Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show

Learn how municipal structural engineering mandates, geotechnical conditions, and regional climate forces vary across different building locations. We discuss why high wind corridors, heavy mountain snow loads, and active seismic zones demand comprehensive structural engineering packages—including shear wall schedules, load-bearing header calculations, and continuous tie-down hold-downs from roof truss to foundation. Discover why jurisdictions with expansive clay soils (such as parts of Texas and Colorado) require dedicated, engineer-stamped foundation plans even when above-grade framing follows standard prescriptive codes. Explore why building departments trigger structural engineering reviews when architectural plans feature 15-to-20-foot tall window walls, multiple exposed walkout stories, or complex chalet rooflines. Finally, examine how certified Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing (MEP) load sheets ensure level, apples-to-apples subcontractor bids while eliminating hot and cold spots across finished living spaces.

A: Standard residential building codes rely on prescriptive framing rules designed for simple 8-to-9-foot walls with conventional window-to-wall ratios. When a custom home features 15-to-20-foot tall walls, large uninterrupted glass arrays, or multi-level exposed walkouts, the wall loses standard lateral shear capacity, requiring a licensed structural engineer to calculate wind-load resistance and design dedicated steel posts or engineered shear walls.

A: In regions with expansive bentonite clay soils—such as parts of Colorado, Texas, and the Southwest—soil swells when wet and shrinks when dry, generating extreme hydraulic pressures that can heave and crack residential concrete. In these jurisdictions, officials mandate site-specific, engineer-stamped foundation designs tailored to soil bearing capacity while permitting standard prescriptive lumber framing above the grade beam.

A: Without engineered MEP plans, HVAC and electrical trades submit quotes based on varying, unverified assumptions—often undersizing ductwork or omitting return air runs to offer an artificially low price. Having stamped Manual J, S, and D load sheets and dedicated electrical riser diagrams ensures every subcontractor bids on the exact same equipment sizes and duct layouts, preventing surprise change orders and cold rooms.

A: Roof trusses carry the full dead weight of the roof assembly alongside dynamic regional live loads, such as drifting mountain snow or uplift from 110+ mph hurricane winds. Plan examiners require stamped truss engineering sheets upfront during the plan-check phase to verify that truss web profiles, plate gauges, and structural bearing points match the load-path engineering of the foundation and walls below.

A: Prescriptive codes provide standardized span tables and generic fastener schedules that any drafter can apply to simple, symmetrical rectangular homes built under average environmental conditions. An engineered plan set provides rigorous mathematical calculations justifying specific member depths, connection hardware, anchor-bolt spacing, and hold-down brackets designed specifically for extreme local wind, seismic, or soil forces.

Interviewer: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me, as always, 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 and that gentleman is Steve Tuma. How’s it going today buddy?

Steve Landmark: It’s an excellent day.

Interviewer: Good.

Steve Landmark: Good day, a lot of customers calling with interesting projects in different parts of the country with different building department requirements. It’s interesting.

Interviewer: Well, that’s good because I’ve got more interesting questions for you, so hope you’re ready to feel the feels.

Steve Landmark: I probably have some interesting answers.

Interviewer: Let’s hope. I want to talk today a little bit about plans again, about getting your plans engineered. And I’d like to go over a couple things again that we’ve touched about a little bit in the past. One of those is structural engineering. Can you just give us your basic expertise on what exactly structural engineering is?

Steve Landmark: In a simplified version, it’s just to make sure that the structural design of your home can withstand the happenings on your site. So let’s just say your building in Colorado, there’s a lot of snow in areas. Some part of Colorado is more desert but a lot of it is snow. So you can end up with big snow accumulation overnight, because of the mountains you can also end up with high winds. Also, the way that mountains are, you can end up with expansive soils.

So then if you took that same house and said “Hey, let’s build that I California.” You’re going to be in an earthquake situation. If you said, “Hey, now I want to move to Key West, Florida.” Suddenly, you’re in a hurricane situation. So the structural engineering develops the structure, the thing that holds the house up to be able to withstand those conditions. And sometimes those conditions like I say are earthquake or wind or snow loads or expansive soils. And that’s what we’re looking at.

So basically, to simplify it, it’s just to make sure the structure is strong enough to withstand the conditions that it’s going to be built within.

Interviewer: And we’ve talked a lot about working with building departments in specific areas, wherever a customer happens to be building a house, he’s going to have to deal with the building department in that area. And the request that they come up with, do they request different structural information a lot?

