to those utilities. Sometimes you could build off grid where you develop – you get your own power from wind or solar. And other times, there’s kind of a hybrid using a little bit of both. But whatever the situation is, we can help a customer by providing the details formally drawn plans, formally drawn site plans so that if they have to work with a power company, they can say, “Hey, here’s my lot. It’s this size. It’s 20 acres. I’m at this intersection. Here’s my driveway. Here’s my house. How are we going to pull power in?” Of if they are working with their well person, how are they going to – where can they put the well? If they are going to work with a solar person, we can have the plans designed to work so that they can get the best solar design.

So a lot of the utility situation, it isn’t necessarily that we interact with the actual utility company but it’s more that we are giving them the information so that they can interact with the different people to get power to their home or work with alternative power sources to make sure everything is designed properly. So we play a support role in there because it’s nice to have plans that are drawn on a scale. It’s nice to have the house accurately located on the lot. It’s nice to know where the driveway is, different things like that. All those details are very important to make sure that everything is planned right.

Interviewer: It just sounds like Landmark is very good at providing sort of an advisory role. I mean you guys are not just about, “Here, here are your plans, here’s your wood. Good luck.” I mean it sounds like there’s a lot that goes on around any project that you guys take on.

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s exactly it. A lot of people think, “Oh, you sell panelized homes.” Well, that might be the product but the actual service and the development of making sure that panelized home is designed right, it’s built right, it’s planned for the community right, planned for your home right or for your lot is I think more. Just as important to more important because if you just take a house and stick it some place and it doesn’t work right, it’s not energy efficient, it doesn’t look good, you don’t like it, nothing has been accomplished. So the time to plan it will actually make the process of building your home more controlled, you will stay on schedule, and you will be able to keep your budget much, much better.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: So it’s that work upfront knowing that things are put together right that are important. Let me take a simple thing. This is – you brought up a 10 or 20-acre property. That’s a lot of land.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: OK? So on something like that, you might have a septic system. You most likely – chances are in a rural area, you would definitely have a septic system. But – so you have to go get a soil report to have your septic system designed properly. You don’t want someone just going out there and saying, “Hey, way back in the back 20, the farthest part, 2 miles off the road, I found the best place for your septic.” And then suddenly your house is in a location you don’t want. We always suggest to people, know where your house is going to be. Stake it out and be there with that person doing the soil test so that they know to take the soil test in an area where you want to be. So you’re not doing a test a thousand feet from where you intend on building. That can really affect your ability to get a permit and also the usability of the septic system.

So it’s details like that that some people may not think of where we are able to point it out to them so that they can then move forward and know that they are not paying for a septic design that’s not even in the right portion of the land.

Interviewer: Yeah. So there’s something I want to run by you because it’s near and dear to my heart. I’m very much into history. Let’s talk about building in historic areas. I love walking through older parts of cities and villages that really care about their heritage and preserving their architecture. But as a builder, what sort of restrictions might I run into when building in historic districts?

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s really interesting. And generally, the historic districts are more on the East Coast but we are running into more and more of them on the West Coast as well as people see the value of having a mixture of old homes and new homes, the different types of people that live there, the different activities, the different communities that can be built.

So the thing with historic districts is some of them can be very restrictive and some of them can be, “Hey, we just want it to much. You got to run it by a historic board.” So they don’t – say you’ve got a bunch of historic kind of – like say in the western states, an old mining community. They don’t want you building a house that looks like a pyramid.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: They would want you to do something that might be a simplified Victorian or kind of a salt box type of design to do it. Sometimes they get into just general design. You can use modern materials like cement board siding and different things. But they want you to have a design so it blends in. So it’s not a big contrast. Other times, we’ve gone through where they kind of want to dictate if you had a brick, you want to use this type of color, where they want you to kind of blend in almost like where it would be pretty hard to tell the difference.

Now fortunately, all of these historic districts, they understand there are modern day codes. What was built in 1890 or 1920, there are just different materials, there are different safety codes, there are different fire codes, there are different ways of living, why the house will be different. So they are not necessarily going to say, “Hey, you have to build a small house and not of closets in your house.” It’s more a situation where they’re going to want the exterior look to blend in. But either way, whether you’ve got a building department that just wants to go through and have a good representation so it blends in or one that’s stringent, we can help you.

Let me circle back to the homeowners association thing that we spoke about just a little bit earlier. We can develop the plans according to the guidelines of the homeowners association or the historic districts with your design, the details that they need so that you could submit them formally to get your approval. So that’s the neat thing about it. All of this work can be done on paper for their approval. It’s not like you’re building a house and then they says, “Hey, that’s the wrong colored brick.” You got to do something different. So we can put all those details together and get the plans set up so that you can go through and submit to your homeowners association or historic review board.

Now, a lot of people, we’ve run into a couple of them in the Denver area where people are moving back into cities and there’s in-fill lots or houses that are being torn down and they want to keep the community what it is because that’s a lot of the reason people are moving there. It’s a whole different feel in a historic community.

Interviewer: Yeah. And it’s part of why people are even looking in that area. It makes sense. Let’s touch a bit on flood areas and what I might be facing let’s say if I pick up a piece of property and I find out it’s in a flood zone. And I’m sure you guys at Landmark have run into that before. How do you deal with that?

Steve Tuma: It happens a lot. I mean we’ve done a lot of projects in Florida and hurricane zones which it’s more of a storm surge type of situation. But then there’s also just flood zones, a 10-year floods, 50-years floods, different situations like that. So in general, what needs to happen is the building department will typically request a certification from a licensed surveyor or civil engineer that goes through and tells you at what elevation the floor of your home should be.

Now, something which is interesting which a lot of people don’t realize is this will affect your homeowner’s insurance.

Interviewer: I can imagine. Yeah.

Steve Tuma: And in some areas, they will say, “Hey, your finished floor elevation has to be this, call it 100 feet.” But if you go to 102 feet, you might see a big savings in your property insurance because you are outside the range of where you are likely to flood and create big damage. So the flood situations, there’s a variety of situations where it could be rainwater, it could be rising rivers which I guess is kind of the same situation, and it could storm surges from hurricanes or high wind situations.

So those are all situations that we ask the people to check if their land is in that area and then we could design the home to work around it by raising the foundation or coming up with a like a pear and beam foundation system to hold the house above. And just more on these coasts where the hurricanes are more prevalent, a lot of people use the raised up area. You can still have storages or breakaway walls and park your cars underneath there. So we can work with the designs to still get utility out of there. Pretty amazing.

Interviewer: Well, we’ve reached the end of another episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But before we go, Steve, tell us how we can get a hold of you guys over at Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Tuma: The best way is to take a look at our website. You can review details and send us a message if you like. It is LHLC.com, just the initials of Landmark Home Land Company, LHLC.com. You can see us on social marketing on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube. You can also call us at 800-830-9788 or you can send me an email at [email protected]. We are very proactive. We are responsive. We answer our phones and we will do everything to take care of you. We enjoy this.

Interviewer: That’s awesome. Well, that about wraps it up. So for Steve Tuma and myself, thank you all so much for listening and we will see you next time on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show.

Steve Tuma: Have a great day.

Learn how organic architecture and off-grid engineering merge to create self-sustaining, energy-independent custom homes. We discuss how roof plane orientation, engineered roof overhangs, and thermal mass capture passive solar heat in winter while providing natural summer shade and cooling. Discover the zoning realities of off-grid living, including municipal ordinances that mandate utility grid hookups and neighborhood solar-access sunlight restrictions. Explore structural logistics for remote building sites, including low-impact pier foundations and hand-carried panelized wall assemblies that eliminate the need for massive ready-mix concrete trucks and industrial cranes miles away from supply hubs.

A: Standard gable roofs designed with gables facing south force solar panels onto east- and west-facing slopes, significantly reducing daily power generation. Blueprints must be oriented with primary roof surfaces facing true south, or incorporate specialized roof profiles and flat collector sections, to ensure solar arrays receive uninterrupted peak sunlight.

A: Dense building materials—such as exposed concrete slab floors, stone hearths, and interior masonry walls—absorb radiant heat from sunlight streaming through south-facing windows during the day. When ambient indoor temperatures fall at night, the mass slowly radiates that stored warmth back into the home, reducing nighttime heating demands without drawing electrical power.

A: Many incorporated urban and suburban building departments enforce mandatory utility connection codes requiring homes to hook into public water, sewer, and electric grids to obtain a certificate of occupancy. Completely off-grid homes powered solely by standalone solar arrays, wind generators, and private wells are generally permitted only in rural areas or unincorporated county districts.

A: Solar access and sunlight envelope ordinances restrict building heights and roofline positioning to prevent a new structure from casting shade onto adjacent lots. These zoning standards protect neighbors’ access to natural light, preserve rooftop solar energy generation on surrounding homes, and maintain natural neighborhood wind circulation.

A: Remote building sites often feature narrow unpaved driveways that prevent heavy cranes or continuous ready-mix concrete trucks from reaching the build site. Pre-engineered panelized packages supply pre-sized framing components that can be unloaded and erected by small crews, allowing builders to construct sturdy homes on low-impact pier foundations without heavy equipment.

Interviewer: Hey everybody. And welcome to Episode 29 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me in the studio as is always the case is President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want and exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993, Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you doing today, buddy?

Steve Tuma: It’s an excellent day. It’s a good day. We’ve helped a lot of people with some interesting projects this week, people all over the country doing different types of designs, building in different areas, below sea level, at 10,000 feet up in mountains in Colorado and then ocean front projects. So it has been an interesting week.

Interviewer: Good. Having a good week is always a good thing. I thought today we might hit upon off the grid home design. And while we are at it, some – talk about some architectural design and design features. And I would also like to ask you about something called organic design and can you run these specific design terminologies by us?

Steve Tuma: Yeah. What’s interesting – our architectural design is basically just the process of designing the home to make it look, the exterior, the roof, the floor plans, some foundation details, so that you know what your house looks like. Is it a 1000-square foot simple ranch? Is it a 5000-square foot Mack Mansion? Is it more of a modernistic design? So that’s the concept of architectural design.

Now, you wrapped a couple of things in here, architectural design, off the grid, and organic design. So off the grid building is basically where people are building off the electric grid. So it’s not necessarily in a subdivision. It’s not necessarily in a city. It might be in a raw piece of land far from civilization as a lot of people would think of it. So you’re just out in raw land. Off the grid meaning, you’re not going to be using electric from your power company. You’re not going to be using gas from your power company. You’re not going to be getting water from your water department or use a sewage department. You are literally going to be building, to make it easy, out in the middle of nowhere, to take advantage of nature and maybe use some of the natural resources to power your home. So how that comes along with organic design, organic design was kind of thought up by Frank Lloyd Wright and that the concept being of let’s take advantage of the natural breezes, let’s take advantage of shade, let’s take advantage of sun, let’s make the house blend into nature instead of making it look like a sore thumb on the side of a hill.

So the concept of the off the grid is kind of like, “Hey, how do we generate our own electric to power our own house? How do we get our own water? How do we not rely on other utility resources to power the home?” So within that, you might have different design elements. The picture of your roof might be oriented in a southern direction so that your solar panels can gather the most sun. The overhangs may be designed in certain ways. I shouldn’t say maybe. They will be designed in certain ways so that they let the sun in in winter and possibly when you need to heat your home but then they shade it in summer when you don’t want the sun to go through the glass and then heat your house up.

So a lot of the concepts are in the orientation of the house in relation to the sun, where it is on the land, are you on slop land, on the side of a hill, natural overall wind currents, what type of climate you’re in, is it really snowy, is it hotter, or whatever type of situation it is.

So basically, the concept of organic design and off the grid design can merge because you are trying to not impact the world by using any utility companies. So that’s a pretty interesting process. We can help people with the orientation of the house, the energy calculations to make sure that the house is efficient in keeping the heat or cool that it creates. And then also work with you on the solar design to make sure that the solar capabilities are taken advantage of and we’ve had customers work with a wind power as well.

So it gets pretty interesting. A lot of people think, “Well, I just get my solar panels and put it on a house.” Well, that’s not always the case. I was driving on the road. This was just a couple of weeks ago and someone had a very nicely oriented solar panel directly south with huge trees in front of it. And the interesting thing about it is they were pine trees. So they keep their needles here around creating shade here around.

So it was kind of one of these situations of whoever put the solar panels and didn’t look at the situation to say, “Hey, wait. We are putting solar panels on but are they capable of doing the job. Where they located, they couldn’t possibly do the job.” So you got to look at the overall project. What’s the land like? What’s the sun like, the wind currents, things like that? And we could help with that design and it can affect your roof structure, the orientation of the roof structure, the venting of your roof system, the types of materials that you put in that home, thermal masses.

I’m sure everyone is kind of bitten by a brick wall or a cement slab after a hot day at a cool night that you could feel the heat radiates off of a thermal mass. So it collects the heat during the day when the sun is out and then it releases it at night when the sun is down and you need a little heat to get through the night. So it’s very interesting. It’s a science. It’s very, very cool.

Interviewer: I like that whole idea of sort of back to the earth thing and designing your home around your environment. It’s just pretty cool. But when I think of – we are talking about off the grid and it seems like whoa, this is such a radical concept. And this was the vast majority of the way homes were built for thousands for years.

Steve Tuma: That’s exactly the case. I know you’re a history buff. And the interesting thing about this is we are going back to what your great, great grandfather probably did assuming he came to the US and became – in the agriculture business which at that time 95% of America was in agriculture. They knew to put an overhang to keep the sun out, face it south to keep the heat coming in. You will see some places in the plains where they put big trees around the house because of prevailing winds are so strong that blows through the house. So we are kind of going back 120 years to what made sense then. What happened with the progress, if we want to call it progress, is everyone wanted a button and say, “Hey, let me push a button for heat. Let me push a button for air.” And suddenly, we’ve got all these energy needs and the homes aren’t necessarily better because of it. It’s more convenient but it may not be more comfortable.

Interviewer: Yeah. I think it’s – you look at the old pictures of the pioneers on the plains and we saw the houses they lived in and people thought, “Oh, they lived in these really rude, crude houses made of sod.” Well, that was only temporary. You have the guys who would bring their family out and they would get these land grants. They didn’t know which side their main window should be on until they lived in the place for a year and then they would design around it. And I’ve always found that pretty fascinating.

Steve Tuma: But you will also see a lot of those old farm houses or ranch houses, they always have porches.

Interviewer: Yup. Yeah.

Steve Tuma: To keep the elements out. That’s also a social thing. You get together with the family and friends and hang out.

Interviewer: Yeah. You hit on solar energy a bit and let’s talk about solar energy and off the grid homes. I’m curious about what you were saying about roofs design and designing a roof specifically for solar energy. And tell us a little bit like you said when you drove by and you saw the guy had his solar panels in the shade of the trees. It just seems kind of awkward. But how much does Landmark get involved in the design and helping people decide where that solar panel should go?

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s an interesting thing. A lot of the customers that are involved with solar, it’s a personal thing that they really get involved with and they’ve actually learned how to design or they have a local solar company that sorted out the best way to put solar panels on the roof. There are also systems that don’t need to go on a roof.

But if it is something where it goes on a roof, what we have to do is be understanding of – that the design of the roof will affect the solar effectiveness. And building departments are catching on to this. We’ve had a lot of them specifically in California where they’re not saying you just have to put solar panels on, they got to be effective.

So I’ve seen situations where you’ve got a typical gable end house, 612 roof pitch, the gable faces south. So the planes of the roof face east and west. They will get some solar but it’s not optimal. So when we understand that someone is going to work with solar design, we might do something in the roof design or the orientation of the house to make sure that there’s enough space for the solar panels so the solar panels can do their job, not just in collecting solar power but also in having enough of the panels there so that it creates situation. There’s a difference of a salesman telling you, “Oh yeah, you got solar. You’re doing a great thing, Mr. Homebuilder.” And knowing that the solar panels work and they are oriented properly and they can take care of it.

California is leading the nation in that and they are pretty much demanding that you have solar on the roof alternative power. And they are also understanding that you can’t just put panels on the roof, they have to be oriented in a way to maximize the collection of the solar rays.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: So the example that I brought up is that if you have a simple gable end roof, just a regular house, 24×40, and that gable is facing south, that’s not optimal. So we might have to do something with different roof designs so that you’ve got flat surfaces on the roof that face south or have the collectors being on the ground. So it does get into the selection of the lot as well. So if you are building in a subdivision where everything is just 100-foot lot stuck next to each other and kind of limited, but there are still ways to make it work. And then there are also situations of if you’re working on raw land, a couple acres in the country, there might be a better place to put the solar or to put the house for the collection of the solar for the type of design that you want. But let me bring something else up and this is kind of a curve ball. A lot of people think of solar of being the solar collection collect the sun’s rays to turn them into electricity or to heat water. There’s also the effectiveness of sunlight on people. You need to have the right size window so that there’s enough light and ventilation coming in the room and then more and more communities are getting into the effectiveness of not blocking the sun.

So let’s just say, you and I live in a sunny neighborhood and then some third person shows up and builds this house that blocks your backyard. So suddenly, you no longer have sun. That affects the community and the way people live. So it’s not just solar as far as solar ray collection. It’s also solar as far as sunlight getting into the neighborhood and then winds being able to circulate. So it can get pretty interesting and the actual design of a house so that sun can get in your yard, in your neighbor’s yard, your neighbor doesn’t block your house.

Interviewer: I think it’s funny how – well, not funny. But I mean I think it’s interesting how much knowledge you and Landmark have just regarding things like shade efficiency. I had never even thought of a phrase like that. And the fact that you and Landmark can help people understand what that means. Should I design my roof structure with a certain overhang? These are sort of questions that people, “Oh, I’m going to build the house.” They never think about these little details. And it’s great to have somebody like Landmark around to kind of fill us in.

Steve Tuma: Right. That’s a key thing because you can get a house anywhere. Getting a comfortable house that you’re proud of that makes sense, that’s the additional details. I kind of call it the icing on the cake. You can get anywhere but where is our nicely decorated one with icing, with – that you just really want? It’s the same thing with the house. It’s those other details. And what I want to point out, a lot of these things don’t necessarily add a big expense to the house. It’s just a thought process to make things work for you. And we have the knowledge to do that. And if you want to go down those routes, we are more than happy to help to make sure that everything gets put together so that the house makes sense for you, your budget, your lot, your family, and it just makes for a better project.

Interviewer: Now, do all – getting back to the off the grid homes, do all building departments across the nation, do they allow off the grid homes?

Steve Tuma: Some of them have resisted to it and the zoning issues are basically the reason why. A lot of areas if – let’s just say, a typical city lot with water and sewer connections and gas and electric, it’s kind of in the code. And then there are guidelines that if you are going to build there, you have to connect into electric and gas, which incurs expenses and maybe some materials and labor that you don’t need. So there are some communities that understand it and are flexible but generally, off the grid is going to be in a relatively or very rural area where the building departments are understanding of it or power is not available. So you really need to check into it. The chances of you going into downtown center, in the city of San Francisco and building and off the grid home are probably not going to happen.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: But if you went out and there are a lot of communities on the West Coast and some popping up in the East Coast where the zoning and building departments are actually understanding of it. And actually heard some government officials talking about it saying, “Hey wait, here we are telling people to be energy-efficient but we are also telling them, ‘You have to buy our power,’” which is created by coal or whatever it maybe that hurts the atmosphere. So I think there’s a little bit of political change coming along and it might take them a little while but pretty soon I think they will have understandings in more communities. I don’t know that it’s ever going to be allowed in every single community but the point is, generally, people are building off the grid don’t want to be on the middle of town anyway.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: They want to be in an area where they’ve got some land. They can grow their food, have a self-maintaining and healthy lifestyles.

Interviewer: Do you run into many people who are asking for designs that they can specifically build where there is no electricity going on to the property at all? I mean more than just, “I’ve decided I don’t want to deal with the electric company. I’m just going to shut it down.” Where if you got a lot, you got to dig a well and there’s no electricity out there.

Steve Tuma: More and more people are asking about it and we’ve got a few that are beginning the process. I think with different shows and understanding of power, a lot of people being able to telecommute so they don’t have to be in a big building in a big downtown area. They are able to take advantage of the technology and choose to have the lifestyle. So yes, it is. And what’s interesting about it is sometimes there’s this little blending where people might be in the city connected to electric but they still have solar. In fact, that’s being mandated in a lot of places. So that’s kind of where the old codes and methods are meeting the new ones because they want houses to be kind of self-sustaining as much as possible.

Interviewer: Sure. Well, I would imagine then that Landmark has a lot to say about designing a home just simpler. I mean to make it easier to build when your property is in a more remote area. I mean it seemed like that the planning phase would have to be very well-thought out because when you are in a remote location, it’s just the simple things such as getting down to the local Home Depot may not be all that easy or getting a cement truck in may not be that easy. So …

Steve Tuma: Right. That’s basically the situation which is happening. And what’s really interesting is sometimes this is lifestyle decision. Sometimes you think of people building off the grid as being some Grizzly Adam’s type guy, “I’m just going to go out there and kind of wild cat it and build the house together.” But what’s really happening is a lot of these people have sophisticated lives and what they are realizing is they don’t always want to live in the middle of a big city. They’ve done it. It’s not exactly what they think is the best type of lifestyle for their family so they want to live off the grid so that they can still keep their sophisticated job as long as they have a strong internet and then they also want to know that they are doing something good. So you have an executive of a big company or someone that’s well-off or in different entertainment industries, whatever it may be to say, “Hey, I can still do my job but I want my kid to eat healthy food and so do I.” And why not? Why not be a little on the leading edge of get rid of an electric bill, get rid of a gas bill and figure these things out so that their kids and grandkids have homes that are more solar capable than are available today?

So a lot of these people are doing it because it makes sense and maybe kind of first adaptor situations where it’s becoming more mainstream. So when you talk about it, imagine building a house in the middle of town, the plumbing supply store is a mile away. It’s no big deal. Well, imagine being 50 miles from there and your driveway is 3 miles long to get off your land. Suddenly it’s like, “Hey, not only are you trying to build off the grid, you are off the grid.” So you’ve got to figure out different ways of doing it. You might not have access or easy access to different equipment or different materials. So we can get into different foundation designs, pure type systems.

Now, we can get in a panelization that’s easier to manhandle instead of needing equipment. And then designs that you get a couple of guys or a couple ladies, you can put the house together. And that is the key element to it because a lot of the people building off the grid it’s not to just to say, “Hey, I’m using solar power. I’m getting rid of the electric company.” It’s to say, “Look at what I did to make the process green and I did it myself.”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: There’s an enjoyment, a pride, and an education process they want to go through just to know that what they did is good. And we are able to work with them to make sure that the design is put together so it doesn’t take teams of a hundred people to do things. It doesn’t take equipment that may not be available in extremely remote locations. So that’s something.

Amazingly, it was kind of funny. Some of these ideas we got by shipping homes internationally because you go ship something internationally, you are putting it in a container and then you are dealing with people that aren’t likely to be familiar with our – the American building systems or metric or not, just different methods. So you have people that are used to building a masonry is suddenly using wood. So we got an understanding of hey, keep it simple. Like here’s the thing, keep it simple. So we have an understanding of what it can take for a couple of people to literally build a house with their own hands.

Interviewer: Right. I would say I mean I just was getting the visual in my head as you were saying. I mean people aren’t out there building a sod house. They are actually building pretty nice houses. It just happened to be off the grid. I think that’s kind of – I think the visualization of how we look at people living off the grid will probably change over the years because more and more people will be doing.

Steve Tuma: Hey, one thing. You bring up a sod house?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Tuma: In the late ‘90s, we actually helped a customer build a house underground on the side of a hill.

Interviewer: Oh wow!

Steve Tuma: Well, theoretically, ground is always 50 degrees, 4 feet underground. They wanted that. It was just one of these things they don’t impact the view across the plains. But there’s a lot of structural work that has to go into that and make sure the back walls are strong enough to hold the house, any water activity, design activity, and getting light and air into the house.  So it’s pretty cool. There are people building with ulterior – or different types of materials. They all have different motivations. The key to it is we are more than happy to deal with unique off the grid projects or even unique designs so that people do it in a sense even though these people are going back in history in the way people used to live, 100, 200 years ago, they are again becoming first adaptors. It’s kind of interesting. History is repeating itself.

Interviewer: Interesting. So going real old school and using that push mower to mow your roof.

Steve Tuma: Well, real old school is having a go do it.

[Laughter]

Interviewer: There you go. That’s right.

Steve Tuma: That’s happening.

Interviewer: I’m getting these flashbacks of people building. I mean not flashbacks, but getting these visuals of people building these houses, very old school as you said like pouring their foundations with the old crank cement thing and then shoveling it in there and building your slab.

Steve Tuma: That’s about what it is. And you know what? They love it. They enjoy it. It’s the pride. They are doing it. It’s kind of like making a cake from scratch for someone’s birthday party compared to going in a store and spending 30 bucks and buying one. There’s a certain pride in knowing that what you’ve done is good.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: And the money savings can be huge.

Interviewer: That’s a big deal. But there’s always one thing, there’s always the devil that kind of sits there and watches you for a while. But I would imagine even if you are building off the grid, you’re going to have to deal with permits at some point. So how is off the grid permitting even done?

Steve Tuma: It really depends then where you are at because a lot of people are building in rural areas. Some of these rural areas amazingly do not have building departments. If they do or don’t, we can develop the plans properly. We suggest even if you are building in an area without building departments, you still do your house right. A lot of these issues are safety issues and structural issues and we are fully capable of helping and want to help. But then there are other areas where there are limited permitting requirements and others that are more sophisticated. Either way, if we can go through and design an off the grid home and even if it needs to be connected to the grid for whatever purposes, we can do that. But let’s just say you’re building in a rural area where a building department just says, “Hey, we need plans. We just need to know this.” And they have a small fee just to register it, we can go through and develop the complete plans so the customer understands what they are building and still know that safety issues are addressed and everything is put together properly.

So whether they have an extremely sophisticated building department or a nonexistent building department, we can go through and get the details for structural design, green situations, energy calculations, any type of heating design requirements, plumbing, electric, we can help them with the process, site planning, organic design. So it works out. Like I mentioned before, even though you might consider solar kind of off the grid, it’s extremely popular on the grid and being mandated in a lot of places where you have to have it. So the paths are crossing. The laws just have to catch up.

Interviewer: Got it. So that’s going to about do it for us today on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But this was a really fun episode. I enjoyed this. We got into some history and we talked about building off the grid. I think that’s amazing. Before we go though, I’d like to give Steve a chance to let people know how to contact Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Tuma: The best way is to check our website out. The company is Landmark Home and Land Company. The website is LHLC.com, kind of like L as in Landmark, H as in Home, L as in Land, C as in Company dot com.

You can email me at [email protected]. You can call us at 800-830-9788. Mike can work through the process and get you going, get your preliminary questions answered. And once you are moving along, I would jump in and help you to finalize plans, get things going. And then we are also available on YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and other social platforms so people can check us out and see what it looks like. But the most important thing is we are here to talk on the phone, to help you through your process, to get a relationship going so that you can see exactly how we can help you and how we can make your process easier and more affordable.

Interviewer: And Landmark Home and Land Company is definitely not off the grid when it comes to being able to find them. They are out there. Get on the internet. And I would advise everybody to check out the website LHLC.com. There’s a lot of information and great videos and all kinds of stuff on there.

So for Steve Tuma and myself, I want to thank everybody once again for listening and we will see you next time.

Steve Tuma: Have a great day.

Learn how owner-builders successfully navigate the bidding, hiring, and management of general contractors and specialized trade subcontractors. We discuss the critical differences between hiring a turnkey builder and acting as your own general contractor to manage trade subs, control project cash flow, and avoid compounding change-order markups. Discover why traditional framing crews already possess the skills to assemble panelized homes, and how factory-built wall panels cut framing labor costs by 40% to 50% compared to conventional stick building. Explore sustainable factory-framing methods that repurpose wood drops down to two inches, and learn when to consult local foundation trades to align architectural plans with regional monolithic or stem-wall preferences.

A: A turnkey general contractor manages the entire project from raw ground to finished occupancy, charging a substantial markup to oversee trades and assume project liability. When acting as an owner-builder, you assume the role of the general contractor yourself, directly hiring individual trade subcontractors (such as excavators, plumbers, and electricians) to eliminate builder markups and control the budget.

A: Assembling a pre-engineered panelized kit typically costs 40% to 50% less in framing labor than on-site stick building for the identical floor plan. Because wall panels and roof trusses arrive pre-cut, labeled, and assembled to exact blueprint dimensions, framing crews avoid measuring and cutting lumber on-site, allowing them to frame the shell significantly faster.

A: Yes, because panelized construction is simply an optimized, factory-controlled method of stick framing that mirrors standard field assembly. On a stick-built site, framers build individual wall sections flat on the subfloor and stand them up; with a panelized package, those exact wall sections arrive pre-built and are stood up sequentially according to an assembly plan.

A: Conventional stick-framing generates high job-site scrap rates from miscuts and framing trimmings that the homeowner pays for twice—first as purchased materials and again in recurring dumpster fees. Factory panelization programs optimize lumber cuts through automated software, repurposing drops larger than two inches into structural blocking and shredding smaller wood remnants into animal bedding.

A: While architectural layouts and structural calculations should be completed early, consulting local concrete trades during preliminary drafting ensures foundation details match regional practices. Trade feedback confirms whether local soil conditions and code officials favor monolithic slab pours, raised stem walls, or concrete block foundation systems before engineering plans are finalized.

Interviewer: Hello everyone. And welcome to Episode 28 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me in the studio as always is the President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their homes where they want exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993. And that man would be Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you doing today?

Steve Landmark: Excellent. How are you doing today?

Interviewer: I am great actually, couldn’t be any better.

Steve Landmark: It’s a great day in paradise, home building paradise.

Interviewer: Home building paradise. That’s right. I wanted to spend this episode talking about contractors, something that you have some knowledge of I’m sure. I know you’ve dealt with a lot of contractors over the years. And I think our listeners would welcome the chance to hear some of your thoughts. So just open it up at the beginning, how does one go about finding and choosing the right contractor for them?

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s an interesting presses because you can always go through and check out reviews, talk to the Better Business Bureau, get recommendations from friends, and sometimes you can just get one contractor that will then lead you on to other contractors. Like in my own projects, I found that excavation contractors always know foundation people. Foundation people always know the framers. They always seem to be in the same circles, working on similar projects where they always run into each other.

So what we always suggest is you get a set of plans for the house and then talk to contractors, foundation person, framing contractors, plumbers, and electricians because there are a lot of people asking the contractors for beds and they would be like, “Hey, how much is that 2000-square foot home?” Well, that’s kind of calling the grocery store and asking him how much dinner is. It’s kind of funny. When I put it that way, people understand.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: It’s one of the best …

Interviewer: Perfect analogy right there.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, it is. But the point is well-taken. It’s kind of – so if you were the contractor and said, “Hey …” and someone asked you how much is a 2000-square foot house is, there’s a lot of stuff going through your head. Is it a one story? Is it a 2-story? Where is it at? Is the land flat? Is it in the city? Is it on the country? Do you want gold faucets in there or regular nice faucets? There are so many different variables. So when you get the opportunity to talk to the contractor, you want to have something kind of definite to talk about. You want to say, “Hey, here’s the plan. I’m building on this piece of land.” And then there’s something where he can help actually help you or she can actually help you to get you an answer to your question because they are busy and they want to know that they are working on a project that has a strong chance of coming to life and becoming a reality.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So it’s not just a matter of you finding a contractor. It’s presenting it in a proper way so that the contractor says, “Hey Mr. Smith, you are a viable candidate to work with.” It’s worth putting time into putting the bid together. So you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got a good presentation and understanding of where you want to build, show that you put some effort into it, let them know the financial position of your project, are you waiting for financing, do you have financing or paying cash, whatever it may be. And then I think you will find that they have a tendency to take you seriously when you’ve done your homework and present it to them properly.

Interviewer: So contractors will network with the other sort of specialist that you need.

Steve Landmark: Right.

Interviewer: That would seem – so finding the contractor is probably the first place to start I would imagine.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. It’s not like you’ve to get all the contractors at one time. Start with one or two and they could lead you to other people.

Now, what’s interesting about this is a lot of our customers, the subcontractors are right in their family or in their friends – their circle of friends or in groups that they belong to so that they’ve got an access to these people. So that’s a situation where sometimes or a lot of our customers actually go through and build their own home. It’s a different degree. Some of them will actually go through and build everything because they’ve got friends and family in all the trades. Others will – how your general contractor that will coordinate the subcontractors for them. So there are different degrees of involvement.

Interviewer: What’s the difference? While we are on this, we might as well go over it. What is the difference exactly between a general contractor and a subcontractor and which is a better fit for the owner/builder?

Steve Landmark: It varies on the situations. Some customers want to just say, “Hey, build this house here. I’ll see you in a few months.” Other customers want to be deeply involved and knowing who is working on their home, what work they are doing, what the reputation is, the quality of work that they do. So a general contractor will contract the whole home. That’s basically you would go to this person and they would say, “Hey, your house costs this much.” And they will work with the subcontractors to take it from a raw lot to a finished house.

A subcontractor is the person that’s hired to do the work. Say, kind of like the individual heating man, the air conditioning, the plumber, the electrician. So he subcontracts to the general contractor.

Now, the point of this which is the interesting thing is that as an owner/builder, you can be your own general contractor. So if you are acting as your own general contractor, you would hire subcontractors to do the work. So I might be creating a little confusion. If you’re someone that says hey – you just want the house done, you would hire a general contractor. If you want some involvement to control your cost, the quality, and know exactly what’s going on in your project, the schedule, the budget, you would act as a general contractor to build your own home and you would hire the subcontractors to do the individual components, excavate, the foundation, whatever it may be. And that’s a key element. You can also control the cost, the schedule, and all the details. And you can also control change orders a lot and minimize expenses as a result of those.

Interviewer: Would you say when it comes to panelized home building, I mean that’s really what this show is all about, would you say most contractors that you’ve run into they actually know what panelized home building is? They have experience with panelized home building?

Steve Landmark: Well, this is the interesting thing about this is they all have experience with it. Do they understand the word panelized home? So the funny thing about is sometimes they would be like, “Well, I don’t know what a penalized home is.” It’s exactly what they do in a stick building process. Our panelized process is a more efficient method of stick building. We make it in a controlled environment, deliver the components, meaning the wall panels and trusses to the site, and then the contractor picks each component and put it in place. So while one goes up, while two goes next, or while three goes next it, and so forth around the home until the structure is completed. The funny thing is a lot of contractors, framing contractors, they will say, “Oh, I don’t know what a panelization is.” It’s the exact same thing they are doing. Their system just doesn’t help you control the cost and schedule as much because it’s affected by weather and fluctuations in wood markets. So when a contractor goes through and he gets a framing crew, they go estimate the amount of materials. They have a lumberyard deliver the materials. The materials get delivered to the site as individual pieces, 2x4s, 2x6s, sheets of OSB, and so on.

They then determined how to cut the wood so that they can make a wall panel. They make a wall panel and lift it up. So they’ve already done it but the nature of their stick building is that they are making a panel for a wall, lifting it up and putting it in place. Ours is already pre-built. So it’s kind of a funny thing that sometimes they will say, “Hey, I don’t know what panelization is.” But they are already doing it. It’s just a perspective shift and a viewpoint. So yes, any framing contractor can assemble it. We supply very clear and accurate assembly plans and we are always available if there are any questions on how to put the home together. That being said, every once in a while, the contractor would be like, “Well, I don’t understand it. I don’t know.” We always say, “Hey, have the person give us a call. We will review the processes and let them understand the nuances of how it’s easier and quicker for them and they can actually make more money because they can finish your project quicker and get on to the next one.”

Interviewer: This is kind of side thing but while you were saying that, I was thinking it seems like panelized home building where everything comes – your wall panels come prebuilt, it seems like that save on a lot of lumber. I mean there are no mistakes made. It’s already coming preassembled. And I’ve seen contractors, I’ve seen builders’ work where oops, screwed up that piece of 2×4 and that kind of thing. And it seems like that’s one way to really keep your cost down.

Steve Landmark: That’s exactly it because we have programs that say exactly the materials that are there, the computers know exactly how to cut them. And what’s interesting is it’s a greener process. You would not have the dumpster bills that you do with stick building because you’re not throwing all the materials away. And by the way, you’ve paid for those materials that are getting thrown away.

Interviewer: Right. Yeah.

Steve Landmark: In our process, if there’s – let’s just say there’s a 2×6 and it comes 8 feet long and your wall needs a 6-foot long one, in our process the 2-fott one is use somewhere else, in your home or someone else’s home. So there isn’t as much waste. In fact, in our plants, every piece of wood beyond 2 inches long gets reused and even the ones under 2 inches, they get shredded to be used for animal bedding.

Interviewer: Oh, I see. That’s great.

Steve Landmark: So when you look at the green factor of it, yes, it’s greener. It also controls the cost. You have less waste, and waste and hassles and miscut just raise your budget and delay the schedule. It comes to a control issue. With our system, you know what’s there. It just needs to be put in place. You can do it quicker. It’s just a smoother process.

Interviewer: Well, back to the original point of the question before I sidetracked just a little bit, so your opinion is a good contractor will find it fairly easy to understand the process of panelized home construction.

Steve Landmark: Yes. What we found over time is that the contractors that run a tight ship, they understand their business, see the benefits of panelized home packages. The reason being is they can build – frame the house or build your house quicker and get on to the next process. It’s much like a restaurant. Everyone has heard of the turn of the tables where hey, if a restaurant can turn their tables two times at a dinner seating instead of one time, they could serve more customers and therefore make more money. The same thing is true with the building and framing of a home. This also allows people in areas where there’s limited building seasons up in Rockies and Sierras or where there’s control over rainy seasons where you’re able to get a house built and occupied much quicker. So there are a lot of reasons that the panelization process.

But getting back to the contractor, yes, a contractor that understands the cost of his business, scheduling things, making sure things get done right will find a big benefit to panelization. That’s why so many commercial projects are done with panelization. It’s quicker. They can get the building occupied and let the building do what it needs to do of get the family into it.

Interviewer: Right. Makes sense. Now, let’s talk about the design process a little bit and how – and the contractor’s involvement. I mean let’s just say it straight. How involved should my contractor be in my design?

Steve Landmark: Well, it all depends on when you choose your contractor that’s going to build it. What I always suggest is we’ve got very good designers, engineers, green code people, energy efficiency people where we can go through and do it. Generally, the customer will determine what type of house they want whether they want a 2-story contemporary home, a modern home, a ranch home of some type, whatever it may be. So we can work with them to get the plans put together in the initial stages. But as you move along to the building processes, it’s always good to run it by the contractors. I’ll tell you the reason why.

Some contractors do things slightly different than others. That doesn’t mean they are right or wrong. It just means that they do things differently. Sometimes there are different projects that are built in different ways in different areas. The example that we run into a lot is slab foundations. Some areas, it’s customary to do a monolithic port. Others, the want stem walls or kind of across space type situation. Other times, they want port walls. Other times, they need to be made out of block. So when we are in the finalization stage, right about there, it’s good to get them involved so that they can go through and say, “Hey, over here, we do it this way.” And we’ve got pretty good understanding of what’s going on. But it’s good to have their involvement so that they buy into the project to understand what’s going on. And ultimately, we want to make sure it’s a good project for the customer, the contractor, ourselves to make sure that the home is built right, built properly, is easy to get permitted, and make sure that the inspections get approved right away. So our key in all of this with our customer and any subcontractors is the clear communication. We are readily available, we are proactive, and we are very knowledgeable. So we want to do whatever we can to support our customer’s project to make sure they end up with the best home possible.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about the cost end of this thing with contractors. I mean on a panelized home project, let’s say, is a contractor going to be less expensive on that, on a project like that or as opposed to a traditional home building project? And if that’s the case, why?

Steve Landmark: Yes, it should be less expensive. The prime example is that most of the work is done and the wall framing and design and cutting and engineering details of a panelized package. So they don’t have to go through and sort everything out saying, “How many boards do I need for this wall? How do I have to cut it? What angles come into play?” The complexities of it. So in general, to assemble a panelized kit is probably 40-50% of the stick built cost for the same design. But what people don’t always look at are the ripple effects of follow-up cost. You don’t have the dumpster cost, the house gets framed quicker so there’s of a chance of being affected by weather. If you have a construction loan, your financing fees don’t go on. There’s just a lot of little ripple effect details. So the impact of getting the house framed quicker and more effectively is a ripple effect that definitely shows a cost advantage as well as a scheduling advantage. Who is the last family you heard of that said, “Oh, take forever to build my house.” They are like, “Hey, I want to get in tomorrow.” So the reality is that it helps control the quality and get people in quicker.

Interviewer: Fantastic! Well, this has been great. We are out of time for today on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show but before we go, I want to give Steve a chance as always to let people know how they can contact Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Landmark: The best way is to take a look at our website. The company name is Landmark Home and Land Company and you can see us at LHLC.com. That’s basically the initials for Land Home and Land Company, LHLC.com. You can email us at – you can email me at [email protected]. You can call and Mike will answer the phone, 800-830-9788. We also have Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and Facebook channels that people can look at.

They key to it is we are available. We are proactive. We will do whatever we can to help. We realized you might not be wanting to start your project today. You might have to sort a few things out. And if it takes a little time to help you get positioned properly to move forward, we are there to help you. If you want to get going today, we are also here to help you. So thank you.

Interviewer: Help is the thing and you guys are well-known over at Landmark for your great customer service, something to be proud of and you guys you just do a great job over there.

Steve Landmark: That’s the key to it is make sure the house gets built properly.

Interviewer: I mean after how many years now …

Steve Landmark: Since 1993.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Landmark: Pretty amazing.

Interviewer: I’d say that says a lot about the customer …

Steve Landmark: A quarter of a century.

Interviewer: A quarter of a century. Do you feel old now?

Steve Landmark: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Interviewer: Well, excellent. So for Steve Tuma and myself, thanks everybody for listening and we will see you next time.

Steve Landmark: Thank you.

Energy efficiency, Calculations and how it affects new kit home design.  Learn how energy calculations, modern insulation materials, and mechanical system designs lower utility bills and improve living comfort in custom kit homes. We discuss the thermal benefits of conditioned attics and sealed crawl spaces, showing how enclosing HVAC ductwork inside the insulated envelope prevents extreme seasonal heat gain and loss. Discover the practical differences between fiberglass batts, open-cell and closed-cell spray foam, and exterior rigid foam sheathing to eliminate thermal bridging through 2×6 wall studs. Explore how on-demand tankless water heaters, solar thermal storage, and Manual J load calculations prevent oversizing heating equipment in tightly built homes.

A: In an unconditioned attic, roof temperatures can reach 130 degrees in the summer, heating the air inside uninsulated ductwork and forcing the air conditioner to work harder to deliver cool air. Insulating along the roofline creates a conditioned attic space, keeping mechanical ductwork within a moderate temperature zone and eliminating extreme seasonal energy loss.

A: Standard fiberglass batt insulation yields roughly R-19 to R-21 in a 5.5-inch (2×6) wall cavity, whereas closed-cell spray foam provides approximately R-6.5 per inch. Filling that same 2×6 wall cavity with closed-cell spray foam delivers an insulation value up to R-36 while creating an impermeable barrier against wind and air infiltration.

A: Solid wood framing studs have a lower insulation value than the cavity insulation between them, creating a thermal bridge that allows heat to transfer through the wall frame. Fastening rigid foam boards (typically R-5 to R-10) to the exterior sheathing breaks this thermal bridge, insulating over the wood studs to meet strict regional energy codes.

A: Conventional storage water heaters continuously burn fuel or consume electricity to maintain 50 gallons of hot water at all times, even when the home is unoccupied. On-demand tankless water heaters only burn gas when a faucet is opened, eliminating standby heat loss and satisfying strict energy compliance codes.

A: Older homes built 20 to 30 years ago had leaky building envelopes and minimal insulation, requiring large 80,000 to 100,000 BTU furnaces to overcome heavy heat loss. Tightly sealed modern kit homes with advanced window glazing and high R-value insulation retain indoor warmth, allowing a smaller 60,000 BTU furnace to heat the home with far less fuel consumption.

Interviewer: Hey everybody. And welcome to Episode 27 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me in the studio in his customary seat is the President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993, Steve Tuma. Steve, how is it going today?

Steve Tuma: It’s an excellent day. I’m listening, 1993, that’s 25 years.

Interviewer: [Laughs] Yeah.

Steve Tuma: We have been helping people build houses and just all the evolution of codes, designs, financing, just different trends, it’s pretty interesting.

Interviewer: Does that number make you feel old?

Steve Tuma: No! Quarter of a century. I’m only 26 though. It’s not a big deal.

Interviewer: [Laughs] I thought for this episode, we might talk a bit about energy efficiency and how that applies to new home building projects. Are you good with that?

Steve Tuma: Yeah. Yeah, what – that’s interesting because we talked about the time that Landmark has been around. In that 25 years energy efficiency has gone berserk.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: A lot of new things happening. If you go look at an older home from 25, 30 years ago, it didn’t have insulation. So it’s kind of an interesting process.

Interviewer: Well, let’s start with a thing called a little – an important thing called energy calculations. Now, what role does that process play in the designing of a new panelized home?

Steve Tuma: Well, this is really interesting because a lot of people think, “Whoa! You just put R-19 or R-21 in the wall, R-30 in the roof and get some good windows and insulate the basement or crawlspace or slab and you are ready to go.

And that would have been something of 20 or 20 – even 15, 20 years ago. In some cases, it’s still the standard. But what an energy calculation does is do the theoretical calculation to sort out how your home will perform.

So for example, if you’re building in the south where it’s warmer and moderate climate, you’re going to have different insulation needs than if you are building way up north, say in Upper Peninsula and Michigan or something like that or in Colorado in the high mountain areas where it can get colder. So what the energy calculations do is sort to make sure that your home as a unit needs a certain efficiency. And most states have standards. Whether or not they choose to enforce them is a different story. But – so what you can do is go through and say, “Hey, we want to make the home energy efficient by certain calculation methods. What happens if I increase the insulation in my roof? What happens if I increase the insulation value of my windows? What if I put insulation in my basement or crawlspace? How does it do that?” So then you can go through and make sure that your home meets or exceeds the current standards. And there’s a variety of different types. Different states have different types but they are basically put together by calculating how the foundation is insulated, how a floor is insulated, how a wall is insulated, how the roof system is insulated, how it’s vented, different details like that, what types of windows, the more sophisticated ones will deal with different climate zones, orientation of the house to the sun, elevations, different details like that. So it’s – it can get pretty intricate.