Steve Landmark: Yes, it can vary considerably because building departments are different, it’s a national code. But the enforcement of that code is different in different areas. My opinion is basically because some areas, the building departments are more sophisticated and others, they are a little less sophisticated.

So that means that some areas like I mentioned before were – they don’t even ask for building permits. Other places, they want simplified structural engineering like header and beam calculations just to make sure that the beams are holding up your house or the headers that are spanning your window and door openings are strong enough to support it.

That’s more on the basic side. Others will go through and want just foundation design because of the ground conditions. That happens a lot in Colorado and Texas and a few other places. And then other places want the full design. That’s the foundation and the complete wood structure, shear walls, different connections, beam sizes and different situations to make sure that the house is strong enough.

So it can be a pretty detailed process. The key point to it is that whatever your building department wants, we’re fully capable of engineering the plans to those – to their requirements and make sure that the plans are complete and accurate for that.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: So it can be a little interesting because some building departments don’t communicate as well so they’ll just say they’ll get me engineering. And I was like, “Well, is there a specific detail that you’re looking for?” but that’s where we come in. And we’ll help out, we’ll communicate them and find out what it is that they need.

So it can be a little intricate, but we’re fully set up to get that taken care of. Oh, and one other detail are truss designs. All truss designs should be stamped by an engineer licensed in the state. And we all supply the truss designs to make sure that they are set for the proper loadings for the design of the home.

Interviewer: And with that include like let’s say calculations for things like headers and beams that must go along with structural information.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, that’s more of a basic one. Some, like certain parts of Pennsylvania and New York, will just had to ask for the header and beam calculations. You know and then some will ask for foundation only, some will ask for the full structural design, so it’s really building department by building department.

And what can be confusing at times and you know people can rely on us to help them through this is some building departments will say they don’t need structural design. And then you turn the plans and they say, “well where’s your engineering set of plans?’

Interviewer: Oh, right.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, so sometimes we can help and clear that up to go through and get that worked out. The reason that that comes in is a lot of the times, people will talk to the secretary in the office who gives a standard answer, compared to asking to say, “Hey, mister customer. What type of house are you building?”

So where that can get confusing is in some of these areas. They’ll say no, you don’t need engineer stamped plans if you’re building a simple design. But let’s just say suddenly, you turn in plans for a chalet design with 19-foot walls, tall ceilings, big glass, big windows, that falls outside of certain parameters that they have that they can just remi– that they can just review quickly.

So that could be why it gets a little bit confusing but either way, we’re here to help. But California, you need engineering everywhere except for parts of Humboldt County. Parts of Texas, you’re going to need foundation design. As you get to the Coast, you’re going to need full structural design. Parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, you’re going to need partial or full engineering.

The East Coast all along the wherever hurricane or high wind hits, you’re going to need structural design. And what’s interesting about this is the interpretation. We did a house on Block Island off of Rhode Island, way up north, they needed hurricane engineering because so many of these storms are now ending up that far up.

And we’ve even been in situations where, in Tennessee, they need a certain level of engineering. New York, Pennsylvania, some of those other states around there, they made – they may need very simple engineering or need more in-depth engineering. In the Plains States, it can vary significantly by building departments and also where they’re located and the sophistication of the building department.

But again, it’s not something to worry about. Just let us know about your project, we’ll search it out. We may need a little bit of your help if it’s a smaller building department because they may not have a website. They may just have a form and they want to have coffee with you and talk about it.

But you know, we’ve been able to help everyone get through the process and we do have engineers licensed in every state and some foreign countries. So we’re able to go through and get the plans put together. And if the building department throws a curveball, we’re pretty good at taking care of those as well. So, so far, we’ve been able to take care of every single one and every customer has gotten permits.

Interviewer: It gets a little confusing and I can imagine overwhelming for some potential builders. Like this structural information that may be required, will that include a lot of times a foundation design?

Steve Landmark: Yes. Yeah, the foundation is very important. It actually is what holds your house up.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s kind of important.

Steve Landmark: So… Yeah, so the found– and that’s generally in an area if they’ll ask for only foundation design and not the above wood portion of the house, it’s probably because they’ve got expansive soils that under different conditions, the soil will heave and lift the foundation. So areas that are in mountain areas, they may request that and then parts of Texas, there’s a lot of expansive soil. So, but it can vary area by area. But yeah, foundation design is – it’s a very important part of it.