Interviewer: Well, how am I going to know if my new home is energy efficient? I mean how are those calculations even put together?

Steve Tuma: It’s basically – they go through and say, “Hey, let’s put R-21 batt insulation in the wall, R-30 or 38 or 48 in the ceiling.” So they run a theoretical calculation based on the square footage of floors, square footage of walls, square footage of roofs, types of ventilation in the roof, is it a conditioned or unconditioned space. So like in an attic, you could have an unconditioned space where you’ve insulated the ceiling of the rooms below the attic or you can have a conditioned space where you’re actually insulating the whole attic area. So there are different factors that are put in for the type of insulation. It could – and where you are putting that insulation. And then also how the insulation is applied. So like a new trend which is coming along and I find it to be very good are conditioned spaces. So like I mentioned with the crawlspace – sorry, the attic, if you just put insulation on the top – the ceiling of the room below the attic, that’s an unconditioned space. There’s just insulation there. The space in the attic is just open. It’s bound to go through fluctuation. It’s not insulated.

What a lot of people are doing now, they found it to be more efficient is that they insulate the whole attic, creating a conditioned space. So along the roof line, there’s insulation, along the ceiling of the room below, there’s insulation so there’s space. What that does is it minimizes the fluctuations because you could have a day, say where it’s 90 and sunny outside. You could have the inside of your house air conditioned at 75 and your attic can be 130. So that 130-degree temperature in your attic just seeps in your house and makes your air conditioning work a lot harder and vice versa with heating systems.

Well if you have a conditioned attic, you don’t end up with 120 or 130-degree attic that’s heating your house. And what also the benefits of it are where do you want the duct-work because if you have ductwork, this is interesting, most people don’t think of this but if you have – say, you had a ranch home, a one story home with a furnace on the main level, it would be typical to run ducts in your attic across the house and then drop the duct down.

Well, think about what’s happening. You’re taking it from a 75-degree area, running the ducts through a 130-degree area where it’s heating the air that you just cooled and then you’re dropping the cooler air back into it. So there is a big amount of heat loss because you are taking your ducts through a heated attic and then back down into the conditioned house. So the idea is by conditioning the attic space, you end up taking – you don’t have the fluctuation of going say, 57 degrees to 130, maybe go 75 to 80 or 90 and then across and then drops back down so that you’re not getting in a sense robbed of the air that you just paid to cool.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: So that same theory also works in crawlspaces where if ductwork goes underneath the house and across. So they have actually found that it’s very efficient to keep to those areas at a moderate temperature instead of the extremes that can happen.

So yeah, so that’s an around about theory on it but you asked how did they do the calculations. It literally gets into how you’re going to insulate each wall, the floor, the roof, the windows, how tightly do these windows fit, how tightly do the doors closed. A lot of the places they have blower door test where they actually check for the heat transfer. And then it’s also in the design of your furnace, your hot water heater, different situations like that.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: So it can get pretty complex. The key to it is to get an understanding of it but we can help customers work for what makes sense for the energy efficiency codes but also what makes sense for comfort in the home and affordability towards your utility bill.

Interviewer: Right. Well, I want to talk about something which seems like it would play into this very much, that’s the actual wall thickness. Like what is the benefit of a 6-inch exterior wall as opposed to a 4-inch wall?

Steve Tuma: That has got a couple of answers to it. The main one is for structural purposes as a 6-inch is stronger than a 4-inch wall. In some cases like earthquake or hurricanes, that house really would not pass the structural codes unless it has got a 6-inch wall. Pretty much most people now are building with 6-inch walls. You get in some area of moderate climates where it’s just – it’s typical to go with a 4-inch wall. It’s just more customary. That doesn’t mean that they can’t take advantage of the better insulation. But ultimately, the 6-inch wall which is really 5 and a half inches deep, you can put more insulation in it.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: And different types of insulation will then minimize the heat or cool transfer from inside to the outside of the home.

Interviewer: Right. Well, while we are on that subject, can you run us through the different types of insulation and really how does one even choose between all these various types?

Steve Tuma: Well, there are a lot of different types of insulation. I’ll run through the main ones, which are batt insulation, blown-in insulation, and then rigid foam insulation.

So batt insulation is what everyone has kind of seen and it’s rolled, it’s fiberglass, it could be a bright pink color, it could be a yellow color. And that’s an insulation that comes in big rolls, a roll that you put into the house. It’s affordable and it will give generally an R-19 or an R-21 value in a 6-inch wall, the 5.5 of a 6-inch wall. So it’s affordable. It does a decent job. Then there’s the blown-in insulations, closed cell and open cell. Open cell, you get about an R-3.3 in one inch. Closed cell, you get about 6.5, an R-6.5 in an inch. So for easy math, if you have a 6-inch wall, you can get up to say an R-30, R-36 in that same wall. It costs a little more but the insulation value goes from say, about R-19 to R-20 to R-36. That’s pretty huge. And in climates where you’ve got big fluctuations or extremes in temperature, it makes a lot of sense.

Now, those foams cost more but I think the long term benefit is definitely there. They also help with iron filtration. Window is likely to blow through it.

The other one that’s very common is rigid insulation, kind of rigid foam. It’s like a 1-inch foam that comes in a 4×8 sheet that gets attached to the exterior of the home. And generally, they come in sheets of an R-5 or an R-10, and those can be used to take care of thermal bridging issues to cover over the studs and the walls so that – because if you look at a wall, a 2×6 wall, 16 inches on center, you’ve got insulation between the studs but the actual stud itself doesn’t have as much of an R factor. So depending upon the extreme situation or design, you may need to add some rigid foam. It’s pretty rare but occasionally people do it. So those are the main common types of insulation, the batt insulation, the blown-in insulation, or like a rigid foam insulation.

Interviewer: It’s also – there’s so much to know and I’m really glad that Landmark is around [Laughs] to help out. There’s so much to know and there are so many aspects of things.

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s the thing about it is we can review these details, the energy calculations with you so understand what’s going on because some customers know what they want and other customers want to do like a cost benefit thing, go through and analyze and say, “Hey, this is going to cost me $2,000 more but what is it going to mean?” If insulation is going to cost you a little bit more for better insulation and you live there for 10, 15 years, I would think you would get your money back very quickly.

Interviewer: Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve been running into people who are really talking about hot water systems and installing hot water systems in their new homes and some of them in their old homes. Is hot water system considered a part of the energy efficiency? Does that play into it at all?

Steve Tuma: Yes, it is. That’s a good question because most people think of energy efficiency of good windows and good insulation. But energy efficiency is also the fuel usage.

Generally, as far as energy calculations are done, gas or propane are more efficient than regular electric but some areas, they only have electric. Other areas, there are options. But in the extreme areas, the gas, natural gas or propane heaters are generally preferred.

But as far as the different options of how you heat the water, generally, you can do it with solar but if we are talking about something that’s run by fuel, the water tank is certain good and certain bad. The bad about it is say, you have a 50-gallon tank, you’re always warming 50 gallons.

Interviewer: Right, yeah.

Steve Tuma: Even if you don’t use it. So if you run away for the weekend, you’re heating 50 gallons. It’s sitting there all day. But I’ll come back to that because there’s a good side to that. The instant or kind of on-demand, so you turn the faucet on, it heats the water. You turn the faucet off, it doesn’t heat the water. For areas like California and other places that are making the energy guidelines a little more stringent, it’s almost a requirement to use instant hot water heaters. So that’s the benefit. I would say the trend is towards instant hot water heaters that are generally run by a gas, a fuel, and they work pretty well. So yes, it is consuming fuel to change the temperature. So it’s part of the energy efficiency.

Interviewer: On the past, I don’t want to be the dead horse here so to speak but we have been talking in the last couple of episodes about solar power but I think it’s important here. Could you explain how solar affects my energy usage?

Steve Tuma: Yeah. There are a couple of ways to do it. And one of them is we kind of just talked about the hot water. And I said hey there is good to hot water tanks.” And it’s solar because there’s photovoltaic in solar where it creates electric and then there are solar systems that heat water for your in-house usage. So during the day, it’s heating water and storing it in a tank, an insulated tank, so that you have the heated water at night. That’s where a hot water heater tank can be good on a solar system. But basically, the energy efficiency of solar if you are working in an area where you have to plug into electric, through your utility company if required, but the solar can be an extra source of power so that you don’t have to go through and then rely on the utility companies. So it’s very important then on how that’s all put together and to make sure it’s designed properly to make sure that the house has enough power to make it happen. In some cases, depending on the – your availability of direct sun, it might not be able to power the whole house but you are doing your best to cover it. A lot of places are pushing for solar to – or the house to be able to create its own power. So solar is becoming a very important component of that and that can affect your site plan, the orientation of the house on the land, and it can also affect the design of your home.

Interviewer: So it sounds like what you are saying is that solar design is something I should really be factoring into my overall home design if I’m wishing for a real efficiency.

Steve Tuma: Oh yes. Yeah. To really do it right, the solar panels have to be oriented to get the sun or be able to move to follow the sun. So we kind of review the sun on another podcast but basically, if you have a situation where the planes of your roof aren’t oriented towards the best sun, they are not going to be as efficient or provide as much electric as they possibly could. So what that might do is change the orientation of the house or change the roof design so that we can go through and make sure we get the maximum exposure to the sun. Now, this doesn’t mean that you’re going to get an ugly house. It doesn’t mean that someone is going to come in and say, “Hey, you have to do this. You’re going to live in an ugly house so that your solar panels work.” There are ways to design a house so it’s very attractive you can take advantage of the solar and make sure that everything works effectively. You still get the attractive home with the solar advantages.

Interviewer: And it would also seem to me that something else I think we’ve probably touched on very little in the past but not just the type of windows you put in your house but I guess the placement of those windows. That’s something that you should take into consideration I’m imagining when you’re in the design process.

Steve Tuma: Exactly.

Interviewer: Yeah. I would think that would be pretty smart too.

Steve Tuma: It’s the placement of the windows. Yeah, let’s get into that for a minute because it’s the placement of the windows to allow sun to come in but it’s also the placement of the window around overhangs too if you want to be protected from the sun. Like a porch in an old style farmhouse, it would let the breeze through but not necessarily the direct light. And then there are also situations where the location of the window can let light pass through to a thermal mass, say like a cement floor that could grab the heat during the day and then release it at night. So this is something where there could be a lot of involved work to do it. But we can help with it. We can make it happen. We don’t expect our customers to be solar geniuses. We can help with the design element for their particular lot, for their particular house. And this could be something if they choose to do it because they think it’s a good thing to do or if it’s something that’s mandated by their municipality or their building department. We can go through and get these design elements put together so that we end up with a house that is comfortable, affordable, and energy efficient.

A lot of people always look at the cost of the house as what it cost to buy it. There is really a reality of what it cost to maintain and live in it. So if you can have it and make it more comfortable and save on your utility bill, it’s pretty interesting. This just brings something up. I’m going to steal an extra couple of minutes here, is we have been doing a lot of design, the HVAC system design, the Manuals S, D, J that get into the heat loss calculations, the sizing of the furnace, and then the duct layout. A lot of old-time contractors are saying, “I need to put 80,000 or 100,000 BTU furnace in this house. Why you are telling me it’s only 60?” And the problem is they are old-time contractors. They do a good job. But they remember the codes of 20 years ago when insulation wasn’t as good and it wasn’t mandated. So back then when you had very little or limited insulation in a house, you needed a bigger furnace to heat the house because the house was losing heat. Now with a better insulation, you can use a smaller furnace, which therefore ends up using less fuel.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: It’s all kind of tied into it. So this energy efficiency situation is you can get pretty deep. It’s not just insulation like people talk about. It’s your hot water, it’s your heating, it’s your cooling, it’s also your comfort and your enjoyment of the home.

Interviewer: There’s such a vast amount of knowledge on all these subjects that you have. Whenever I talk to you, I’m always kind of blown away by how much you actually know. You’ve probably forgotten more than I’ll ever know about home building. But it’s the deep down sort of core of all of this is when you talk, you talk with a passion. And I know that you pass it on to the customers and information you – and the help that you try to give each and every potential customer at Landmark. And I’m imagining that customer service is pretty important for you guys.

Steve Tuma: It’s what it’s all about. The reality is, there are a lot of people who can draw plans up, that can help you build your house, but we happen to really, really enjoy it. And I think when someone enjoys their job, they do it better. It’s a better product. It sounds weird but enjoying your job, working with the customer that’s in tuned of what they want to build, the house will be better just because you are thinking it through. You are working it out. You are making it happen. And yeah, we are constantly working helping customers. If they call in in the morning, at night, on weekends, we do whatever we can to help them out and keep it going. And we are also proactive in making it happen for them.

Interviewer: Fantastic. Well, we are about out of time here on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But before we go, I want to give Steve a chance to let people know just how to get in touch with everybody over there at Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Tuma: The easiest way customers can look at it right now, just look at the web page and see what they can learn as at our web page at LHLC.com, it’s kind of the initials of Landmark Home Land Company, LHLC.com, we’ve got floor plans on there, videos, these podcast, different details to give people an idea of how we help. You can also call 800-830-9788 and Mike will answer the phone and he can work with you on the preliminary phases. That’s a key to it. We answer the phone. If for some reason you get a voicemail, we will call you back right away and get you taken care of. Communication is very important to us. You can also check social marketing out Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and you can email us – you can email me at [email protected] and we constantly watch our emails to take care of customers and make sure everything flows smoothly.

Interviewer: Awesome. And I just want to say that I would encourage our listeners to if you’ve only heard a few of these podcasts, go back and they are archived and you can find them and listen through all of the podcasts at your leisure and there’s so much information on there. I think it would be a worthwhile thing to do. So anyway, for Steve Tuma and myself, I want to thank everybody for listening and we will see you next time.

Steve Tuma: Thank you.

Learn the structural and architectural principles that ensure a new custom home stands strong against environmental forces and site constraints. We discuss how to select the right foundation system—comparing concrete slabs, raised crawlspaces, walkout basements, and elevated piers—based on local topography, flood zones, and soil conditions. Discover the structural equality of poured concrete versus reinforced concrete block (CMU) foundations, and why block is essential for remote or island sites inaccessible to ready-mix concrete trucks. Explore Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fire-hardening regulations, learning how Class A roofing, cement-mortared tile closures, and residential fire sprinklers protect structures from wind-borne embers traveling up to two miles. Finally, examine the superior load-bearing capacity of engineered lumber (LVL and glulams) and how to incorporate salvaged architectural elements, milled timber, and surplus windows into custom blueprints before factory production begins.

A: Concrete block foundations reinforced with internal steel rebar and solid grout cells achieve structural strength comparable to solid poured concrete walls. Block construction is particularly advantageous for tight building footprints, island properties, or remote parcels where heavy ready-mix concrete trucks cannot access the site, allowing materials to be staged and assembled in manageable units.

A: Wildfire embers can travel up to two miles ahead of a fire front and ignite vulnerable crevices, such as gaps beneath curved roof tiles, open attic vents, or exposed wood decking. WUI building codes mandate Class A fire-rated roofing, cement-sealed roof tile ends, fire-resistant fiber-cement siding, and boxed eaves to prevent airborne sparks from penetrating the building envelope.

A: Residential fire sprinkler heads activate within seconds of detecting rapid thermal rise, extinguishing or containing a blaze at its source before emergency crews can arrive. This localized activation suppresses heat and smoke within a single room, protecting occupants, preventing complete structural loss, and limiting water discharge strictly to the affected zone.

A: Engineered wood products like laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and glue-laminated (glulam) beams are manufactured by bonding wood layers together under high pressure, eliminating the natural knots, crowning, and grain defects found in solid-sawn trees. Size for size, they carry substantially heavier structural loads over longer open spans and offer a more sustainable manufacturing footprint than large old-growth timber.

A: Yes, custom CAD blueprints can be drafted around pre-purchased building elements, including liquidation windows, salvaged entry doors, antique interior partition walls, or reclaimed timber mantels. Exact rough openings, structural header spans, and mandatory safety glazing requirements (such as tempered glass near wet areas or floor levels) are integrated directly into the construction plans prior to manufacturing.

Interviewer: Hello everyone and welcome to episode 26 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. I’m here with the president and founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide for, well, 25 years now since 1993, Steve Tuma.

Steve, how are things going?

Steve Landmark: Excellent. Staying busy as always working with people to develop some very cool homes. A lot of our customers are working in areas that are very interesting whether geographically, weather-wise, building restriction-wise, historic areas, whatever it is. So it’s always a fun day taking care of each customer individually.

Interviewer: Yeah. It seems like a – over at Landmark, you like to be challenged and I think that’s part of the fun. So today I would like to utilize my time with Steve going over some aspects of panelized home building that we haven’t had all that much time in the past to go over and some things that I’m sure will pique his interest, some of the questions and inquiries that potential Landmark customers have brought to us. So if you’re ready Steve, let me throw some questions out there I think our audience might be keen on hearing you tackle.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, let’s do it.

Interviewer: Let’s start with the foundations. How do I know as a new home builder, how do I know what type of foundation is best for my home and building site? I mean do I need the basement type of foundation, crawlspace, what – their slabs, piers. It could get very daunting I think with all the choices.

Steve Landmark: Right. Well, there are different situations as to why you would choose one or the other. Sometimes you’ve got restrictions geographically. Sometimes there are situations of what people are used to building in an area, therefor they do it. Other times, you’ve got the flexibility of doing any one of those types of foundations. So how does it work? So let’s just – we’re basically going to review – I think you said basements, crawlspaces.

Interviewer: Slabs.

Steve Landmark: Slabs and then a pier system.

Interviewer: Right, yeah

Steve Landmark: So basements are – as everyone knows, it’s like an area underground. It can be a walkout if you’re on the side of a hill where that basement, instead of just being in enclosed areas, an open area. So if you’re like on a lakefront or on the side of a hill, you can have a drive-under garage or workshop, additional rooms, family room.

Interviewer: That would be kind of cool to have your garage underground.

Steve Landmark: Oh, people have done it and boats, you know – you know, sometimes it’s just recreational toys if you’re by a lake. That’s where you bring the canoe in and picnic tables, whatever it would be.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So basements can pretty much go anywhere where the ground conditions allow for it. You’ve got to check water tables, make sure the soils are right, make sure the terrain is right for that. Some people will say, “Well, you never put a basement in California.”

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Landmark: Because …

Interviewer: You don’t see many.

Steve Landmark: Well, it depends on where you’re at because if you’re in the areas with mountains, you might have a house that steps out of the side of a hill and in a sense the basement is a walkout basement. Someone might say, “Oh, that’s a three-level home.” Well, in a weird sense, it’s a two-level home with a walkout basement. So those are generally made from cement or block foundations. We can design and engineer them all. So then there’s also the crawlspace which is made like a basement. It’s just not as deep.

Interviewer: A lot of people have crawlspaces, right?

Steve Landmark: Right. They come – crawlspaces, raised foundations, stem wall foundations, whatever it would be, and that basically raises the home above the ground, so that there’s space below the wood floor system of the main living level on the ground.

So you can run plumbing duct work done there and that would work and sometimes people just don’t want basements. Other times they want crawlspaces. Now the example of a changing situation is Florida. A lot of people were building on slabs. But there are areas of small hills, but we’re finding a lot more people want to do a crawlspace in Florida for energy efficiency reasons and different construction costs. So then there’s the slab which is literally just a cement slab put on a flat pat of ground.

Interviewer: Real common here in California.

Steve Landmark: Right.

Interviewer: And it’s a situation where generally it’s considered to be the least expensive and then there are pier situations which you might see in flood areas or hurricane areas where a house is actually lifted above piers, pilings. There’s a variety of different words for the size and how they’re used. So sometimes people will use the pier system to be environmentally-friendly because they’re not disturbing the soil as much.

Steve Landmark: Right.

Interviewer: Other times, you’re in an area where there might be a little bit of water flood situation along a river or whatever and then there are other situations where – you know, we will take South Florida where there are hurricane situations and the piers lift the house above the storm surge. So it’s a – there are different reasons. People probably wouldn’t put a house on 10-foot piers in the Midwest unless they were along a river where there’s flooding or we’ve done some on the East Coast. You can do them in California where people have done them – or I shouldn’t say California but any mountain area.

Interviewer: OK.

Steve Landmark: You know, where people have kind of cantilevered a house over some land. So this is a situation where we can work with customers. I’m adding a little bit of complexity to it there by saying, hey, you could use them in different places by – under different conditions. But generally in the Southwest, parts of California, slabs are generally used unless you’re in a hilly area. Then you might get in a crawlspace or basement. In the Midwest, the Plains states, there are basements, crawlspaces, slabs and occasional pier home. On the East Coast, it’s generally basements or crawlspaces and sometimes slabs as you get farther south. In the south, we’ve done everything, the slabs, crawlspaces, basements and piers if along a flood area. The key to it is that we can work with you to find out what is best. So we don’t expect the customer to know hey, I definitely need to do this or that. Most customers have an idea of what they want. We just work with them to find out the situations. For example you take a crawlspace. In some areas, they could be just a couple of feet tall. Other places, they need to be four feet tall or six feet tall. So there’s a lot of work that we would do to make sure that it fits on the topography and works in the requirements for the building department.

Interviewer: Right. So while we’re talking about foundations, how would I know if maybe it’s best used poured cement or – I notice a lot of people building foundations out of cement blocks? I mean what’s better? What’s worse? What is the difference?

Steve Landmark: Well, what’s interesting about it is a lot of the material choice sometimes is just derived by what’s common in the area. Some areas, block is just more prevalent. Other areas, it’s poured. There are benefits of each one. We’ve had customers build on islands and if they’re small little islands and inland lakes, it’s easier to put cement blocks on your boat and get them across than it is to bring a cement truck or hand-mix it.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: But the reality of most of these is people seem to have a preference or their contractor will have a preference. To us, the end result is pretty much the same. We will design for what makes sense. If you need an engineer-designed, stamped foundation design, we can do that as well. Now that being said, there are different reasons for each one in engineering. But basically it’s kind of what’s done in your community is typically what we do. Now a basement can be poured cement or blocks, so can crawlspaces, so can pier systems. Even slabs, some slabs have stem walls or footers below the grade that will need a poured wall or a block below it. It kind of depends on a variety of situations with the land, what’s common in the area. So someone doesn’t necessarily need to know, hey, I definitely want to go with a black foundation. If they have a preference, that’s fine. But that’s something that we can work through them, with them and the design element.

Interviewer: Right. Now I’m just curious. When using cement block for your foundation, now that block has to be joined together in some fashion, correct?

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s generally mortared together. But you’re bringing up a very strong point because sometimes you’ve seen block walls that are older and the blocks seem to be separate.

Interviewer: Exactly.

Steve Landmark: So that’s why you want to make sure it’s designed right. Some of them are filled every so many courses. There’s rebar in them and reinforcement to hold them together. So block walls can actually be made just as strong as the port cement walls.

Interviewer: Oh, there you go.

Steve Landmark: You know, because of different types of blocks, different types of materials reinforcement and situations like that. Only in extreme situations have I seen engineers say, “Hey, you must use this or this should be done.”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: But a lot of it really comes down to just cost in your particular area or what’s common practice.

Interviewer: So let’s talk about something that’s rearing its head a lot, sort of the new white elephant in the room. Let’s talk about these wild land urban interface or WUI. Can you go through that with us?

Steve Landmark: Yes. What that is, is basically the interaction of a home and fire. It seems in the last few years we’re hearing about bigger fires, record-breaking fires, more disasters and fires and it’s something where building departments are getting tuned into it. One of the leaders in it is the State of California where they’ve done the wild and urban interface and it’s a pretty in-depth process but in summary, they basically want to make sure that your land is accessible so that you don’t have a bunch of materials that are flammable sitting around your house. You know, just brush, wood piles, whatever it may be. They want to make sure that if there was an emergency situation, that the first responders can get to your house, so they would rather not have big walls of hedges or different things so people couldn’t get through. Then a big portion of it is just the types of materials, class A shingles that are fire-resistant, cement board siding, the way your eaves are enclosed, different details, the types of materials that are used for decks. It’s always interesting to me because people think – and I used to think this until I really, really got into it that people were worried about fire spreading, just that wall of fire going through a neighborhood from house to house to house. But then all of us have seen the news where there’s a house that’s burned and 20 feet away, there’s a house that is unburned.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And you sit there and go, “How could this happen?”

Interviewer: Right. It seems weird.

Steve Landmark: So I was checking into this and I was like …

Interviewer: Who has got the tarot cards and doing the voodoo to predict their …?

Steve Landmark: Well, yeah, you’re trying to think that. It’s like is this lucky? Should that guy go buy a lottery ticket now? It’s kind of a situation. But then I heard this thing that just – it was mind-blowing that a burning ember can travel two miles. So when you see those things where there’s a couple of houses that are OK and a couple – you know, one or two houses in the middle that are burned, it’s quite possible that there was a fire a distance and one of these burning embers goes and lands on the unlucky house.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Well, if that unlucky house has somewhere for this ember to sit and burn and turn into a fire, like under a roof shingle and a vent and a wood siding, suddenly that individual house burns and the neighboring ones don’t. So it’s not just a wall of fire that you have to worry about. It’s that individual little spark here and there and that’s the reason for having certain types of roof systems. I was talking to someone and they wanted to build a house in Malibu, California and we’re talking about tile roof systems. The old tile roofs would just be tiles laying on top of each other.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Well, theoretically, an ember could get in between the tiles, go sit on the wood sheathing of the roof system and start a fire and you wouldn’t even see it until it’s too late. So now a lot of tiles, they get filled in with cement so that the ember can’t kind of lodge in between the tiles and a lot of the – well, the metal roofs are generally resistant. The asphalt class A and class B are resistant where the fire – the embers won’t really catch on top of the roof shingles. So that’s the situation. Now what’s interesting is a lot of other states or municipalities or counties, building departments, are adopting California’s – a lot of places in the Western part of the country are adopting California’s WUI because they’re as prone to fires as any other place.

Interviewer: Right. Let’s – while we’re on the subject of fires, let’s kind of get your answer on this. Why are some building departments now requiring fire sprinklers in new homes? That seems to be something that has been popping up over the last few years a lot.

Steve Landmark: Right. What we noticed a few years ago, five, ten years ago is that some areas were requesting sprinklers and areas where the fire department couldn’t get to right away in the rural areas and then California and other places have adopted it where any new house has to have it even if you’re in a populated area, even if the fire hydrant is right in front of your house and people would say, “Hey, what’s the point of that?” So I did a little research into it, talked to some of the designers and the theory is that if your house caught on fire and the fire department was notified, it could take a few minutes for the fire department to get to your house, get set up and start spraying your house down.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: In the meanwhile, in that few minutes, the fire is spreading. The theory – and I think it has been proven. So it’s a little more than a theory is that the sprinklers catch the rise of the heat temperature and therefore they’re able to respond quicker.

Interviewer: Oh, OK.

Steve Landmark: So if you had a sprinkler system throughout your house and say something happened. For some reason, your office garbage can catches on fire. That zone would catch the fire or the burning, the smoking garbage can and then put the fire out in a fraction of the time compared to the response time of even the best fire departments.

Interviewer: Right, that makes sense.

Steve Landmark: So what’s interesting is a lot of people would say, “Well, then my carpet is wet or my dress gets wet,” and it’s kind of an interesting reaction and I agree with them. But it’s better than your house being gone.

Interviewer: I think I would put up with a wet carpet over my house being gone.

Steve Landmark: Right. So it’s a situation where that system has to be designed to make sure there’s enough water flow. Make sure there’s by zone. So that if one sprinkler head goes off, it doesn’t set the whole house. So when the codes tighten up like this, there’s a little resistance because it’s – it costs them money to put these in. But I think if you look at the safety situation that happens, whether you’re home or not at home, it’s a pretty good situation to have. So all of California, any new home in California needs them. In other parts of the country, they’re either suggested or they’re mandated.

Interviewer: OK. We’re going to change the subject here from fires to – the word “engineer” or “engineered,” we hear that – we hear you talk a lot about – that word comes up a lot on the show. So I’m going to ask you a few questions about that if you don’t mind. Like what’s the difference between an engineer-stamped plan and regular building plans? I would really like to know that.

Steve Landmark: It’s basically the justification and the calculation for the design. So all of us have seen regular building plans that will say, “Hey, here’s a house. Here’s a certain dimension. Here’s what the floor system is like. Here’s what the roof system is like. Here’s how the walls are framed,” and so on and so forth. It’s generally accepted information. A set of engineer-stamped plans are plans that have the documentations, calculations to show why the foundation walls are strong, why the floor system is strong, why the walls, why the roof systems are designed to withstand the particular situations.

Now if someone is building in a place where there aren’t really any extreme situations, huge snow loads, high wind speeds, earthquakes, expansive soils, the building department won’t always request engineer-stamped plans. But in the case of say a – say Lake Tahoe, Leadville, Colorado where there are huge snow loads, anywhere in Florida because of the hurricanes, almost anywhere in California, pretty much everywhere in California and the West Coast where the earthquake faults are. They want to know that your house is designed properly. So an engineer goes through there and makes sure the materials are of the proper strength and also the connections of the materials. Steve, it’s – like in the case of wood, a two-by-six in an earthquake generally doesn’t snap. It’s the connection where that two-by-six attaches to another component of the home.

Interviewer: Right, right.

Steve Landmark: That’s what breaks. So you need to make sure those connections are right. They’re nailed together right. The sheathing is put on right to give it strength. A lot of people don’t understand it. They think, well, engineering is just taking any set of plans, going to an engineer, having a cup of coffee with them and giving them a few hundred dollars and he stamps the plans. That isn’t necessarily engineering. In our opinion, structural engineering is the actual justification of the design and the stamp is the certification by that particular engineer to make sure that the home’s structure is significant to meet or exceed the design criteria for the code application and the place.

So I want to differentiate something here because a lot of people generally in the southeast say, “Well, this engineer said they will stamp my plans for a couple of hundred bucks. I just have to over and they will do it.” That’s not our opinion of engineering and we’re finding less and less engineers do that because of insurance reasons, liability and the building departments are standing up and saying, “No, we want to know that you calculated this.”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So in some cases, you can – we just finished a house that had 126 pages of calculations justifying why a beam is a certain strength, why are connections done a certain way, why a wall needs to be a shear wall. So that’s the key element and this really separates it. There are a lot of plan services online that say, “Hey, just take your plans to an engineer and they will stamp them.” You know, maybe 10 years ago, not in today’s climate. You need to have a set of plans that an engineer – was involved with from the – through the design process to understand what’s going on and there’s likely to be a lot of situations. By the way, engineering can affect the architectural design of your roof or of your house. Your roof system, your walls, the spans, the open areas, the sizes of windows, different details like that. I don’t want to add complexity to it but I – we take it seriously and we want to make sure the house is designed right.

Interviewer: Sure, yeah. OK. Well, while we’re on this word “engineer” and “engineered,” let’s talk about engineered lumber materials. Now run us through that. What exactly are engineered lumber materials?

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s kind of interesting. Let’s take the – a simple two-by-ten. A two-by-ten is a natural material that’s typically pine, some type of pine, Douglas fir, spruce, whatever it may be for whatever part of the country that you are in and that will have a certain strength or design criteria capability. You know, it can span so much and carry so much weight. Well, what has happened over the course of time and building evolution moving forward is they’ve determined that they could create man-made materials of the same size that are stronger.

Interviewer: Oh, OK.

Steve Landmark: What’s interesting about these is in theory, some of these are greener materials because they’re able to take small pieces of wood, bind them together to create one big piece of wood. So you don’t need to cut big trees down to make –

Interviewer: Are they able to use recycled wood and things like that for this process?

Steve Landmark: Sometimes it’s recycled. Sometimes it’s just smaller pieces of wood. So the example is in the old days, if you had a beam that was six inches by twenty inches tall, you had to find a tree that was straight and you could cut that out of. Now they can use small pieces, remnants of wood, bind it together to create a six-by-twenty beam. It’s greener and it’s stronger.

Interviewer: That’s awesome. That’s great.

Steve Landmark: So one of them – the common and easy to understand ones are LVO, which is laminated veneer lumber and it almost looks like a very thick piece of plywood if we were to look at the profile of it. Then there’s glulam which is glue lamination. If you looked at the side one and look like a butcher block. So if someone took a bunch of two-by-sixes and laminated them together, so you end up with those beams. They’re using – they’re a greener process but size for size, they’re stronger. So that’s what engineer –

Interviewer: Wow, that’s a great option. That’s awesome.

Steve Landmark: Right. So instead of having it cut down, a 100-foot tree to get a certain size beam, they can use smaller trees or shavings from other parts of it to create those beams. The key to it is they’re affordable, they’re stronger, they’re greener and they have better performance values.

Interviewer: I’ve seen people do this thing with – I think I know what’s going on now. So there’s this – there are companies that make these faux wood. They’re made out of resin. They’re like a long block and they stick them over wood and it looks like a 100-year-old tree. That’s pretty awesome.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, that’s what’s happening because an engineered piece of wood – say you had a real rustic home. You’re building up in the north woods or in some mountain area and you wanted a big, open space. But you didn’t want an engineered beam. A lot of people are doing the faux wood or they’re taking a simpler home and giving it that rustic design. I think a podcast or two ago, we talked about the finishing materials.

So you could take a very basic home and dress it up and give it that large log home type look without going through the expense of true logs and all the issues with log maintenance. It’s a good little diversion. It’s interesting what can be done with the materials that weren’t available 20 years ago.

Interviewer: Yeah. You’re being environmentally-friendly while you’re creating a pretty cool look in the house.

Steve Landmark: Right, and you’re also making the building processes much more simple.

Interviewer: Well, speaking of building a cool-looking house, I wanted to ask this question in the last podcast and I kind of – just kind of slipped by me. So I will ask it now. Let’s say I’m a guy that’s going to be building a house and I start piecing things together before the walls are even up. I’ve gone out and I bought cabinets and I’ve purchased doors, windows, other items that I’m just building my dream house in my head sort of with all of the elements. How would I use all this stuff sitting in my garage in boxes in my new home? Can Landmark help me kind of put that together?

Steve Landmark: Yes. We actually have a few projects like that right now. Sometimes what happens is people want to control their budgets. So they see liquidation sales or they see a special deal, you know, of places getting rid of a sample cabinet or for some reason they just have a bunch of windows and they want to work it into the design. We can do that. We’re working on a project right now like that in Colorado where this customer has some huge picture windows that he wants to put in the dorm rooms of a chalet. So we work with them and what’s interesting about that is – let’s take windows for example. We’ve got to make sure that they work right because in some cases, they need to be tempered glass. Other times, they could be regular glass.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: But yes, if you have materials, it will happen. We had one customer. There was a building that was some 1800s bank building that was getting demolished in the Dakotas and somehow they were driving by it and it was an old bank. So they actually bought the walls, the old –

Interviewer: That’s great.

Steve Landmark: And they put it in a – like a little kind of party room in their house.

Interviewer: That’s great.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. So they were able to incorporate that. So we’ve had people say, hey, the husband, he builds his own cabinets. We put them in or they run into some liquidation situation where they’re able to get windows at a fraction of the cost. We’re all up for that. We can go through and do it and a lot of people are doing reclaim materials. Like you just talked about the beams, the full beams. Well, some people will go through and find some old barn wood or something –

Interviewer: Right. That stuff is great.

Steve Landmark: A real custom older look. So we’re able to do things like that. Now in some point, you don’t want to go reclaim insulation or different situations. There might be issues with that. But in general, finishing materials. If there are different wood floors that someone wants to put together or they want to create their own trim from wood off the land. We’ve actually had people do that where they go through and they might have to clear a few trees. Well, they’ve actually milled it and use that material for the inside of their house.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So if someone has the desire to do that, I’m all up for it. It’s just really, really cool to see a family go through and really personalize the house, get the house that they want.

Interviewer: Yeah. How fun is that? That’s great.

Steve Landmark: No, it’s amazing. It’s pretty insane what some people come up with and what they put together. So designing the house isn’t just putting the windows so you have a view of the lake or the mountain or the view that you want to take care of. It’s the interior finishes as well and sometimes when there’s a story behind the wood trim or the wood that you made the countertop out of, it’s pretty interesting.

Interviewer: Yeah, that’s good stuff. I love to see the whole repurposing thing going on. It’s really exciting. So we’re about out of time here on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show and I want to thank all of you for listening in once again. But before we go, as always, I want to give Steve a chance to let people know just how to contact everybody over there at Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Landmark: Well, thanks. The quickest and easiest way, you could do it on your smartphone or right on your computer or is at our website, www.lhlc.com. Sometimes people think I’m saying “A” but it’s LHLC, like Landmark Home Land Company. You can look at our website at any time that’s convenient for you. You can also call us at 1-800-830-9788 and Mike will answer the phone. You can review your whole project, talk about the land, talk about the financing, talk about design. You can also email  [email protected] and I’m always available at [email protected].

We’re also on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, a variety of social platforms that the people can see, look at pictures, get ideas. The most important thing is we are available. We are interested in your project individually to find out what it is that you need and how we can help you put it together. We like taking the time to make sure that every customer is kind of helped individually to make sure that they get the support that they need.

Interviewer: And as always, I want to let everybody know that at Landmark, customer service is what they’re known for, along with building great houses.

Steve Landmark: Oh, yeah, cool ones. Let’s put it together so it’s a – I look at it this way. When you’re coming home from work after a hard day of work, you should pull up to your house and go, “This is cool. I’m glad I did it.” That’s what we want to do. We want to help people get the house that they want.

Interviewer: Fantastic! All right. So for Steve Tuma and myself, thank you for joining us here on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show and we will see you next time.

Steve Landmark: Well, thank you.

Read about the differences of prefab homes, kit homes, panelized homes, modular homes and manufactured homes.

Learn how to navigate exterior finishes, structural floor systems, and roof load engineering when personalizing a custom panelized kit home. We discuss the structural differences and cost trade-offs between dimensional lumber (2x10s), engineered I-joists, and open-web floor trusses, showing how open webs eliminate drop-down ceiling soffits in walkout basements by routing HVAC ducts and plumbing lines directly through the floor structure. Discover how roof dead loads and live snow loads are calculated across varied elevations in mountainous terrain, why heavy tile roofing requires reinforced trusses, and how detailed site plans capture utility tie-ins, zoning setbacks, and topography for municipal permit approval. Details on kit home site planning.

A: Solid 2×10 joists require large mechanical ductwork and drainage plumbing to hang below the floor system, creating low soffits that reduce basement ceiling heights down to seven feet. Open-web floor trusses feature open interior webbing that allows HVAC ducts, plumbing pipes, and electrical wiring to run directly through the joist space, maintaining full, flush eight- or nine-foot finished ceiling heights across wide open spans.

A: Standard dimensional lumber typically spans only 12 to 14 feet before requiring an intermediate load-bearing beam and vertical steel posts. Engineered I-joists can span 20 to 30 feet continuously without intermediate support columns, allowing owner-builders to design clear-span recreational rooms, underground garages, or large basement workshops free of obstructive posts.

A: Concrete and clay roof tiles carry a significantly higher dead load per square foot than standard lightweight asphalt shingles or standing-seam metal. Structural engineers must increase the lumber dimensions, top-chord bracing, and plate connections of the pre-manufactured trusses to carry the permanent structural weight of the tile without causing the roof ridge to sag.

A: In mountainous regions, ground snow accumulation increases dramatically with elevation, meaning two lots in the exact same zip code can experience drastically different winter forces. Municipalities enforce elevation-specific ground snow-load formulas, requiring engineers to calculate roof capacities ranging from 50 pounds per square foot at lower valley elevations to over 150 pounds per square foot on higher alpine parcels.

A: Beyond basic property lines and structural setbacks, zoning departments require certified site plans to pinpoint the exact entry paths for electrical service, gas supply lines, and domestic water lines, as well as municipal sewer or septic connections. Plans must also show the proposed driveway slope, easements, and adjacent neighbor utilities to ensure safe clearance during excavation.

Interviewer: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 25 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me in the studio as usual is the president and founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993, Steve Tuma.

Steve, how are things over at Landmark?

Steve Landmark: Very well. We’re working hard taking care of a lot of customers, developing their personalized and customized home plans so that they can build a home that they want and make sure it fits on the land, make sure it’s easy for them to get building permits and make sure it goes through inspections properly.

Interviewer: So business as usual over at Landmark.

Steve Landmark: Working away.

Interviewer: So we’ve talked a lot in the past about the panelized home building process from the ground up and one thing we haven’t gone over all that much are the finishing items for a home building project. You know, things such as cabinets, doors, windows, siding, other details like that. When a Landmark customer comes to you and they’re looking at designs and they want to customize one of the Landmark designs, how do those fixtures and items come into the process?

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s very interesting because we are able to let the customer choose the finishing items. What we mean by finishing items are the siding, the windows, the cabinets, the fixtures, the floors, the trim. You know, the kind of details that you see. We supply the plans and then the wood structure, which you generally don’t see after the home is built. But our customers like to personalize it and that’s the advantage. Sometimes they might – you know, people would go to build and there’s a choice of – you know, like Henry Ford. There’s a choice of everything as long as you pick from this one item, which really isn’t a selection. In our situation, with Landmark, people can choose their own flooring, their own siding, their own faucets, the plumbing fixtures, counter tops, cabinets. So there’s almost an endless variety that they can choose from.

The nice thing is we can go draw all those details on the plans so that when they’re working with their plumber or electrician, carpeting people, flooring people, cabinet people, they know what’s required. They know how much space they have for cabinets. They know what areas are going to be wood floors, what areas are going to be carpet, what areas are going to be tile and whatever it is. That’s really the bottom line so that dollar for dollar, the people get the house that they want and that’s a key element. So we can put the details on the plans. Sometimes homeowner’s associations need to review the exterior look. Other times it’s just so that customers understand what they want to put on the home. They make final decisions and then it’s clear and the plan is set for the contractor. So it’s very clear. The plans are actually like a communication device when you’re getting estimates that would show, hey, you want a cement board siding or you want a metal roof or whatever the details are, so that it’s very clear. So that – I call it personalizing your home and customizing is also a good word for it. But you can have the colors you want, the materials you want, the look you want, the finishes that you want in the interior and exterior of the home as you choose. That’s pretty cool.

Interviewer: You know, that all makes sense. But now the tough part. After we had all the fun of figuring out which windows and doors we want, what about the nuts and bolts like plumbing, the electric, the heating and air conditioning systems? So how do those get designed into the home and installed?

Steve Landmark: Well, we’re capable – that’s kind of three items there and they’re similar but also separate. We can do the plumbing layouts and within that, it is kind of nuts and bolts. You know, no one is really too concerned about the actual piping or sewer line in the home. But the faucets, the toilets, the tubs, the showers, are there any special use, any wheelchair-accessible or mobility-restricted types or are they just – some people want something a little more styling. Other people want something a little simple, more affordable. So that we could put the details on the plans. But they could work with their actual plumbing supplier, whether it’s the contractor or if they’re installing the plumbing themselves. They can go to the plumbing supply house and pick out the faucets and details that they need.

Now also within plumbing, there are some selections in the nuts and bolts. Some people want a water tank heating system. Other people are going for the more on-demand heating systems, which are actually more energy-efficient. So electric systems. Again, people generally just install what’s required for code for the actual wiring, but they might have different selections of switches, dimmers. A lot of these are getting into smart home situations.

Interviewer: Oh, right, yeah.

Steve Landmark: So if someone wanted to, they could design their smart home situation and we can supply the set of plans and work with them to make sure that everything is clear. So on electric, it’s kind of more simple. But people can decide where they want yard lights, if they want computer cabling, ceiling fans.

We’ve got a lot of customers with different types of hobbies. Some people work on cars. Some people have wood shops. Some people are – audio files or they’ve got an editing base or different situations. So they may need – have different electrical requirements.

Interviewer: Right, right.

Steve Landmark: So we could design that into the home and not just supply what’s their code, but also design what they will need to make the house more enjoyable for themselves.

Interviewer: Would that include like if I put a Jacuzzi in the back? Would that be like all of that stuff kind of goes in at the same time?

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s exactly right because that’s – if it’s heated with gas, there’s probably some gas piping. If it’s heated electric, there would be an electric circuit brought out there and also in some places where there are green codes, they’re requiring plugins for electric vehicles.

Interviewer: Ah-ha! There you go.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. So that’s something maybe not as many people are concerned with now but I – you know, if you look at the wave, it seems that there’s more and more of them on the road. So there are – and that’s where we’re able to work with people because the idea is to make the house yours.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: I think the last one you asked about was HVAC, heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Again a lot of people look at that as a – oh, that’s just keeping me warm. It’s not exciting. It’s not a fireplace. It’s not a window overlooking a great view. But the reality is there’s a lot of filtration systems, humidifiers, higher efficiency heating systems and cooling systems and then a lot of people are getting into the mini split systems as well. So there are a couple of selections there on what would work. The key to it is we can help design. You don’t have to know how to do the manuals S, D and J for your house. You don’t have to know the electric code. You can just say, “Hey, we’re going to have an electric car. We need this here. I happen to have my home arc welder. I need this.” You know, we cook a lot on the island. We want a couple of sockets or hey, we need sockets with USB connections, whatever it may be. We can go through and …

Interviewer: Pretty detailed stuff.

Steve Landmark: Well, homes are a little different now. The dining rooms are disappearing and being replaced by game rooms and home theaters. Extra bedrooms or areas and lofts are becoming home offices. Well, if you look at the power requirements, people working at home offices with computers, printers, multiple screens, radio, phone systems, whatever it may be, you need a lot of sockets and the proper power in one particular location. So it’s easier to install it when you’re building it than it is to add it afterwards. So it’s very easy to take care of upfront.

Interviewer: There’s something you hit on just a little bit. I want to backtrack just a little bit because we all know what smart phones are. But you had mentioned smart homes and I’m sure there’s a lot of people who are wondering, “Well, what the hell is that?” What is a smart home?

Steve Landmark: Well, basically it’s automated systems. A lot of people have heard of the big brand names, the Googles, the Alexas and stuff like that. So theoretically you could walk in your house and they could sense you and say, “Oh, this is Steve walking in. He likes the house 72 degrees. He likes classic rock playing and he likes lighting like this.”

So other people just have simple things as far as being able to make a voice command and the light would come on or come off and we’re working with some people that have mobility restrictions. So imagine if you were someone that lived by yourself and you worked hard to get out of your wheelchair or get into the bed and then you sit there and scratch your head and double guess yourself and say, “Did I lock my front door?”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: How much fun is it to get out, roll over to the door and to find out that it is locked? You know, compared to just being able to say …

Interviewer: That alone is worth it.