Now, in some of these areas where they don’t ask for engineer stamped plans and that we will develop a typical set of plans in an assumed ground condition. And they can review your mater– your foundation contractor and we can make an adjustments.

Interviewer: You hit about something a little bit earlier, truss design. Is that something else that may – a building department might come back with one specific truss design information?

Steve Landmark: Yeah, truss design in itself is very specific you know. So if you’ve got – you know, let’s just say the 26 by 40 house. They want to know that it carries the right loads, the live loads, the dead loads and different you know snow loads, ground snow loads situations. So those are all details that we would go through and get put together.

And it’s very important and a lot of building departments say, “Hey, you know we’ll approve the trusses after you install them.” We kind of say, “Well’ that’s kind of backwards. You know let’s get it all designed and get it approved up front.” And then deliver them and get them installed. So truss design is very important as is the complete design of the home. But most building departments want to review those up front.

Interviewer: How do – how am I going to know if my building department requires the engineer stamped plans? That seems a little vague sometimes.

Steve Landmark: It can be tricky. Where it gets tricky is in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, and then some of the Plains States, Montanas and the Dakotas. Generally, all of California will request it, all of Florida will request it. And then up the West Coast and up the East Coast, they’ll need it.

But a lot of building departments, like I say, they don’t always communicate it well. They don’t say “Yes, you need engineer stamped plans to get permits.” They’ll say, “You need to meet this code.” Well, the situation is the code may or may not dictate, it’s more of their interpretation of the code of what you think.

Our belief is if you’re in an area with high wind speeds, earthquakes, big snow loads, expansive soils, you should definitely do it. Now, I’ve just provided an answer there but I don’t want to create confusion for people because how do you know what a high wind speed is? You know you go outside in a 40 mile an hour wind if you’re standing there, that seems high.

Generally, 90 miles or 100 miles, say 100 miles an hour over is generally they would do it. But the building department will generally tell you they’ll need it. There are certain conditions where they might say you don’t need it and then after they see the design of the home. Those are – now that falls back in our experience where we, when the building department says, “Hey, we don’t need engineer stamped plans.” There might be details of the house where we realized they’re going to come back and ask.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: And those details might be big walls, big, big expansive walls that are tall with a lot of glass in them or designs that are beyond a typical design. So something typical would be a simple design or home that’s fairly common. But if you took a home with a bunch of 15 and 20-foot walls with a lot of glass in them, that might be different.

A home that’s got three levels exposed, they may ask for that. Different roof designs, they may ask for it. The reason being is it gets a little more complex and some building departments aren’t – don’t have the resources to verify that and they pass it onto the structural engineer.

Now, we’re fully capable of taking care of those things, we do it every single day. So it’s not a big deal. It’s more of the situation of finding out what the building department wants. And they’re getting better at communicating, either you call them, we can check a building’s – the building department website, we can call them and have a discussion with them and we’ve got an understanding of what they need in general.

But sometimes, we just need to see their particular perspective and what they think is important to put on plans. I would say 70 or 80 percent of plans are all the same. An engineered plan, it’s the 20 or 30 percent that’s kind of you know detailed by their particular experiences. And sometimes, what one inspector wants is different than another one even if they’re in the same building department. So we’ve got to you know sort through that.

But what we do is we’ve got a method of making sure that the plans are complete, turn them in. and they if they come back with a checklist of items, they’re usually pretty specific saying, “Hey, we need verification of these three or four items or 10 or 15, whatever it may be and then we can go through and respond to them. And typically, a customer would obtain the permit.

Interviewer: Hmm.

Steve Landmark: So it can be a little tricky in places like Colorado, parts of Arizona and New Mexico and the Plains States, parts of Illinois, even in Northern Michigan, Northern Minnesota, and then up in the Northeast, the building departments may have different requirements for different types of designs or different building conditions. But like I mention, we can take care of them. So a customer shouldn’t consider that to be like a big bad situation. It’s just something we can jump in, help them along and make sure that the plans are done properly.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm. Well, you know building inspectors, to the average person, somebody says, “Oh, you have to see the building inspector,” or I guess an engineer would be about the same. Like the man behind the curtain, you just never know. When you walk in, you drop off your plans. How involved does an engineer get? Do they do actual calculations and structural design details or do they just simply stamp your plans and send you on your way?