Steve Landmark: Right. And then other people would like it just for security systems, yard lighting. You know, that’s an evolving business. So we can work with people if they choose to design a system like that.

Interviewer: There’s another thing we haven’t really hit on as much and it’s kind of a nuts and bolts thing. We talk a lot about the overall design and how much fun designing a home is. But what about insulation? Let’s say I’m building a home and I don’t know. Is Landmark able to let me know the best insulation for me, for my home, for my area?

Steve Landmark: Yeah. We can help you with that and the key element in that is the theoretical calculations with prescriptive guidelines, risk check or actual calculations to show the energy efficiency of your home. In some states, it’s very simple. They just say, hey, put R-21 in the wall, R-48 in the ceiling and that’s good insulation and maybe that is good. But there are always ways if someone wanted to get a little more involved say to the situation of – like the State of California does where they actually get into the type of roofing materials, the color of the roofing materials, the type of siding, the orientation of your home.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And that can greatly affect it because the simple way to put the concept across is all of us have stood by a big glass window facing south on a sunny day. It seems that the heat is magnified and – or the sun power gets magnified through the glass and creates heat. Well, in summer, that’s kind of our – sorry, in winter, that’s kind of a help. But in summer, it might be heating up and it’s fighting against your air conditioning system. So the sun is creating heat. Your air conditioning system is trying to cool. It’s creating a higher utility bill.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Well, there are certain things that can be done in the design of that to prevent or minimize that occurrence to keep to it. So I’m kind of dancing around saying, hey, the insulation is important but understanding where the insulation needs to go is the important part. Sometimes a lot of people are surprised when they find out – if their basement insulation or slab across base insulation can be the difference of passing or failing. A lot of people think hey, insulation in walls and roofs and having the right windows. So these calculations can get into the efficiencies of furnaces and air conditioning systems and they can also get into the details, the performance ratings for windows as well as the actual insulation.

So we go a little bit further to make sure that the home as a unit performs well.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Because there kind of really isn’t any sense to putting great insulation in your walls and then having a window that performs very badly.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And defeating the purpose.

Interviewer: A quarterback is only as good as his receivers and vice versa.

Steve Landmark: Exactly.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. It’s a team. It’s like a chain. You know, the weakest link determines the strength of the chain. So we want to keep all the links solid.

Interviewer: Now we’ve talked in the past a little bit about floor systems and flooring in general. But how would I know what type of floor system should be in my new home? You know, two-by-tens, I-joist, floor trusses, all of those. It gets a little bit confusing at times and I’m sure Landmark has a lot of answers for that.

Steve Landmark: Right, and there’s a variety of different reasons. Like you mentioned, dimensional wood, two-by-tens and two-by-twelves. There are reasons for those. Engineered I-joist, there are other reasons and open web floor trusses, there are other reasons. So let’s just start with the benefits of each one. The dimensional wood, two-by-tens and two-by-twelves are generally the most affordable, but they only can span such a distance. So for example under certain conditions, the two-by-tens, they would span 13 feet. But if you wanted to have a room that was say 26 feet wide, like a basement say, say your basement was 26 feet wide, you have to have a beam down there so that one group would span 13 feet to the beam and then the other one would span 13 feet to the opposite side of the foundation. It’s affordable. It’s conventional. It has been used forever. It works. But if you’re in a crawlspace, that makes sense. If you’re in a basement, it can make sense as well, but people have to realize you can’t cut a big hole through a two-by-ten and run a duct through it.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So you’re going to have to hang your ducts below it. So if you have a basement, it’s going to – you’re going to have a soffit or a lowered ceiling. So in the case of an eight-foot wall – and I’m simplifying the math here. If you have an eight-foot wall, you might have a duct come down a foot. That gives you a seven-foot ceiling in certain places.

Interviewer: Oh, right. I see that.

Steve Landmark: Now if your basement is a storage space or something that is just kind of a – used here and there, it’s OK. But if you were to have a family room down there with a big screen TV and a pool table and recreation areas, people might find that the eight-foot ceiling is more conventional. So with using two-by-tens, they could raise the height of the basement floor or wall I mean, going from an eight-foot wall to a nine-foot wall and then the clearances would work. So that’s the bottom line on those. I-joist can span. They’re an engineered material. They can span farther. Sometimes 20, 30 feet is very reasonable for those items. So you could then take this 26-foot basement not of beams and minimize the post in the basement.

Interviewer: Ah, OK.

Steve Landmark: OK. So suddenly – Steve, you’ve been in people’s game room downstairs. They’re having a big Super Bowl party. The pool table is going and that post is always in the wrong place.

Interviewer: Exactly.

Steve Landmark: No matter where you put it, there’s that shot. You’re at the pool table. You’re about to win and uh-oh, the post is in the way. So with I-joist, you can have bigger spans creating bigger areas. But they also have limitations on the size of hole you can cut through them. So in the case of duct work or larger drainage pipes, you would have to put them – hang them below the I-joist.

Interviewer: Oh, it makes sense.

Steve Landmark: Now floor trusses work similar to I-joist. They could span farther but a floor truss has open webs in it. So you can pass duct work and plumbing and electric through them. So it gives you that finished ceiling height. So – or it’s a higher ceiling height and that’s the nice thing about it is it gives the flexibility. So there’s good and bad to each one. Cost-wise, the dimensional wood is generally the least expensive. I-joist will go up a little bit and floor trusses will go up a little bit beyond that. It’s hard to give an exact dollar amount because it depends on the design point loads above it and a variety of other details. But for a typical home to go from two-by-tens to floor trusses, you might add a couple or a few thousand dollars. Someone might say, “Oh, that’s a lot of money.” I would say, “Hey, if you’ve got a basement and a walkout basement and you can make it wide open, for relatively a little amount of money, you’ve got a lot of open space”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And that’s something to consider. So suddenly your walkout basement becomes more usable instead of a basement with a forest of poles. You got open areas and in some cases, people will put drive-under garages, workshops, brought their boats in there or kayaks. You know, their picnic – that they put it inside and some families, that’s where they have big tables for family get-togethers. You know, the holidays or birthdays, you have 20 or 30 people over. It’s one big dining hall. So it’s – we can help with those ideas, asking how they want to use the home, talk to our structural engineers to make sure that the design is right and then go forward to help. But that’s one of those things. People don’t think about it until you’re in your basement wanting to use it.

Interviewer: Yeah. If you move those posts, then your pool game goes up.

Steve Landmark: Right.

Interviewer: So we’ve talked about flooring. Let’s go as they say from the ground up. What type of roof should I put on my new home? What can I put? I mean there are so many choices it seems. Asphalt shingles, metal, on and on.

Steve Landmark: Tile.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Landmark: No. It’s – sometimes the roof is a budget situation where people go with a simpler three-tab asphalt shingle. That’s probably considered the least expensive. People will have asphalt shingles that are architectural shingles. They have more of a texture to them. A lot more people are going with metal roofs and then in certain parts of the country, tile is very important. It’s part of the architectural design. So we can design in any type of roof system that someone likes. On flat roofs, there’s a lot of rubber roof systems. But what basically – I think most people have an idea of what they want. If someone was going to do a Mediterranean design or a Southwest design, they would probably go with the tile roof. The metal roofs can go on a lot of different homes as well as the asphalt. Now in some places, there are reasons to have different roofs like fire resistance. It’s the ratings of fire resistance. So all of us have heard about the fires in the West and so there might be reasons to make sure – or there definitely are reasons to make sure that you’ve got a …

Interviewer: Yeah, of course, of course.

Steve Landmark: But as far as the different types, we just need to know to make sure that the roof structure is right because some of the tiles weigh more than an asphalt shingle. So we’ve got to put a – you know, increase the strength of the roof system to hold the shingles properly.

Interviewer: Well, while we’re up walking around on the roof, let’s talk about snow loads. I mean that’s something that comes up in customer questions all the time. You know, the people living in Minnesota or Colorado, is that more of a concern for them than say someone living in Florida?

Steve Landmark: It’s actually a concern everywhere because you want your roof to be designed properly. All of us have been in an older neighborhood and you see a house and there’s a swayback roof or something or a wave in the roof. That’s where something wasn’t designed properly.

Interviewer: Got it.

Steve Landmark: So what’s interesting is they call it a snow load. But obviously in some places, there really isn’t snow. So it’s more of just a generic term for loading and what they want to do is just make sure that the loads are proper for the roof system. So if – if you were building a house in on Key West, Florida, you would have a lower snow load because it really doesn’t get any snow load there than if you were to build that same home in Leadville, Colorado 11,000 feet up or in Lake Tahoe where they can get 150, 170 pounds of snow. So we need to know that just to make sure that the trusses are properly designed and then the truss weight is supported by the walls and then the foundation. So a lot of people will find that sometimes their building department doesn’t know or they won’t tell them.

Interviewer: The building department actually might not know that.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. It’s kind of interesting. Some of them just don’t know the simpler ones. But we can find out and then in other places, like Steve in mountain areas, you brought up Colorado, the Rockies. You could have areas where in the same zip code, the elevation of the ground can go up a thousand or two thousand feet.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And that can change the snow load. So there are special areas where you have to actually look at the elevation that the home is being built at to find out, hey, is the snow load 50 pounds, 70 pounds, 100, 110 pounds. So it’s not always uniform. But if you were in a – like a flatter terrain like Phoenix, they will generally have one snow load. But if you went into the Rocky Mountains or towns or even the mountains along the Sierras, even in Upstate New York, you can end up in situations where the snow load can vary by the location.

You go from one side of town. It’s one rating. Go to the other side of town. It’s another rating. Now if someone can’t find that out, we can sort it out for them when we’re doing the design elements of the home and then make sure that the home is designed properly for the snow loads.

Interviewer: It’s interesting though. Now we’ve learned something like we do every day hopefully.

Steve Landmark: That’s the idea.

Interviewer: Snow load is a generic term. Just – so we make sure that we build a roof that’s damn strong enough.

Steve Landmark: That’s the idea. But we’re simplifying in snow loads. There’s a lot of issues with roofs. You know, there’s wind coming across, hurricane situations. There’s the weight of the dry wall on the inside. There’s live loads and dead loads for top and bottom cords. There’s also energy heel trusses that allow for insulation to be brought to the edge. There’s a whole variety of scenarios that come into roof design and lately, we’ve had more and more building departments rightly asking to make sure that the water flows off the roof properly. You know, in drainage plans, hey, make sure there are gutters so that the water can flow and where does it go so that your gutter doesn’t go on your neighbor’s house or something like that.

Interviewer: Right. Well, I know you’re a busy guy. But you got time for one more question. I would like to –

Steve Landmark: Yeah, let’s do it.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about site plans for my building site. Let’s say my building department wants me to have a site plan drawn up. But I wouldn’t even know how to start.

Steve Landmark: We can do that. We’ve got all the drafting and capabilities to make sure a site plan is put together. We can also find out what your building department wants. This is really a varied situation because some building departments that are less sophisticated, they just want to know what’s the size of your lot and where is your house.

So let’s just say you’ve got a lot in the city and it’s 100 by 100. They want to know that you’re within the building setbacks, the front, side and rear setbacks. They want to know where your driveway is, where your house is and maybe the size of your house just to make sure it fits in zoning. Then there are other building departments that go to the nth degree. They want to know where the electric comes in, where the gas line is, where the water line is, where the sewer line is, where your neighbor’s water or sewer is, where your driveway is, all these different setbacks. Are there easements? Are there power lines? Are there other buildings? We’ve been asked to locate the dog house on some of these because they don’t want people – there are guidelines on that. You can’t stick your dog house right underneath your neighbor’s bedroom window if you’re in a higher density area.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So we’ve run into situations like that where we’ve also got to work together with our clients. Civil engineer for grading and drainage plans. So there’s a lot of details that can come into it. Now that in a sense, what I’ve described to you, is like a bird’s eye view looking down on the land. But a lot of building departments are rightfully concerned about the terrain. They want to know the topography. Does your land slope down? If so, is there enough space for the walkout basement you intend on doing? How is the drainage? Is there an excessive slope of your driveway? So these are all situations that we can work with. Each building department is a little different. Some of them will ask questions that have never been asked by anyone else. Others will ask a very common question. But that’s a key element and generally they need to be drawn to scale, a specific scale and they will actually see it has got to be a specific scale and a specific size paper.

So we’re able to get that all formatted properly. The formatting of that is pretty important to make sure everything is to scale, drawn right and accurate.

Interviewer: Fantastic. Well, we are about out of time here on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. I want to thank all of you for listening in once again. Before we go, I want to give Steve a chance to let people know how to contact Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Landmark: The easiest way is to take a look at our webpage, which is  www.lhlc.com. Kind of the initials of Landmark Home Land Company. It’s actually Landmark Home and Land Company, but www.lhlc.com will work. There are videos on there. There are these podcasts. There are plan ideas. There are discussions on what we supply, how we can help you, some pictures and other details like that.

You can also call 800-830-9788. Mike will take care of you initially and talk to you about your project. We do answer our phone. If for some reason we can’t answer your phone right away, leave a message and we will return your call promptly. We are very proactive in talking to people and making sure that they’re taken care of properly or they could email [email protected] or they can reach me anytime at [email protected].

The key to it is we are very interested in our individual customer’s projects. We will take the time to find out what you’re looking for and we will also take the time and explain how we can help and how these different concepts work for your individual project.

Interviewer: And I would encourage all of our listeners to go to the website. Again that’s  www.lhlc.com. There’s some great information on there. There are some amazing videos showcasing the process of panelized home building from A to Z.

So anyway, again for Steve Tuma and myself, thank you for joining us on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show and we will see you all next time.

Steve Landmark: Thank you.

Learn how landscape design and site engineering directly affect wildfire protection, stormwater drainage, and municipal permit approvals for custom panelized kit homes. We discuss how vegetative spacing, fire-abatement setbacks, and open driveway turnarounds ensure emergency vehicles and firefighters can access your home during a wildfire. Discover how extensive concrete patios and pool decks create impervious runoff surfaces that can flood neighboring properties if not managed with an engineered grading plan. Explore the technical decisions behind building on sloped lots—comparing full-bench cuts and retaining walls against walking a foundation down a hillside—and learn how to evaluate existing foundations or adapt clear-span roof trusses to build without interior basement support posts.

A: Landscape plans must incorporate fire-abatement spacing between trees and ornamental shrubs to eliminate continuous fuel paths that carry wildfires toward the house. Municipalities also enforce clear driveway clearances and prohibit dense continuous hedgerows so emergency fire apparatus can reach the home, maneuver safely, and establish a defensive perimeter.

A: Large concrete patios, pool surrounds, and wide driveways create impermeable surfaces that prevent stormwater from absorbing into native soil. This concentrated water runoff flows rapidly across the site, requiring civil drainage engineering and retention areas to avoid eroding the building pad or flooding adjacent parcels.

A: Cutting a flat building pad is generally less expensive for framing assembly, but steep slopes often demand large, engineered retaining walls to hold back the cut hillside. Stepping the foundation down the natural grade allows owner-builders to incorporate walkout or daylight basements, reducing heavy excavation while providing lower-level living space that opens directly to the terrain.

A: Yes, but an existing foundation must first be inspected by a structural engineer to confirm that it is square, level, structurally sound, and supported by below-grade footings. If original interior basement footings are missing or their locations are unknown, the new home can be engineered with clear-span roof trusses and open-web floor systems that transfer all structural point loads strictly to the exterior foundation walls.

A: Comprehensive accessibility planning extends beyond interior three-foot doorways and zero-threshold showers out to exterior arrival routes. Landscape grading must provide smooth transitional ramps, minimal slopes from vehicle parking pads, and wide pathways that accommodate mobility devices and emergency medical access from the driveway to the primary entry.

Interviewer: Hey, everybody, and welcome once again to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me in the studio in his usual seat is the President and Founder of Landmark Home & Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide for, what, 25 years now since 1993, and that would be Mr. Steve Tuma.

Steve, say hello to the listeners if you would.

Steve Landmark: Hello, home world.

Interviewer: Panelized Home Building world.

Steve Landmark: Yeah.

Interviewer: We – we’ve been having some fun with the last couple of podcasts, the last few. And I wanted to kind of get back on, you know, sort of on track as far just talking about some real basic problems, issues that people come up when building. And basically, just kind of go over what I believe, you know, a lot of the customers just have these questions that Landmark is fully qualified to answer. So if you’re ready, I’m ready.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, let’s do it.

 Interviewer: So I’d like to some – a couple of things I’ve written down. One of them, we haven’t talked a lot, in fact, hardly any of in all these podcasts about landscape design and how important that is to, you know, the health of the house in general. I mean, obviously, landscape designing, lawns, gardens, things like that, they’re – they should be for more than just, you know, putting plants in. There should be, in my opinion, there’s got to be another sort of reason why you might choose certain landscaping over another. Can we get into that a little bit?

Steve Landmark: Yes. It’s really interesting because I think when you talk about landscaping, people are like, “Oh, where do I put my Petunias, or the Tulips, where is my pine tree? Where is this? Where is that?” And there’s actually deeper reasons for landscaping. It’s not just the beautification of the area, but you got to watch a lot of landscaping. And I think all of us have heard all the fires in Colorado, the West Coast, and Canada, everywhere and these fires are getting bigger and bigger.

So a lot of landscaping is a design to make sure that emergency vehicles and – or emergency personnel can get to your house. So for example, you don’t want to build a house in a big forest that’s prone to fires and just have a hedgerow all the way around it so no one can get to your house.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So a fireman couldn’t get up there. So in a lot of those places, there’s a abatement procedure showing that you’ve got to have a certain distance between bushes, you can have certain plants or certain boulders, you know, so that our firemen has got to, you know, rock climb to get over to your house.

So in some of those areas, we’re able to work with people on their landscape design or site planning to make sure that the house conforms with the requirements for that area because it’s an innocent situation that people don’t realize. They might be like, “Hey, I want to put a row of apple trees across my front yard. Won’t it be beautiful or, you know, the cherry trees with all the blossoms in spring?” Well, if it stops the ability for people to get to your house, it could be an issue. So of course, that doesn’t apply everywhere. But everywhere, you know, the big forest fires is what I meant by that. But the – you still want to make sure that people can get to your house in case of emergency.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: And another thing that people don’t always look at is how your landscaping affects your drainage.

Interviewer: Oh, right, yeah.

Steve Landmark: So if you take a house – let’s just say you had a house and you had a back yard and you just wanted the ultimate barbecue spot, you know, an area for, you know, where you’re going to put cement down and different details and have cement around the pool so it’s easy for people to walk – you know, they’re not walking across gravel or dirt, you know, in front of the house. Sometimes people don’t always realize that water doesn’t go through cement. It rolls across cement until there’s a point where it can drain.

So sometimes what happens is by someone putting a lot of cement, say, around a pool, suddenly, there’s an increased water flow across their property or into a neighbor’s property.

Interviewer: Oh, right, yeah.

Steve Landmark: So there’s a lot of situations where people might want to consider that and we can help them with their designs to make sure that they don’t create an issue where they flood a neighbor’s lot or they flood a different part of their yard. And, you know, there’s bigger storms everywhere, so more water is there. So it’s an important thing to take a look at that.

Now, if you’re out and building on 50-acres and, you know, you’re kind of out there and building a house on a property, it typically isn’t as big of a concern, you know, for drainage issues, but it is something that you want to consider because you don’t want to have a walkout basement in the ravine, you know, just different details. I mean, you can do and take advantage of it, but you’ve got to design things in certain ways to make sure that water doesn’t enter the house and you also want it to be safe. You know, you don’t want to have a walkout basement and have a 2-foot drop down a cliff.

So, you know, there’s a lot of details and – again, it – 99 out of 100 people will say, “Hey, let’s work on your landscape plan.” And they’re thinking about where they’re going to put their Petunias and Tulips. They’re not thinking of that it’s kind of water flow, it’s access for emergency vehicles and stuff to make sure that it’s – that it’s taken care of properly.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm. Well, and there was – there was something that came up in an earlier podcast that I wanted to revisit. Let’s say – because we talk about building on slopes and hills and, you know, things like that. But how do I make a decision like, let’s say, I buy a – I bought a land and I’m building on the side of this hill. Is it better to actually figure out a way to build on that slope or should I actually cut into the hill, make a pad and the – and have the house sort of sit into the hill? What – how do I make decisions like that?

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s a pretty interesting situation because, you know, a few years ago, you’d hear about landslides where houses that have been in places for 40 years, nothing has ever one, and then one big rain comes along and suddenly, there’s a landslide and a couple of houses around it. Suddenly, these houses go skating down the side of a hill. So as the code people and engineers look at this, they realize there’s certain things that have to happen.

So in some situations, there’s – there are certain calculations that depend on the slope of the hill and it’s better to have the house kind of crawl down the hill or if it’s better to cut into the hill and create a flat pad and then like a retaining wall holding the part of the wall there. It really is project by project because it’s not just how was the house going to sit properly, it’s how where you’re going to have proper access, you know, driveway access. And a lot of places they don’t just want to know you have a driveway, they want to know a fire truck, or emergency vehicle can get in there and also return. So that’s when it’s good for us to work with the civil engineer and the structural engineer and have a conversation and the best approach.

In general, it’s cheaper to build on a flat pad than it is on the side of the hill. But a lot these really depends on the soil conditions, the local scenarios and code applications, as well as the house design.

Interviewer: Sure.

Steve Landmark: So there’s – we’ve even done some houses that project over a cantilever over and have, like, beams supporting the house below.

Interviewer: Like Malibu – Malibu, California case in point.

Steve Landmark: Right. Now, some of those can get pretty expensive.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So it’s something where you’ve really got to look at the budget and sometimes that’s the deciding factor. If someone’s got a little bit higher budget and being higher up a hill creates for the ultimate view. Maybe it makes sense. But, you know, depending on where you’re at and what matter.

So you bring up the situation that decision will also vary in different places. It’s different of what people consider a hill to be. I’ve seen people call 5,000-foot mountains, hills, just because it’s a local thing. And then I’ve seen in other places where there’s this rolling hill that goes up 12-feet, some people say, “Oh look at that mountain.”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: You know, so sometimes you can use that to your advantage. So in the case where there’s, you know, a rise of 5, 10, 15 feet, you might be able to put a lookout or a walkout basement, enhancing the use of the home for that particular piece of land.

So it is a good thing to review. Sometimes you can just send us pictures and we could look at it and give guidance. Some other times you need a civil engineer to go in and really figure out the way to do it. The civil engineer is in more areas where there’s more sophisticated building departments and more complex building in, like, true mountains. But in places where it’s, like, rolling hills, like the Midwest or South might have it, you can generally just, you know, figure out how to put a pad there or have a walkout basement or whatever it may be to adjust it. But that’s a really interesting situation, because this is kind of one of this little hidden situations that it can really affect the cost of your home.

Interviewer: I can imagine.

Steve Landmark: So it’s a good idea to have an understanding of how to best use your land, if you’ve got one of those more challenging situations of building on the side of the hill.

There’s also other things that come into and a lot of people will go through and say, “Oh, my house will fit on the side of the hill.” Well, if you’re in an area with septic, you also need to know that your septic will work.

Interviewer: Oh, right, yeah.

Steve Landmark: So you got to make sure, like, your driveway will work, your septic will work, you can work in all of the setbacks and different details. So it’s something that’s easy to overcome with the right information and that’s why we say it’s more of an extreme situation, get a civil engineer, most places where it’s more extreme, the building department will dictate a grading plan.

Interviewer: Right. Well, we’re talking about pads and there’s a question I always wanted to ask you and I haven’t, because we talk about pouring foundations and building a house on it and have them fit the design. What if I find a piece of property and let’s say, I want to just destroy the house sits on it, call Landmark and design a house, but there’s already an existing foundation there. What’s involved there?

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s interesting because those projects come up. We’ve done quite a few of them. And sometimes existing foundations are there because people just stopped building, sometimes they’re there because people are demolishing an old home or in the case of the burn situations, they –

Interviewer: Oh, yeah.

Steve Landmark: – they might, you know, for insurance reasons and codes and building department, they may have to build on that exact same footprints –

Interviewer: Oh, right, yeah. of course.

Steve Landmark: – that they had.

So existing foundations can be tricky because we’ve had people go through and they say that they bought a farmhouse from 1890 and they want to use the existing foundation. Well, the chances of that foundation passing code are probably zero, you know, unless they just happened to build some super sophisticated foundation. But there’s also the approval by the building department and then there’s some also common sense. So someone might go through and say, “Hey, I’m going to build this half million dollar home and I want to use this 1950 foundation.” Even if the building department says it’s good, you might want to wonder, “Hey, is it square? Is it still level? What is the foot like?” We had them on the East Coast and at Charlotte where there was an old foundation, the building department requested a check, there weren’t footers.

Interviewer: They weren’t? They just weren’t there?

Steve Landmark: Right. They just had a wall going down, so an eight-foot poured concrete wall going straight down without a footer. So initially upon looking at it, you’d say, “Hey, that looks like a foundation that’s been there for 100 years – or even just 20 years.” You don’t know the standard that it was built. So a lot of this, the building department will send someone out that will ask you to get a builder or an engineer to review, to see if it’s viable.

Little complications can’t come into it, but we understand what those complications are. So we can do it. We’re working on a project like that right now, where the building department says, “Hey, the foundation’s great, you can go use it.” But the particular home that they had needed a post in the middle, it was a chalet design. So this post had to go from the foundation going all the way up to their bridge beam to carry a load.

The problem is we don’t know if there was a footer underneath the cement slab in the basement to support the point load of this post. It showed on the original plans that were approved that it’s there. But it didn’t show dimensions as to where it was or what size. So, do you assume that it’s kind of centered? Or do you think that maybe they just didn’t leave it there?

So what we did is the customer verified the perimeter walls. We redesigned the roof system and the floor system so that all of the weights were carried to the exterior wall of the house. We didn’t have to have post. So now, we ended up with a chalet with a clear span in it so that the living rooms and all of these different situations were wide open. And it actually ended being more usable.

Interviewer: That’s interesting. That’s – that is – that’s something.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. So sometimes this, you know, getting in awkward situation of what is this foundation allows you to turn that situation into a very unique home.

Now, the key to that is we have the designers, the structural engineers, the mileage and also the desire to help people in those situations. Because a lot of people that come with those foundations, sometimes they just bought it, it’s at a lake, they’ve always wanted to do it and there was a special deal on this property. Others, it’s been in the family. You know, grandpa put the foundation in but for whatever reason, he – they never built the house.

Interviewer: Got it.

Steve Landmark: So there’s personal attachments to these, so it’s pretty cool to be able to go through and take this and continue on with the family’s dreams.

Interviewer: Right. Necessity can be the mother of invention. They’re right.

So, let’s talk about something we haven’t hit too much on in the past, and that’s all this new smart home technology. How can – how does Landmark fit into that, and what are you guys doing about people who are looking for that kind of home?

Steve Landmark: Well, the smart home technologies are becoming more and more prevalent. You know, first people had these home assistants where you could say, “Hey, so and so, what’s the weather?” or “Hey, so and so, play this song.” And that’s, kind of, the basic one. But a lot of people are getting into really automated houses, you know, controlling heat, flood warnings –

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: – different situations of opening and closing blinds, and whatever it may be. And some of these can be extremely basic, like, go to your local store, buy something, plug it in, and have some fun with it, as the hobbyists do, being a few hundred thousand dollars.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So what we can – generally, if someone wants to design their own system, we could work with them on the plans and, you know, kind of the hobbyist guy could say, “Hey, I want to do this. I want to have this light controllable so that when I drive in the driveway it senses my car and it knows that I want the house at this temperature, and you know, these lighting conditions with this music.” And then, also there’s other people that work with, you know, the pros that are getting into ultra sophisticated leading edge technology. In those cases, we can go through and supply CAD files or different situations so that they know exactly what works.

Sometimes people say, “Hey, why do you need a CAD file for, you know, where to put a socket or a smart socket or something like that?” The reason being is you never know where there’s a structural member that they say, “Hey, I want to put a TV here, is there the right structure behind it to hold the TV?”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Or, you know, different lighting situations, or whatever it may be. And what’s interesting about this is a lot of people look at this as it’s a convenience, you know, just to sit there and say, “Hey, I’d like to listen to this blue song and have it played.” Well, a lot of these are becoming accessibility and mobility issues for people that have restricted movement or eyesight, or whatever it may be. So sometimes people will have that, or they have a system of knowing that there’s movement in a house. So, let’s just say you had an elderly friend or relative, there might be motion sensors in the house so you don’t have to call them every five minutes. You could just say, “Hey, there’s been no motion. Let me go check on Uncle Fred.” That type of stuff.

So, a lot of people are really getting into these technologies for the enjoyment and also for quality of life issues.

Interviewer: Right. You know, we’ve kind of talked about something a few times before but I don’t think – I don’t think we can talk about it enough because I think people run into this a lot. And that’s – you go to an area, you’re going to build a home in a certain location, and the building department in that location just happens to be super picky. And what role does Landmark play in a situation like that?

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s pretty interesting because a lot of people think they have the pickiest, hardest building department. And maybe in their area or their experience, it is. But we’ve likely – you know, when we’ve worked with different building departments in the US and in Europe, we’ve likely run into situations where we’ve had more complex scenarios that we’ve already worked through.

Interviewer: Oh, right.

Steve Landmark: We also have the team of people that has a lot of knowledge to understand it. So, a lot of times when people say, “Oh, it’s picky,” it’s because their friend did something or someone that didn’t keep up with the codes, you know, tried something and they chose not to learn what was required. So therefore, they call the building department picky.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: I would say, since 1993, I’ve run into three, what I call, picky or unreasonably picky building departments. That means there’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other building departments that are just wanting to make sure your house gets built right, so.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So that’s – we don’t look at it as being picky. They just happen to ask things that make sense to no one else or that they have special, you know, “hot buttons” on what they want. So we have an ability to go through and get the information.

One of them was in Ohio where a building department decided to ask us the allowable size of an air bubble inside of a poured concrete foundation.

Interviewer: What? Wow, that is picky.

Steve Landmark: What was interesting about that is here’s someone in a moderate climate asking a question that should be applied in a colder climate. So I called the guy up and I say, “This is interesting. Why are you asking this?” He goes, “Well, I used to work way up in the north, and now that I moved, you know, to a moderate climate, I thought it was important.” And I said, “Okay. That explains why you’re asking it.”

It was something that in the winter – in the winter pouring of cement, they put certain chemicals in the cement so that it can cure in colder weather. And that affects it. Well, he was just asking the thing that was important to him, in a place where it didn’t apply. The cool thing about it is we got the answer, and we answered that.

We’ve had other situations where people want to put synthetic grass in their yard for an easier to clean dog run, for water savings, for savings on, you know, lawn care fees, whatever it may be. This was in an area that involved a drainage plan. We had to document how water would pass through the synthetic grass to make sure that it didn’t create a flooding issue for a neighbor. And then the geotechnical engineer had to verify that there was enough of a support and flow rate for that to work properly.

So, sometimes these odd and seemingly crazy requests do have a fundamental version. It’s just that not every building department asks them. Most building departments, 80% of what they ask is extremely similar. They want to know that, you know, your hallways are certain widths,  your windows are egress so you can get out. They want to know that you got energy-efficient heating and cooling systems. They want to know your foundation’s built right.

But sometimes you get to these extremes and so far, no one stumped us. Every customer’s got their building permit and we’ve worked through it. So, sometimes even though the inspector may sound like he’s being picky, the codes are put in place mainly for safety issues and to make sure that the home is solid so that it stands in 10 years, 20 years, 100 years, so it doesn’t devalue the neighborhood. But even so, people shouldn’t be concerned about their plan check person. We’ve been able to work through issues to make it happen, and we have the knowledge to help people so, you know, we’ll take care of our customers.

Interviewer: So what you’re saying is that building departments aren’t necessarily trying to keep you from building your house.

Steve Landmark: No, no. It may give that impression –

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: – but generally, they just want to know that it’s safe, you know. Like there was a person I was talking to that wanted to do something and to squeeze little space, an extra bedroom and like a bonus room area above the garage. They had this great idea to have like an 18-inch wide hallway, and they said that this room would work. And I said, “It’s three feet.” And he said, “Well, why is big brother telling me what to do? It’s my land.”

And I asked a question that’s kind of interesting. I’m like, “If I walked down that hallway, it’d probably be shoulder to shoulder.”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So if there was an emergency where you needed medical help or get out or just –

Interviewer: Yeah, good luck.

Steve Landmark: – or yeah, or you happen to be walking down the hallway where one of your big dogs is and you get stuck in there, you know, that’s the point. So even though it may not sound logical, sometimes, if you think about it a little bit, there’s a reason for it.

Now I’m not an advocate of building departments taking our life over, telling us that we want to build, but I think it is good to have a scenario where, you know, your structure is solid, the foundation is solid, your water is going to be heated properly, your cooling system is going to work properly, because there are contractors and people out there that will go for the low big, and suddenly, they find out their furnace isn’t big enough or strong enough –

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: – or their air conditioner isn’t good enough.

So in those cases, we’re able to substantiate situations to make sure that things are done right. Ultimately, you don’t want to spend a dollar and then later have to go back and spend more to fix it. We want to do it right the first time.

Interviewer: Let’s talk a bit about basements. Now here in California, basements are not really a thing, but in other parts of the country, they’re a big thing and some people wouldn’t even think about building a house without a basement. Let’s talk about designing basements from the get-go and how that process works.

Steve Landmark: Well, the basements or the foundations are interesting. And yeah, generally, like you say, California, you know, the South West, it’s a lot of slab foundations. In Florida, there’s a lot of slab foundations, but we’re getting more and more customers wanting crawl spaces.

So sometimes, the foundation design is a result of, you know, just what’s customary in the area, and other times, it’s a result of the ground conditions. So like we talked about a slough piece of land, if you have a slough piece of land, you might be able to put a walk-out basement. Suddenly, your basement area becomes a little more liveable. Instead of just an enclosed cement wall, there’s a wall on one side where you can go in and out, you can have a drive under the garage, you can have extra space, an in-law apartment, whatever it may be.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So in California, we have a lot of customers that build inbounds. So they do have walk-out basements.

Now, if that same customer was building, say, in a flat desert area, say in Coachella Valley or something like that, it’s more likely, if they’re in flat land, that they’re going to be building on a slab. But if they put a little slope to the land, maybe it’d be a stem wall or crawl space.

But I think that what you are getting at is using the basement. So just like the house I spoke about just a few minutes ago, on an existing foundation where we were able to create a floor system and a roof system, where we wouldn’t need posts, the idea – let’s just say you had a drive-under basement. You could do different things. And let’s just say this house is 24-feet wide, and on the 24-feet side you had two garage doors where you could drive in to your man cave, your garage, your – you know, your recreational vehicle storage, whatever it may be. Typically, you’d have posts going down the middle, right at the center at the 12-foot side, and then the floor joist above would be 2-by-10s or 2-by-12s spanning from the outside foundation wall to the center beam, and then from that center beam to the opposite foundation wall. So you have a post.

So Steve, every guy knows, every woman as well, knows that no matter where that post is in the basement, it’s in the wrong place. If you put a pool table there, you’re going to be at that shot where you’re just going to win the tournament and that post is going to be there. If you’re a guy that likes to do his own oil changes, that post is going to be right where the jack needs to be.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: You know, if you’re building an entertainment area, that post is right in front of your 65-inch TV.

So what we’re able to do, when we have an understanding of this, is figure out different floor systems for the floor system above that can span farther. So then, like for example, this 24-foot wide home, we can go with engineered I-joist so we can get rid of the post and the beam in the middle. Suddenly, you have a 24-foot wide open area –

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: – that you can do whatever you want.

We can also get into open-web floor trusses that can span extended length, 20, 30 feet without huge issues. And within the open-web floor systems, you can run ductwork and plumbing, so it’s not hanging below your floor. The idea being that we’re talking about is the usability of this basement.

So if you have an 8-foot basement wall with a 4-foot cement slab on the floor, that gives you, give or take, 7 feet, 8 inches. It’s actually a little more with the plate but for easy math, let’s say it’s 7 feet, 8 inches. If you have a floor joist going across there and you decide you want a ductwork or plumbing or whatever, suddenly, that ductwork might hang down a foot. So suddenly, your head clearance in certain areas is 6 feet, 8 inches.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Okay, maybe in some areas, maybe it’s all the way across. Well, if you could take that same ductwork and put it within the floor truss, you have that 70 ceiling height.

Interviewer: Got it.

Steve Landmark: So there’s a lot of work, like we’re talking about in the upfront work of designing the home properly, so that if you’re going to use this basement as an additional family room, office, workshop, you have a ceiling height that’s advantageous

Steve Landmark: – as an additional family room, office, workshop. You have a ceiling, how you could say advantageous for what you do. So that’s an important factor. And it’s easy for us to sort it out. We just have to have a conversation to figure, hey, what are you doing with your basement? If someone says, “Oh, I just put boxes down there as storage.” That’s a different story than if, you know, your in-laws might move in in the future or if you’re going to, you know, have your hobbies of, you know, home theater, bike repairs, woodshops, stained glass, craft shops, whatever it may be.

Interviewer: Now, let’s move out of the basement and upstairs and let’s talk about, you know, kind of specialty rooms like we had mentioned in the, I think, our last podcast about people designing home offices and people telecommuting. And what about things like that or like convertible room design, you know, rooms that can become two rooms, things like that?

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s really interesting because what’s happening, you know, what the internet and people’s jobs and gig economies and different hobbies and different economic situations is people almost need to have homes that have multiuses.

Before, you know, might say, “Hey, I need a three-bedroom, two-bath, dining room, living room, kitchen.” It’s extremely rare that someone starts talking about designing their living room. It’s more of a great room or a gaming room or a convertible room that it’s the home office, but when the grand kids or guests come over, that home office becomes that.

So way back when people were building mega mansions you say, “Hey, just put another wing on the house.” Well, the world isn’t like that anymore. So people are kind of condensing the design to have these kind of flexible areas. Sometimes the different furniture works that way to give room, you know, Murphy Beds, different situations where rooms are flexed.

But the one that everyone will relate to is depending upon what age you are, way back, you probably sat down at the kitchen table or dining room table and ate dinner with the family or lunch with the family.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Now, there’s snacks bars. There’s islands in kitchens.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And things are kind of on the go more or people’s work schedules are different. It’s a little bit of more informal. So I think people will see where the dining is kind of phasing out. The great room is phasing in. Gaming, entertainment areas are coming back in as well. Well, if you’re someone like most people where you’ve got a certain amount of money and you – this certain amount of money you got to get a 1,700 square foot room – home, sometimes that family room becomes a gaming room. Sometimes that third bedroom becomes an office or whatever it may be. So that’s what we’re able to work on these different design elements, we call it universal design, so that there’s more flexibility in the space that you have.

And sometimes an individual space becomes a multiuse situation. And sometimes these multiuses aren’t necessarily just now. You know, if you look at as kids grow up, they might need different bedrooms, they might need different game rooms, they might need different homework rooms. There might be different hobbies. So sometimes it’s the evolution of, hey, the kids might be moving out, but then the parents might be moving in.

So sometimes we got to look at, you know, what’s going to happen in 5 years and 10 years to come up with a design that’s sensible for the people.

Interviewer: Right. Something I’d like to hit upon as well is we’re talking about, you know, creating a home environment that suits the family. What if we have a family member who is handicapped, you know, someone who I need to build a house that’s accessible to myself or my family member who happens to be in a wheelchair or otherwise, you know, handicapped in some way.

Just pretty much, a handicapped-friendly house. How difficult is that to work into the design?

Steve Landmark: Well, it all really depends because you brought something up there which is interesting. You used the word handicapped-friendly, which generally means, “Hey, let’s make doors three feet wide and make sure there’s a ramp to get in and out of the house,” and, you know, that’s good enough.

And then there’s other people that want to get full ADA compliance.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: The Disabilities Act. And that can involve your whole building site. Like can I –

Interviewer: No, I should – I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I should go back and fix that. I think disability is the word to use. I think that’s the more proper use, my mistake, I shouldn’t have said handicapped. Yeah, the disabled-friendly home is what we meant.

Steve Landmark: Right. And that can come into the site plan. So if you had a vehicle to help you maneuver, that vehicle may need certain clearances to turn in for you to get out, for you to travel up a ramp. And a lot of people think of the disabilities of being a physical thing, maybe it’s a mobility restriction. It can also be a visual restriction.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: You know, or different things like that or an arm or whatever it may be. So we are capable of going into the full ADA compliance if that’s what someone chooses to do. Most people just say, “Hey, I want to know that I can get through a three foot door that, you know, my cabinets are here that I can move around and take it from there.

So depending upon the depth of what someone chooses to do, we could do the quote friendly where we’re just doing the simple things, wide doors, easy access, ramps. Or you can get deeper into it, you know, where do you locate electric sockets, where do you locate light switches. So if someone, you know, is restricted, they can access it. And I think it kind of gets back in the smart home technologies.

Interviewer: Right, right.

Steve Landmark: You know. When someone could sit here and say, “Hey, call my mom,” you know, or have a little signal go back to say, “Hey, there’s movement in the house. You know, the person is likely to be okay.” It really, really helps. So we’re capable of doing that to whatever degree someone would choose to do it.

Interviewer: Before we close out today, I want to give you a chance to do something that we haven’t done in the show before. I just want you to kind of give me some anecdote that you’ve come across that you think might be interesting to our listeners, just anything that’s happened in your 25-year career at Landmark.

Steve Landmark: The weirdest thing, you know, there’s always stuff that happens, you know, there’s something here and someone gets a survey to find out that the city has a different lot record in their name, you know, the weird little stuff, or they think the sewer connection is in the back of the lot and then they find out it’s at the front of the lot because something at the city wasn’t recorded right, or a surveyor made an issue, or whatever it was.

One of the absolute weirdest ones, and it was in a rural property in the Midwest – we get along with our customers and we have a lot of fun, and this guy’s name was Gene. And he calls me up and he says, “Steve,” with a couple little expletives. “You won’t believe what I just found in my yard.” And I thought there’s like a bobcat or, you know, a neighbor’s horse is running around, or who knows what’s going on. And him and his family were doing a lot of the work. They were doing the excavation, and the electric work, the roofing. They just had the family in the trades. He had a 1954 buried in his yard right where they were digging.

Interviewer: The entire car?

Steve Landmark: There was a car. It was kind of crushed –

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: – but it was buried in the yard. And I say, “I just hate to think that someone’s going to look in that trunk.” And it was just, like, to bury a complete car. So that’s still one of those things. You know, weird things have happened. People excavate and they find granite, or this happens, or that happens, but it’s just one of those things that it kind of takes the cake and to think that it was a buried car.

Interviewer: Was the story ever found out how that car got there?

Steve Landmark: No, no. They owned the land for 20 or 30 years but when this was – the car would have been 10, 15 years old but no, they didn’t know anything about it. But that’s the point, you know, how are you going to know that until you excavate. You know, it’s not like there’s pre-excavation car searchers out there. I guess he’s got a huge metal detector. But that was kind of one of the weirder, funnier things that I remember. And it was just – oh, then another one, bring up one of the basement houses.

The people had a basement that they had forever, and they’re showing it to me. And they just got back from grocery shopping, and they had this grocery bag on the counter and it was just going crazy. And I couldn’t figure out what it was. They apparently left their door open and a little baby raccoon came in, started to just eat their cereal and throw it all over the room. So, yeah, it’s was always fun, there’s always a story. But those are two of the weirder ones.

Interviewer: Awesome. Well, as so often happens, we do run out of time here on the show so I want to thank all of you for joining us again, listening in on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. And as always, before we go, I want to give Steve a chance to let people know how to contact Landmark Home & Land Company.

Steve Landmark: I think the best way is people can look at it at any time. It’s our website. The company name is Landmark Home & Land Company. The website is lhlc.com. That’s like L as in Landmark, H as in Home, L as in Land, C as in Company, .com. And you can browse plans, just see different discussions on different topics, see some videos on what we can do. And you could send a message through there at the email button, or you can also call us at 800-830-9788 and Mike will answer the phone and he can walk through the preliminary phases.

His email is [email protected] or you can contact me and my direct email at [email protected]. And we’re very responsive and proactive. We want to help people get the right home. They work hard for their money and we want to make sure they get the best home possible.

Interviewer: Right. And I would encourage all of our listeners to go to the website, to go to lhlc.com. There’s great information on there, so many design possibilities you can’t even believe, and some amazing videos.

There’s tons of videos on there, you know, basically showing the process of panelized home building from A to Z. And if you’re looking to get that visual, there’s a lot on there. So once again, we’re going to say adios for Steve Tuma and myself.

Thank you everybody for joining us on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show and we will see you next time.

Steve Landmark: Have a great day.

Learn how early architectural planning and geotechnical verification protect custom panelized kit home budgets from costly site surprises and permitting delays. We discuss the hidden structural risks of unrecorded subsurface soil conditions, demonstrating how uncompacted agricultural fill, buried muck, or sudden bedrock granite can force unexpected 12-foot foundation walls if not discovered through preliminary soil borings. Discover the zoning and legal pitfalls of building close to narrow urban lot lines, where wide concrete footers and retaining wall bases risk encroaching beneath neighboring property boundaries. Explore how expansive south-facing view windows trigger strict residential energy code compliance, requiring engineered roof overhangs and mechanical compensation to prevent severe indoor solar heat gain. Finally, learn how professional engineering firms take over and fix non-compliant third-party drafts to satisfy municipal plan checkers and eliminate job-site framing confusion.

A: Parcels created from historically filled farmland or buried ponds often conceal layers of uncompacted organic muck that cannot support structural weight. If footings are dug without a prior geotechnical soil boring, builders may be forced to excavate deep down to solid load-bearing ground, inadvertently turning a standard crawlspace into an expensive 12-foot-tall poured foundation wall.

A: While an above-ground foundation or retaining wall may sit strictly within the property line, the concrete spreader footing beneath it extends outward by an additional 6 to 12 inches. On tight urban infill lots with minimal setbacks, that below-grade concrete footer can illegally encroach onto adjacent private property, requiring specialized offset engineering or structural grade beams to stay entirely within the parcel boundary.

A: Expansive glass arrays facing true south capture intense solar radiation, creating extreme heat gain that causes a home to fail Title 24 and prescriptive energy calculations. Designers must balance this solar exposure by engineering deeper roof overhangs, specifying high-performance Low-E glass ratings, or upgrading heating and cooling efficiencies to prevent the living room from overheating in the summer.

A: Unengineered drafts from online plan clearinghouses or unlicensed drafters frequently lack point-load paths, connection hardware schedules, and local energy calculations required by municipal examiners. A comprehensive design firm can convert those conceptual layouts into permit-ready CAD blueprints, integrating site-specific structural stamps and coordinated MEP plans that pass municipal plan-check review.

A: Rather than measuring from a flat base, municipalities evaluate sloped building sites using complex formulas based on the average grade between the highest and lowest points of the foundation. Designing a walkout basement on a hillside creates a tall exposed rear wall that can easily violate municipal height caps if the roof pitch and plate heights are not carefully balanced during initial drafting.

Interviewer: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me in the studio, as always, is the President and Founder of Landmark Home & Land Company, a company which has been helping people build new homes where they want, exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993, Mr. Steve Tuma.

Steve, how are you doing, buddy?

Steve Landmark: It’s an excellent day. Another good day helping customers and we had a few customers from 10 and 15 years ago get in touch with us this week that wanted to go along and build again or they had a family member that needed help building a home, so.

 Interviewer: Well, that’s got to be exciting. That’s very –

Steve Landmark: It’s a great feeling to think that they – people remember you 10 and 15 years ago. But I guess, you know, it’s a big thing building a house, so people remember we helped them out.

 Interviewer: That’s right. When I go buy a pair of jeans, I usually go back to the same store if I liked the jeans.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, well.

 Interviewer: So I thought today we might – I think with the last episode, we were having some fun with just some weird requests or not weird, but just kind of off-the-wall requests for design, some sort of design variations on plans, and that was a fun one. I liked that a lot.

So I thought today, we might, I don’t know, just go through some of your past experiences with customers and situations where you’ve helped – where you have helped Landmark homebuilders through, let’s say, specialty use homes, you know, like a guy that has a huge car collection. We talked a little bit about craft rooms and gaming and home theaters and – but I’d like to talk today about some of the other design things that would take in sort of, you know, like taking advantage of the views of property that somebody might be building on, things like that. And, you know, we’ll talk a little bit about controlling the budget and when you run out of money, which I’m sure you run into that a lot with customers.

So let’s start with that and talk about some of the experiences you’ve had working with customers in specialty situations.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. So because every project is different, you know, where they build is different, just different site conditions, different design requests that customers have, different budget situations, and you brought up, you know, how do people stay within a budget and control it so that they don’t get into problems, and that’s where we’re able to help at Landmark because that’s an important part. It’s not just the excitement of designing the home, but it’s making sure it works so that your family enjoys it. If it’s on land, you get permits. But also, make sure that, you know, the wallet is happy with it at the same time.

 Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: So yeah, initially, it brought up different like, you know, special design things and we’re running into a lot of customers that have special requests for the design. We’re able to take care of all of them. But sometimes, families are condensing homes. You know, their in-laws or grandparents are moving in to make for a better lifestyle. The grandparents can babysit the kids allowing the, you know, center generation to, you know, go out and do things, and also the kids being around helps the activity of the grandparents.

So we’ve had situations where houses are sometimes built as one family unit, but you could kind of see two distinct living areas. You know, we’re working with a family in Pennsylvania and there’s kind of two families, the grandparents and then the parents with the kids. So it almost looks like two ranch homes that are put together with a big common central area. But each end of the home is – or like its own suite. So there are situations like that where just people’s lifestyles, budgets, whatever needs there, medical help, whatever it is, they would like a certain type of home.

And then there’s other situations where people have hobbies. We’re running into a lot of, you know, “car guys” where they have car collections or they like to work on cars. Other people are into craft rooms. Home offices are becoming more and more important for Millennials or even people that can telecommute with – you know, with the strength of the internet these days, they’re – we’re able to do that.

So it’s pretty cool to be able to work through and figure out what really enhances the design of the home so people get the best value, you know, in the home and makes it worth their value. We believe people should drive up to their home and be proud of it and say, “Wow, this is cool. I have the home theater I want,” or “Our family is a bunch of movie buffs,” or, “Hey, we like to cook. The kitchen is really laid out right or –”

Interviewer: Or dad wants a man cave.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, exactly. There’s more and more man caves and also lady caves showing up, too.

 Interviewer: Lady caves. You’re right, yeah.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. So there’s a lot of that and that’s the cool thing is that we’re not stuck using a standard plan. If someone wants to do it, it’s – you know, we can adjust the plan to exactly how they want it, which enhances their lifestyle.

 Interviewer: Yeah. I’m actually – I actually know a woman right now who’s – who just built sort of her own woodworking shed. And so, you know, we can’t get locked into that where it’s always the man who’s looking for that. There’s a lot of women out there who are building shops and things like that. It’s pretty cool.

Steve Landmark: What’s the interesting portion about this is sometimes, you know, they figure hey, it’s the guy thing to have a classic car and go out and shine it, but it’s – you know, the whole family jumps in that convertible when they go to the ice cream stand. So it allows the family to go have fun, you know, learn different things and, you know, kind of eliminate some screen time, and go do different things.

There’s – yeah, gaming is becoming a good thing. A lot of people are using it for stress relief. Some people just enjoy it. Home theaters, you know, with the cost of going out to movies, it’s expensive. And now, with all the different streaming services and stuff, we can design a room so that people can enjoy, you know, entertainment at the – at their house, and that’s the key thing.

Interviewer: I actually saw some online magazine I was looking at. People that are building little mini ballrooms in their house with the wood dance floor and a little stage, and they bring in DJs, that’s some entertainment value there.

Steve Landmark: Oh, we’re seeing people that are doing that, especially with walkout basements more – you know, mountain areas or lake areas where it’s becoming the recreational spot. So instead of just having a walkout basement, you know, the cement walls with, you know, your bike in there, there are bars, eating areas, sitting areas, additional spaces for big family get-togethers. We’ve had a few families do that where, you know, if they have 15, 20 people coming over for the holiday, they’re in a basement in a big kind of luxury, you know, Bankwood area.

Interviewer: I like what you said about, you know, the parents and grandparents. I have a friend. She – no one else in the family was really willing to do it. And so, she took on the task of moving her grandfather in with her and her two grown kids and they’re the ones taking care of him. And she was telling me about how she’s kind of had to rearrange and adapt the house because he is a man and he’s 90, but he’s still a guy, you know, and he has certain things that he wants. And I can see how people might just build a house specifically with the thought that, you know, we’re all living a little longer now that maybe instead of putting grandpa or grandma in a home, we bring them to our home. And if you’ve got the right house for it, that’s great.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, and that’s what we’re able to do. A funny one, this will make, you know, all the guys laugh. Sometimes, there’s a woodshop or a man cave, they’ll actually ask for a urinal.

Interviewer: Oh, that would be great.

Steve Landmark: You know, it’s kind of funny. So – I mean, the point is that everyone kind of chuckles when I say that. But in a sense, doesn’t that make sense?

Interviewer: Oh, that would be great to have a man cave with a urinal.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, yeah. So there’s a lot of – there’s a lot of little details that can be put into it and it doesn’t necessarily have to cost more. It’s just a situation of, you know, a conversation. What does your family do? You know, does someone work so they need a separate area, but there’s kids and those kids still need a different area that – you know, where it might be a little noisier? So do we have to do things with soundproofing on walls or just put the room on the other side of the house or – you know, the home offices are becoming more and more popular and they – sometimes, they need separate entrances or distinct separate areas.

Every – a lot of people talk about the guy in the home office, you know, he’s getting up and working in his pajamas until 2 in the afternoon. A lot of the customers actually tell me they get up just as if they were going to the office. They get up, take a shower, wear a suit, and go right into their home office, just the formality of I’m at work. So –

Interviewer: Yeah. I don’t see anything wrong with it myself. I don’t do it, but I see nothing wrong with it.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. So it’s – that’s – the point is, we can customize it for what your priorities are. And like I say, it doesn’t always have to cost more. To make a separate office with its own separate exterior entry isn’t a big deal. You add a door, you know. So it’s a pretty cool scenario.

Interviewer: Something we hit upon and I’ve written it down, I keep forgetting to bring it up again because we didn’t really expand on it enough. But a lot of times, people will buy a property because of the view and then I would imagine that some customers come to you and say, “Well, now, we’ve got it but what design can we put together that will take advantage of that view?” And maybe they love the view, but unfortunately, the way they have to build, the way the land is, they’re facing the wrong way. How do you take care of issues like that?

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s pretty interesting because the majority of the time, most people will be like, “Hey, we’ve got an idea. We want a chalet design overlooking a mountain,” or “Hey, we want a ranch home, but we want one side of the house just to have a lot of glass wall so we can sit in there, you know, look at the fireplace and look at the glass and, you know, see a beautiful view of a lake or a mountain or open prairie or whatever it is.”

So the concept of what they want to look at, they kind of understand. It’s how do we take advantage of that. Because a lot of people will think, “Well, just put big windows and face them at what you want to look at.” Well, it’s true, but a lot of that is also affected by the roof structure and, you know, some structural components because there’s different ways of fitting different windows into space. And depending upon where you’re doing it, if it’s a place with a lot of engineering requirements, earthquakes, snow loads, high wind speeds, you know, like hurricane areas, you can accomplish that but it can end up costing a lot more.

So that’s where we can come into it is go through and figure hey, a family wants a big picture window here, but they’re on Key West facing south. You know, the structure of that home might be a little different than if someone said, “Hey, I’m in the open prairie in the Midwest and I just want to view these expansive sunsets.” They may have a different design, so we’re able to work with them to get the end results and then design and engineer the structure at the affordable price point, so that they’re ending up being able to take advantage of the view.

Generally, this is kind of funny, but it’s extremely true. People want to take advantage of their view more than they want to pay for an expensive roof. So if we can do certain things to – in roof design, to allow for a bigger open space, for bigger windows, that’s something that we can provide. So sometimes that taking advantage of that better view doesn’t necessarily have to cost you more.

Interviewer: Well that’s – but that’s something you really have to hit early on in the process, right? I mean, that has to be talked out a lot.

Steve Landmark: Right, it does. And I – I think somewhere, we’re probably going to talk about that view and how it affects energy going to as well, because, say, you’re in a place that has very tight energy calculation requirements, like parts of Colorado, like, Olive, California, is if you have a glass wall facing south, that glass just magnifies the heat going into your house. So your air conditioning system might need to be a little different.

So there’s situation and I can go back to the roof, different overhangs, orientation of the home, orientation of the windows, insulation around the home in general where we can – where we can work with that. So the initial idea is, “Hey, how do we get the view in?” The other one is, “How do we make sure it’s in affordable and passes the codes?”

Interviewer: You’re right. We hit on earlier, a little bit, just in this podcast, about the designing for a budget. And like I said, people, I’m sure get to a point where they’ve planned poorly and ran out of money and I’m sure that’s something that Landmark is really good at kind of helping to control that early in the process. But –

Steve Landmark: Right.

Interviewer: – what kind of situations have you run into when working with people who have, you know, they just have a finite budget?

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s interesting because in – since 1993, about 25 years, we’ve only had one or two customers that don’t care if it goes over a million, like, “Hey, add another million is not a big deal.”

Interviewer: All right.

Steve Landmark: So generally, whether – you know, no matter how many zeros there are in your budget or how many digits, there’s always a restriction. So if you’re spending 100,000 or five million, it’s the same problem, your eyes are bigger than the wallet wants to go.

So what we always suggest is – people have to really kind of just be honest with themselves. Because the over budget situation from what I have seen, is generally taking from people’s changes. So they fall in love with the house. They see the house going up and then they’re like, “Oh, honey, let’s put that hot tub in the back deck –

Interviewer: Oh, right, yeah.

Steve Landmark: – let’s extend the deck, let’s do this. Oh, we’ll find that extra 10,000.” Well, my opinion is just design it right up front. And if you have an extra 10,000 to spend, be honest with yourself, are you going to spend it or would you rather not.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Because it’s the changes during the building phase that can create the issue. If someone has a properly designed home with an accurate set of plans, which is what we supply, they can take those plans and go get the cost estimates.

So people that run into problems just say, “Well, I talked to my friend. He’s a concrete guy, you know. He’s at my bowling team and he told me a foundation’s 30,000.” So they write that number down, they think they’ve done a good job. We say, “Well that’s great, maybe your friend does know the cost. But isn’t it better for him to look at the land and see your foundation plan to determine the cost?”

Interviewer: Right, right.

Steve Landmark: So he may go out and go, “Oh, you’re right, it is 30,000” or he may say, “Hey, I didn’t know you were on the slope on the side of a hill. And this and this and that and all these other things maybe it’s 34,000.”

So the budget in the situation really comes down to, you know, keeping tabs on yourself so that you draw a set of plans for a house that you’re happy with and then stay with that happy house and move forward. And, you know, I jokingly tell people turn your TV off, don’t watch anymore of these renovation shows and all these – all these great things, because, you know, those are all there by people selling products and they make it sound like it’s just so cheap to, you know, put an airplane hangar in the back of your house.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And do all these things. So, you know, generally those are high-dollar projects, but, you’ve got to be realistic with yourself.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: To go through and make sure that you’re shooting for an accurate situation. So when people go through and are honest with themselves and do their proper budgeting, design the house to the way they want it to be, those issues are avoided. So that’s what we tell people. I always say it’s doing your homework up front.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Let’s do all the things that can change on paper. It’s easy to change something on paper, it’s very hard and expensive once the house is up. So take the time to be honest with yourself and say, “Yes, we do want a fireplace” or “Yes, we do want a deck” or “Do we need a two-car garage or a three-car garage,” or “Do we need to have gold faucets or can we use chrome ones?” That’s – those are the details they have to be – kind of worked out. And at a certain point, you just got to say, “Hey, the chrome ones are beautiful, they’re timeless, they’re going to look good in two years and ten years and 20 years, it’s the standard one. That’s the one to go. So we don’t end up paying for thing two and three times.”

Interviewer: Yeah, that makes sense. Speaking of things that would be real expensive to change after the fact, let’s talk about some customer sort of questions about, you know, when you – when you’re excavating for a foundation and maybe the soil conditions aren’t great, things like that. That’s a problem you definitely have to start early, I would imagine.

Steve Landmark: Yes. And that – in my own projects, I found that things that can affect your budget that – are kind of those, uh-oh moments. And my experience from the projects I have done myself, they’ve had to with ground because you can’t just walk in a piece of dirt and look at it and go, “Hey, I could tell you what’s four-feet down.”

So let me tell you some extreme situations. I wouldn’t think most people are going to run into it, but it’s the extreme story for people who don’t understand the value of knowing what you’re building in.

So some people go through and say, “You know, my grandfather had this land for a 100 years, you know, nothing’s happened, nothing’s changed to it.” Well over the course of time, people have filled wetlands in it to make more agricultural land. Well, you know, when America was 95% farmers, they needed land, well now, it’s flipped to where there’s 5% or 10% farmers. So the land is going from being a wetland or whatever it may be to farming lands to now, land for homes –

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: – and home developments.

So we had a customer. We always tell people check their soils out. He was in Southern Illinois in a rural area. And he wanted a crawlspace. I told him, “Check the situation, you’re an agricultural land, who knows what happened 100 years ago, 150 years ago.” Well he wanted a crawlspace, so in that area you dig down three, four feet and put a foundation in. He ran in a muck.

What happened is someone way back filled in a pond. So you and I know that if you rock to the edge of a pond, you’ll sink. There’s just muck, you know, rotted leaves, dirt stuff like that. So you take a regular 150 or 200 pound person, you sink in that muck.

So what happened is the people – someone way back filled the pond in. You know, they don’t go tell anyone, much less does the story transfer around for 100 years.

Interviewer: Yeah, it could’ve been decades ago.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, they dig the hole and right where the footers are going to be is where the bottom of this pond was.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: It was all muck.

Interviewer: Huh.

Steve Landmark: The person ended up with a 12-foot-tall basement. Wow. By the time they were able to dig to the bottom of the muck.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Now it’s interesting about this is a soil test before that, a couple 100 bucks. Someone could’ve taken a bore in to find out.

Now the interesting thing is this is more of an extreme story and most building departments don’t require stuff like this. So they say, “Oh, you don’t need it, you know, the land’s the same, just do this.” But ultimately it is your responsibility to know what the ground conditions are. And that’s it. And sometimes people say, “Well, we took a soil test 300 feet over there, it’s the same here.” Well, soil can change in a foot.

So we always suggest checking that. We had another situation on a very nice family building in Colorado. They – they went out, they had a test done and they decided move their house 200 feet. They suggested take your test again and well, when they got to that point, they dug down a foot and they hit granite.

Interviewer: Oh, right.

Steve Landmark: So we had to re-engineer, they had to get rid of some granite, we have to the stuff go. They got through the issue, the point is it would’ve been nice to know about that up front.

So that – what I always suggest to people is understand what’s – what your ground conditions are. It can affect your excavation, your ability to have a basement, crawlspace or slab. It can also affect your septic system, so it kind of affects the use of your land. You know, you don’t want to put your house in a drainage area. You know, someone makes, “Oh, it hasn’t flooded here in ten years,” well, all you need to do is watch the news to know that, you know, there’s a 100-year flood every five years in certain parts of the country. So we always say, you know, sit back and take a look at what’s there and if you need it, hire a civil engineer or soil scientist to check it out.

Now, the situations that I’ve brought up to you are more on the extreme side. It doesn’t happen to everyone – it’s pretty rare. It’s probably 1%, 2%, 3% of the people that run into that situation. I’m just saying that, you know, it’s something to consider, so.

Interviewer: Yeah. And consider early with something like that.

Steve Landmark: Right.

Interviewer: Let’s, you know, let’s talk about the environment of the land you’re building on, and I don’t mean environmental, I mean, the – your neighbors. Let’s say you’re building in a neighborhood. And I’m sure there are a lot of restrictions on your lot, height restrictions and calculations that you, like, you know, if somebody’s got a ranch home and you come in and build a three-story monstrosity and it cuts out all their light, I’m sure there are restrictions and rules to all of that.

Steve Landmark: Yes, there are. It’s the enforcement of it. So, you know, the simple one that’s easy for people to understand are height restrictions.  Generally, in communities, there will be a height restriction, 25 feet, 30 feet, 35 feet. And they may calculate to the peak of the house, they may calculate to the average of the bottom eave and the peak. There’s a variety of different ways that they calculate it. And then also, if you’re in the side of the hill, you know, each corner of the house maybe at a different now of elevation. Like, in the case of a walk-out basement on the rear, and then, just a floor system and just a little bit of above grid at the front. So, how do you calculate that?

So we’re able to do that and sometimes people like, “Hey, it doesn’t matter. No one’s around.” But there are parts of, you know, very scenic parts of the country where they don’t want someone building a big house and blocking the neighbors view.

Interviewer: Sure.

Steve Landmark: It defeats the character of the neighborhood and it devalues someone else’s house. So they want to make sure that a house is uniform, the neighborhoods are uniform, and some guy doesn’t have a 17 story house, and everyone else has a, you know, 15 foot tall house. So, they want to make sure that there’s some continuity in there for the overall urban planning of the home.

We’ve also run into a few communities, and again, this is a rare thing but it’s an interesting thing of how we’ve help people through, where they have light restrictions. So, as you can see, you can’t create a certain shadow. So they don’t want you – if you had a lot, and say that was, 50 feet, or say, 60 feet wide, with 10 foot setbacks in each side. So, you have 40 feet to build. They don’t want you to build a big block, 40 feet wide, 20 feet tall. There’s restrictions to make sure that light comes in to your yard. You know, you’re not putting shadows all over your neighbor’s yards, all over your neighbor’s house, because light and air is very important to the enjoyment of the community.

So if you live in one of those communities, we can – we can help develop the calculation and the graphical representation showing that light passage passes for the requirement. Light’s important though, there’s a lot of people that can –

Interviewer: Oh, yeah.

Steve Landmark: – that can have, you know, depression issues if they don’t have the right amount of light.  No, for all, that showing that light just makes people happier and more enjoyable.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So –

Interviewer: There’s another I wanted to get into that I had written down here about working in a real tight lot You’ve bought up all this place where you want to build your house and – but it’s a pretty tight neighborhood, houses are close together. Let’s talk about retaining wall design and fitting those in to tight lots, and you know, I wouldn’t even know where the footers go. Where do you begin?

Steve Landmark: That’s an interesting one that you bring up because as people, you know, work in an infill lots and cities or different places their – they’re building pretty cool homes. Sometimes they have lockout basements, sometimes these lots are sloped. So, what ends up happening is sometimes to take advantage of a walk-out basement, or lookout basement, or work around different terrain, they require certain amount of retaining walls to hold the soil back so they can have a walk-out basement in these urban areas.

And what ends up happening is, if you have a skinny lot, you want to basically, put a wall right up to the corner. Those retaining walls have a footer that may proceed underneath your lot line into your neighbor’s yard.

Interviewer: Yeah, right.

Steve Landmark: It’s kind of, an interesting situation, a very few people think about. So, when we get in a design some type lots like that which are generally closer in city areas, we’ve got to look at the design and the big scope to say, “Hey, what are you doing?”

Now, if you’re just going to put a simple ranch over there and follow within the setbacks, it’s fine. But if you’re trying to, you know, work with the grades in different situations to have access around the house for walk-out basements, and things are tight, and you do need retaining walls, we have to watch where the footers of the homes go. And that – it’s not just retaining walls, some communities do allow you to build right up to the lot line. So, the situation that comes in is a basement wall, say it’s an 8-inch or 10-inch thick basement wall, that footer at the bottom might be 18 inches, 24 inches wall. If you’re building right on the lot line, that footer is going into your neighbor’s yard. So there’s legal issues and stuff like that.

Again, this is very strange and we’re talking today about unique, funky things that have come up, and how we’ve organized and work through with our customers. So, again, if someone’s working at a tighter lot, generally, you know, in smaller spaces, putting a lot of stuff, there’s a little more detail work that has to go in. And sometimes it’s just where do you put the driveway, where, you know, where water and sewer connections, where’s the view.

Sometimes people don’t think of it. They’re like, “Hey, I want to put my house, you know, as close to the lot line as possible.” And then they realize their bedroom windows looking right into their neighbor’s bedroom window. Maybe that’s not what you want.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So, it’s good to think – think those things through. And we’re not expecting every customer to know everything about this. We’re bringing ideas up and when things like that pop up, we’ll – we’ll jog the idea and say, “Hey, do you want this? Can we consider this?”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So it’s pretty cool.

Interviewer: Speaking of tight lots, how do you – in a tighter space, how do energy calculations, perhaps, restrict your home design or orientation on your lot?

Steve Landmark: Well, sometimes it’s a, you know, the tighter lot could limit the orientation as to how your house can face. But also, it’s not just the tighter lot, it’s the tighter energy calculate – requirements that are coming in certain states.

You know, in some places like, you know, they tighten up a little every year. It’s not a huge deal. There’s other places where they’re getting extremely tight every year. So, what we have to do is – if you’re out in the country, you know, I’m going to tie a few things together . If you have a specific view that you want, you know, you want your living area to have this great view through big glass windows to look at – to look at a mountain range, well, by chance that mountain range happens to be at your southern view. Like we mentioned before, the sun’s going to go in and, kind of, cook that interior of the home.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So, sometimes we have to work on adding porches, or covered areas to restrict the sun coming in, or counteract with a higher efficiency heating and cooling systems, water heating systems, insulation values, or shading of certain types to allow things to work.

So if you’re in an area, and California’s the one that definitely comes to mind, where you’ve got restrictive – more restrictive energy calculations, it can affect the orientation of your home. So if you’re building in a community with smaller lot sizes and you want big glass walls facing south where the southern sun just beams right in your living room, it might be a little bit more work to design it. We could do it, but people should understand that in certain areas, your energy calculations might dictate some of the design. You might need more area in your roof system for added insulation. You might need – if you’re building on a slab, you might have to insulate the slab considerably more.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: There might be geothermal units. There is likely and definitely going to be the use of solar. Now, as a little side note, a lot of our customers build in the mountains, where they have 100-foot tall trees that completely block the sun. I don’t want to say completely but they block a considerable amount and they’re pine trees so the sun doesn’t get through. The code still dictates you have to have solar panels on your roof starting very soon.

So there’s a little bit of an oxymoron in the whole situation, but those are the details that were here. We have the energy code professionals to go through and do it. And by the way, just because your area doesn’t dictate stricter energy codes, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have an interest and still desire to have a more energy-efficient home than the code requires.

So if you go to certain places in the Midwest, generally 70%, 80% of the country, there are energy codes. They want to know if the house passes but they are what I would call stringent. So if someone wanted to have a house that excelled way beyond it, it’s always possible to say, “Hey, I want to do what I can to control the cost. What can we do to upgrade insulation, to have better installation, to verify that the installation is done right, to make sure the mechanical systems are done right?”

Just because someone says, “I’ve been an insulation installer for 30 years,” that doesn’t mean that they know how to use modern insulation and install it properly. So there’s a lot with the energy the energy codes where we can help people. And that’s a situation where people are always concerned about their energy bill after they move into it. They don’t always think about it upfront. They look at it as a government regulation hindering them. The realty is it allows for a more comfortable home.

Interviewer: Yeah. Here’s the thing I was saving for last because you and I have talked about it privately before and never on the podcast, but I’m sure that customers come to you with this all the time. When somebody chooses a design and they come to you, it’s not a Landmark design but from an outside designer, and it doesn’t get approved, how can you help at that stage?

Steve Landmark: It’s very easy for us to help because typically times where people pay for a set of plans and they don’t get approved, they have gone to the local guy that’s doing it as a side job and he’s more interested in making his few hundred bucks than he is truly knowing structural design, energy calculations, working with civil engineers, and code issues.

So when we get plans like that, and it happens a lot, people innocently work with a friend or whatever and get it, and I don’t want to say that –

Interviewer: Your brother-in-law.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. And I don’t want to say that some of these people can’t do it, but that’s generally the situation is we can go through and work from the point that they’re at to go get a set of plans put together so that they can continue on with permitting, or if they work with a less sophisticated building department and they’ve actually obtained permits on plans that aren’t detailed enough to know exactly what needs to be built, we can go through and work with it.

Again, it’s kind of like what I spoke about upfront, do your homework upfront. The design element, engineering element, other details for permitting, that’s kind of the roadmap to building. If you have a bad set of plans upfront, you will have problems when you’re on the building phase, because the plumber’s going to come back and say, “Hey, it’s not clear where your toilet is.” Suddenly you’re out there trying to figure it out. A framer’s going to come through and say, “Hey, it doesn’t say if you have a flat ceiling here, a cathedral ceiling, or a tray ceiling.” Or it doesn’t say, “Hey, what type of floor system are we using?”

So we’re believers in do the homework upfront, develop the plans accurately, and understand your project.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: So if someone does get stuck or they buy some plans that just don’t seem to do the job, we will gladly help them through the process and get it on track. It’s easy. We do it every day, you know, developing accurate sets of plans. So they shouldn’t be embarrassed to call. We’ll do whatever we can to help them.

Interviewer: Awesome. Well, this has been a pretty long podcast. When we started talking, it seems like it’s gone by really fast. I’m looking at the clock, and this –

Steve Landmark: Well, this is interesting stuff. It’s kind of just interesting stories that is not meant to scare but it’s meant to say, “Hey, Landmark can help us. Look at this, look at this stuff, I never thought of it.”

And that’s what we try to do is give our customers an understanding of the project because maybe they’ve never built before, maybe they’re on their fourth home. There’s always new experiences, upgraded codes, different situations where we can help them.

Interviewer: Right. Well I want to thank everyone for joining us again on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. And before we go, of course, as always, Steve, why don’t you let our listeners know how to contact you guys at Landmark Home & Land Company?

Steve Landmark: The quickest way is to take a look at our website which is lhlc.com, so it’s kind of like the initials Landmark Home Land Company – lhlc.com. And on there you can see plans, there’s different discussions on how we can help with permitting, working in different states, you know, just different ideas.

They can also submit a message to us. They can also call at their convenience at 800-830-9788. And they’d work with Mike to go through and have preliminary discussions on what we can do to help them.

They can email Mike at [email protected] or I’m also available at [email protected]. They can email, we’re very responsive, we’re knowledgeable, and we’re proactive. A lot of our customers say, “Steve, without you, you’re kind of the engine driving the project because we understand what needs to be done and how it needs to be scheduled and worked through.”

Interviewer: Oh, nice. Well, we are going to wrap it up now. So for Steve Tuma and myself, thanks again everybody for joining us on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show and we will see you next time. Thanks.

Steve Landmark: Happy homebuilding.

Learn how site planning, municipal zoning regulations, and topography evaluations ensure a custom panelized kit home fits your building lot seamlessly. We discuss the critical differences between wall-line and roof-eave setbacks, explaining how to calculate maximum lot-coverage percentages that balance foundation footprints, sidewalks, and driveways with required permeable green space. Discover how Homeowners Association (HOA) architectural covenants frequently impose stricter setback rules, square-footage minimums, and exterior finish palettes than city zoning codes. Explore how contour lines on topographical maps influence foundation choices—such as walkout versus daylight basements—and learn why municipal plan checkers require formal grading plans to secure driveway slopes and safe emergency vehicle access.

A: While many jurisdictions measure setbacks strictly from the property line to the home’s exterior wall framing, strict building departments measure to the outermost architectural projection. In those municipalities, deep roof eaves, bay windows, exterior fireplace chases, and roof gutters must remain completely within the legal building envelope to pass plan check.

A: Lot coverage restrictions establish a maximum percentage—typically 30% to 40% of total parcel square footage—that can be covered by permanent structures and impermeable surfaces. Depending on local zoning codes, this calculation can encompass the primary foundation footprint, attached garages, detached outbuildings, covered patios, and concrete driveways to preserve permeable ground for stormwater runoff.

A: The more restrictive regulation always controls where the home can be built on the parcel. If city zoning requires a 25-foot front setback but private Homeowners Association (HOA) covenants mandate a 30-foot setback, the house must be situated at least 30 feet from the property line to obtain HOA architectural approval and prevent legal challenges.

A: Topographical lines represent specific elevation increments across a parcel, revealing whether the building footprint sits on a level grade or slopes across the lot. Placing a flat concrete slab on a sharply sloping site requires excessive excavation and retaining walls, whereas matching the foundation to natural contour lines allows the design to incorporate an affordable walkout or daylight basement.

A: Building departments enforce engineered grading plans on sloping lots to verify that finished ground slopes away from foundations to prevent water intrusion. Furthermore, grading plans demonstrate that proposed driveway approach angles do not exceed maximum grade limits (typically 12% to 15%), ensuring emergency fire engines and ambulances can navigate the terrain safely.

Interviewer: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me, as he is for every episode, is the President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new houses where they want exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993, Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you doing my friend?

Steve Landmark: It’s another great day, another fun day helping customers design houses, build them and work with different details and today we were working on a project and where the customer wanted to know, “How does my house fit on the lot?”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: It sounds kind of simple. But when you think about it, it’s like who has ever thought about that?

Interviewer: And that falls under what? Site planning would you say?

Steve Landmark: Yeah, I would say site planning. It’s an important thing and sometimes there’s technical details. You know, and generally smaller than the lot, a little more complex because it’s just harder to fit a lot more in a little space. But some nice big lots and mountain area, slopes and stuff. There’s a lot of details. But it’s important not just for the building department but also for your enjoyment of the home and the site.

Interviewer: Well, just give me the basics. Talk to me like I’m a third grader. I mean how do I go about developing a site plan?

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s kind of interesting because a lot of customers will know where they want to put a house or what the house looks like or if they own a land, they will be like, “Well, this is our spot and we’ve got a view of the sunrise or the sunset,” or “Hey, this is easy access to get out of the kitchen, run into the garage and go off to work.”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So whatever someone’s priority is, they generally have some general concepts. So the idea of setting it up for someone’s lifestyle is important. But it’s also good to make sure it fits the regulations and other things that are important for draining, accessing your garage, being able to make sure you can get on the porch roof. If you’re going to put a patio on the back, make sure that the ground is there.

So it’s important stuff to review and understand because different houses fit on land different ways. Sometimes people send us a plan for a house with a big walkout basement and they’re telling us that they want to build it on a slab in Iowa.

So we’ve got to make adjustments to the design to make sure that it will fit the land. But there’s – it’s kind of interesting. I’m initially talking about how do you fit it on the land. You know, does it flow? Does it work good? But some of these regulations that the building departments have, there will be different setbacks. So some areas you got to have a 10-foot front yard or 20 or 30-foot front yard. Some will say you have to have 10 on side yards. Some will say you have to have 20 total with the minimum of 8 on one side.

So sometimes the interpretation is relatively simple. You just need to understand and then there’s also rear lot setbacks. So those are details that we can work with with customers to find out the building area, to make sure that the footprint of the house fits in there.

So – and we can work with the finer technical details. Most building departments say the setbacks will go up to the side of the house, the wall of the house. We’ve had others say no, it goes to the overhang. Others say no, it’s to the farthest projection. So if you’re putting gutters on the house, you have to go to the setback up to the gutter.

So there’s a variety of situations that we can help a customer work through and that’s a very important part. You don’t want to design and have a house ready and then find out that you can’t put it on the lot.

Within that, some of these building departments have lot coverage setback or lot coverage restrictions. So you can’t have over 40 percent of the ground covered.

Interviewer: Ah, OK.

Steve Landmark: Right? So they basically don’t want people just covering their lot with cement. They want some green areas or to have side yards and have a certain feel in the neighborhood. So sometimes those coverages are by roof area. Sometimes it’s roof area and sidewalks and garage area and overhangs.

So it’s – we can work with the situation there to make sure it complies. Then there’s also height restrictions. Some areas, they don’t want you putting five-story buildings.

Interviewer: I guess you could make some pretty angry neighbors if you build too high.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. You put your tower over there, the big, evil tower in the middle of town or something, but no. So there are height restrictions and then what a couple of communities have is they have different restrictions to make sure sunlight gets in your yard, so that you don’t have to push shadows all over.

So there are different calculations sometimes on how to calculate these different details and that’s what we can help. It’s not hard for us to do. It’s just a matter of finding out what your building department wants and we can go through. So we don’t expect every customer to know every detail on site planning. But that’s what it is.

But then some building departments will ask things like, “Where’s your septic? Where’s your reserved area for the septic? Where’s the driveway? What is it made of? Where does your gas come in, your power, your electric come in, and any other utilities? Where are there power poles? Are there any other buildings?” In areas – you know, the fires in California. They want to know are they restricted areas where someone can’t travel through? Are there cliffs or different stuff? Because if there’s a fire, the fire department might look at it and say, hey, these are the conditions at the house. Then they’re prepared to fight the fire.

So there could be different situations. Again, it’s details that we deal with. I’m just kind of reviewing them, so people could get an understanding of what’s involved. Generally, the less sophisticated building departments, they just want to know, “Hey, how big is your lot? Where’s your house going? Does it fit within the setbacks?”

Other building departments want details but that’s part of our service. If someone wants the site plan to help get that all put together and go from there. We always say that someone should understand their lot. If they own it, they should have a survey of it or a legal description, so that we could develop this plan and so that they know what they own.

Rarely but occasionally, someone will say, “Hey, I own a 100 by 100 lot.” Well, you get the legal description as 97 feet, 6 inches by 102 feet and 4 inches. So more and more building departments are making sure that the site plan is actually drawn to what their recorded piece of land is to make sure that everything is consistent.

Interviewer: You’re talking about building departments a lot. We do discuss that a lot in this podcast, dealing with building departments and how much Landmark – you know, stuff like lot coverage, height restrictions that we mentioned and Landmark Home and Land Company, your company does help the customer deal with those and deal with the different departments. But what about homeowner’s associations? How much control are they going to have over my site design and how much of that to you does Landmark need to know before they can help a customer?

Steve Landmark: Right. Homeowner’s associations are interesting because the general concept is they will go through to keep the uniformity or to keep a certain community to a certain standard. So generally if they have recorded covenants and restrictions, they might name them something else. But covenants and restrictions, they might be as simple as you can’t park two cars in your driveway or they might say, hey, the house has to be over 1000 square feet. If it’s two levels, it has got to be over 1600 square feet and then other homeowners’ associations can be extremely restrictive. They can say you’ve got to have these colors. You got to come by a board. You got to do this, this, this and this and they can really, really dictate what it is.

Most of them are pretty easygoing. They’ve got a clear and written set of guidelines. As long as you fit them, you should be ready to go and get them. So we can work with it. You know, read them, work with the plans, make sure it’s all put together and we can also get the plans. So in some cases if they’re simpler, saying, hey, the house needs to be 1000 square feet. We just draw the plan. So it’s 1000 square feet or larger according to what the customer wants.

If it’s something more specific, we’ve actually had some building departments say you have to specify the exact manufacturer and color of the roof, the siding, the fascias, soffits windows and they want samples of them at the meeting. So they can be restrictive but generally people know about that before they purchase the land. So it makes sense for them to have a more restrictive neighborhood. They can buy there. If they want something less restrictive, they can go somewhere else. But overall it’s just another – they just want to make sure that the community is uniform. You wouldn’t want to go in and build a nice home and then find out the guy next to you is building something less than nice. So we can be supportive and help the process.

The important thing is to get those approvals before you get too deep in the final designs and stuff because if they do come back and say, “Hey, you got a nice home. But we need you to do this and that,” we can make those revisions.

But most homeowner’s associations are pretty easygoing. Every once in a while, they get interesting. But they’re pretty easygoing and straightforward. So – and sometimes the important thing is that sometimes they are more restrictive than the city.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So I’m working on a project right now where the city setbacks are 25 feet in the front. Ten on each side and 20 in the back. But the homeowner’s association restricts the front setback at 30 feet.

Interviewer: Oh, I see what you’re saying. Yeah.

Steve Landmark: So that’s why you’ve got to look at what the city or the county wants along with what the homeowner’s association wants. We can look at some of those things and interpret some of them and get you to set a plan so that they can be submitted properly.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about the actual lay of the land as they say. How does the topography affect the use of my site?

Steve Landmark: Well, topography basically just kind of get – tells you is the land flat. Is there a hill? Is there a steep hill? Is there a cliff? If you’ve ever looked at a site plan, there might be lines there. There might be a number there. Like it will say 100 and it might say each line is a one-foot increment or two-foot increments or ten-foot increments.

Interviewer: Yeah, I’ve seen that.

Steve Landmark: And you could read that to show where hills are. Where that’s important is in making sure the house fits on the land, making sure the foundation fits properly. You might need to get someone in there to do a grading plan or a drainage plan. But it allows you to understand stuff. So if you’re in an area and designing it, you might not want to design your driveway so it’s on a steep upslope. It might not be safe.

So you can look at the terrain and see what is and sometimes it’s to take advantage of a view. But generally when we’re working on it, it’s to make sure that the house fits on the land, the foundation works right, to know that if you want a walkout basement, make sure there’s enough space or if it’s a lookout basement, to make sure there’s enough space or if someone wants a house on a slab, to make sure that you’re – you’ve got an area where the land is workable.

So topography is very important. Now what’s interesting is certain states, there’s less topographical challenges. Like Florida is a pretty flat state. You know, what they consider a hill down there, people don’t even notice in the Colorado Rockies.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So …

Interviewer: That’s good.

Steve Landmark: …you can end up in some pretty extreme situations when you get in the mountain areas. That’s where it’s important in positioning the house and sometimes it’s not just for the foundation. Sometimes it’s aesthetics. Sometimes people want to say, hey, there’s this beautiful mountain here, this knoll or this vista where the sun sets and we want to be able to take advantage of that or they might say, hey, we have horses. We want the horses to have this flat area. Let’s put the house in an area that’s higher in the hills to look over the pasture.

So it’s kind of an important detail. Now a lot of customers, when they buy the land, they will go through and say, “Hey, this is beautiful. I want the house here and the garage is here or the pole barn is there,” or whatever it is and go from there.

Generally city lots are relatively flat. But there have been conditions when you need topographical details in areas that are very sophisticated in their permit review.

Interviewer: Now you had mentioned grading plans just a second ago. It sounds like something that’s probably a good idea to get. Would you say in most situations?

Steve Landmark: In situations where you’re in a – an area where there’s a varied terrain, a lot of hills and valleys and stuff like that, it’s important. Like if you’re in a flat piece of land, generally isn’t important. There are some areas of California where they will ask you to get a topographical detail and a grading plan on a perfectly flat piece of land that’s going to stay perfectly flat because they want to know what’s there and what will be there. It’s just documentation. But like if you’re building on the side of a hill, it’s important to have the topographical details and a grading plan, so that you know you’ve got proper access for driveways, to get in your doors.

Some areas, this is kind of done to make sure that there’s enough turnaround for emergency vehicles. But the areas that want grading plans, your building department will request them. It’s pretty rare that someone does a grading plan just to do it. You know, so generally in mountain areas. You know, Colorado and California type projects and also in Oregon and Washington State. Every once in a while, you will run into that. But that’s something we can work with on the site plan. So basically I think the bottom line of site plans is some of them are very simple. If you’re building in an area, they may not even ask for one. They may just say, “Hey, sketch up your lot dimensions and where you’re putting the house,” and others, they can get very complex. The point is where they’re asking for more complex information, there’s probably little challenges to the lot and we need to have that information to properly design the home and supply the information the building department will require.

There are situations where grading plans get into the safety of a home. You know, making sure you can get out of a house properly and easily get in and out of a house for whatever reason. So it’s important stuff. But site plans, like I say, can be simple or they could be complex. Either way, we can work through the process to help it and sometimes customers just want a site plan so that they could visually look at it.

Interviewer: Right, I could see that.

Steve Landmark: And say, hey, you know, I want to sit out there with my family and say, hey, the pole barn is going here, the garage is here and some families will actually go out to their land and stake it and say here’s the garage, here’s the driveway, here’s the house, here’s the porch and they will sit there and go, “OK. Is this taking advantage of the view? Is this making it easy?” You know, if they’ve got multiple cars to make sure they can get in the driveway right.

Now we can plan that on paper. But some people actually like to kind of role play it out on the land.

Interviewer: Why not? Yeah, that’s great.

Steve Landmark: So that you can see it and within that site plan then, you can start seeing hey, wait. We’ve got a view of this hill or this big tree or the lake or the river. We should have a window here.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Or this is where we want the back porch. So it’s kind of important not just for regulations but also the enjoyment of the home. It’s a pretty key element.

Interviewer: So site plans can be pretty detailed but they can also be pretty simple I would think.

Steve Landmark: Right. Yeah, that’s the point and it really comes down to what the building department requests. But it’s something we can help with. We just work with the customer for them to provide the information. We get it drawn up. If they need help interpreting something or knowing how to obtain some information, we can help them through the process. We’ve been doing it a while. We can help.

Interviewer: Just Steve, you’re – I have to tell you. Your knowledge on the subject of home building, it never ceases to amaze me. I just want to know a little bit about your day. I mean helping people just seems to be something that Landmark is – you guys are known for your great customer service. But how many hours of your day are spent on a telephone just helping people get through the little bumps of home building, you know, without scraping their knees too much?

Steve Landmark: That’s interesting because I think if I looked at how many hours it was, I would be like, “Wow, I work a lot.” It’s basically you get out of bed and you help people and you take calls. It’s emails, texts, phone calls, messages through social marketing, wherever it may come through. We communicate with the people on – and by telephone as well.

The interesting thing is we do like to support and help the customer. So some customers call. Some people email. Some people text, whatever it is. We’re very responsive and take care of it because we think it’s important that our customers understand what they’re doing. So if someone says, “Hey, should I do this or that?” we don’t just answer yes. We try to explain why it makes sense.

Interviewer: Right, right.

Steve Landmark: Because they’re owner builders. They’re doing this for a personal enjoyment, satisfaction, learning, control the quality, control the budget. There’s a lot of reasons why they do it and we want them to enjoy the process. It could be a lot of work. It is a lot of work. But when you understand it and realize, hey, I’m taking in extra time to do my site plan right, so we have the view of the pond, as long as they live at the house, they’re going to enjoy the view of the pond or the sunrise or sunset or whatever it is.

So that’s why we like to work with people in a supportive manner to help them through the process. I think in any professional business, there are people that just give you answers and push you out. We’re here to say, hey, let’s make sure you understand this, so that you could make good decisions and those good decisions leads to a better home and a more enjoyable building process.

A huge portion of our business is repeat and referral business. That’s a result of taking care of people.

Interviewer: I was told that you actually receive like Christmas cards and things from former customers. That’s pretty amazing. That says a lot.

Steve Landmark: Oh, it’s amazing. There’s one family, there – a retired couple in Arizona every year and I think we helped them five years ago. People will just call up and say, “Hey, what’s happening? We were just sitting here and talking about you. It’s like your ears must have been burning and I just wanted to tell you about this,” and there are people that will call 10, 15 years later to say, “Hey, remember me? I want to do another one.”

Interviewer: Wow.

Steve Landmark: That is the ultimate pat on the back. You know, Landmark you did a great job. It’s just amazing when people come back and will go through and say, “You really helped me. Do you remember me?” I’m like, “Yeah! That was a cool house. It was a chalet in Colorado,” or the house in the Historic District in Pennsylvania and to go through and work that through.

What you’re hitting there is a passion. I think we totally enjoy this. We’re having fun.

Interviewer: Yeah, that’s a good one, passion.

Steve Landmark: We – this isn’t a nine-to-five. This is an all-day endeavor. We’ve been doing it since 1993. If someone calls us on a weekend, we answer or we will give them a callback right away. We’re supportive of the project because we realize it’s a very important project to them and it’s also very important to us. It’s cool. It’s a lot of fun. And you know what? The best thing is we’re lucky. We’ve got a lot of very good customers doing interesting projects that are just trying to do things to get a good home, whether it’s their first home, their fifth home, their retirement home, whatever it may be.

It’s interesting to see how our help affects them and their ability to live a better life. It’s very cool.

Interviewer: That’s awesome, yeah. Well, with that happy note, we’re going to wrap up this episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But before we go, Steve, tell our listeners how best to get in contact with you guys over at Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Landmark: The best way is to call 800-830-9788. You can also check out our website at www.lhlc.com. It’s the initials of Landmark Home and Land Company but it’s just www.lhlc.com. We’re on social platforms, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and then you can also email us. Mike will generally work with customers upfront. He’s at [email protected] and I’m at [email protected] and we’re always wanting to help and help people sort projects out.

We realize some people are ready to go now and we realize other people might need a year or two or three or whatever time to get things in line, get the right land. You know, get everything in a row so that they can move forward. So we don’t look at this as a race to build a house. We look at it as a positive endeavor to go through and make sure the house is designed and built properly.

Interviewer: Fantastic. Well, that’s going to do it for us today on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. So for Steve Tuma and myself, once again thanks for joining us and we will see you all next time.

Steve Landmark: Well, thank you.