Steve Landmark: Well, there’s a couple of things there. Way back, there were engineers that would just look at any piece of plans, stamp it, move on. But I think as building departments get more sophisticated and knowledgeable and as the insurance companies of these professionally licensed engineers get involved, they want to know that the people are actually doing the work.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: Other engineers do different things. We actually go through and do the actual structural design based on calculations. So if there is a certain specified beam, there’s a calculation showing how much that beam can carry and make sure that it’s good for the design.

And then there’s also design details showing the connections basically showing the foundation, the connection of the foundation to the floor, the floor to the wall, the wall to the roof and shear wall locations and different stuff.

So we actually go through and do a full set of plans. The idea that someone’s out there and just by you know magic and they understand, they can just say hey, I know this is fine and stamp the set of plans, you know what? It may work but we’d rather have the documentation to show that we know it works you know.

So if a building department has a question or anyone else has a question down the road or it can be documented that “Hey, this is what’s going on.” Now, you mentioned something about the intimidation of talking to building department or engineer. We’re fully set up for that. We can work with you to get you the set of plans so you can go on with the complete plans set, turn it in, and get the permit.

And also the engineers, I work the engineers and all the design people to do it. So I can filter it so that any communication we have with the customer is at a level that they understand. And if they’re very technical, that’s great. If they have a lesser understanding, we can go through and take care of that. But you do if you’re in this place where you need full structural engineering, you do want it to be done right.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm. Can you – do you mind going over some of the other types of engineering that may be required that we haven’t touched upon today?

Steve Landmark: Yeah. Generally, other building, some building departments will ask for plumbing, electrical, and HVAC. HVAC being heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: It’s not extremely common but it is happening more and more where building departments want electrical load calculations. To show that if you have a house of 200 amps or 400 amps, that’s exactly what you need. They want riser diagrams, how it gets – how the power into the house and how it gets distributed.

We were running into more requests for plumbing. Plumbing being water but also gas piping to know that the pipe sizes are right. And then also the HVAC, the heating and air conditioning systems to make sure that the heat loss calculation is done right, to make sure that the sizing of the heating and air conditioning units are properly done. But also verification to make sure that the duct worked and the returns are right.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: And sometimes this comes out of situations where you know the equipment is getting a little more technical or the installers keeping up with the knowledge. But it also can be very helpful to people when they’re out there getting bids.

Because when you have a certified, let’s just say a found– not a found – a heating and ventilating and air conditioning design, you know that everyone is bidding the same system and one guy isn’t getting a lower price and you know keeping a doctor to out of your room. And then you find out that hey, maybe the room is not as comfortable as it should be.

We’ve all been in houses where there’s a room where there’s a cold spot.

Interviewer: Hmm. Right.

Steve Landmark: Or a room that’s cool for whatever reason. Well, it’s quite possible when that house was built, someone saved a thousand dollars.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And now they’ve got a cold room you know that may not be the best thing to do. So those are basically the main engineering, the structural engineering for the foundation and the house, the plumbing, the electric, and the heating and ventilation. Now there’s other details you can get into civil engineering. And that gets involved with grading plans and drainage plans.

So let’s just say that you’re building on a mountain and you’ve got some rolling hills and your, you know or maybe some steeper parts of it. A civil engineer would go in there and figure out the best way to put your house on the land to make sure you’ve got a legally accessible driveway. To make sure that where you want your patio or whatever it fits and to make sure that the ground conditions are right for a properly installed foundation.

And then that civil engineer may also help with a drainage plan to make sure that you know when it rains, the water comes off your house and driveway or any other nonporous areas and the water gets distributed properly so you don’t flood a neighbor out or flood your own driveway or whatever it may be and make sure that the drainage follows the planned drainage for the county.

So those are basically the main types of engineers that we get into. Sometimes in certain areas, you’ll need a geotechnical engineer so that you can go through and they could take a boring of the ground to find, to do a geotechnical test, which is basically the strength of the soils. And then there’s also the possibility of a geologist to find out what’s under your house.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: Are you on a fault line you know type of situation or what kind of rock is there. Those are you know, the geologist is pretty rare, the geotechnical engineer in those areas where you need full foundation engineering is pretty common.

But I guess we rattle the bunch of people off. I’m telling you, the people that you might need to have, we can help you with a lot of those. You shouldn’t get overburdened with it, it just have an understanding that it might need to happen in certain places. Where you might need more of those is in like Colorado and California, and Florida. Other places, you know the Midwest, some of the Plains States in Northeast, some of the Northwest, you don’t have to get that deep.

So we’re talking about engineering here, so it applies to you, we’re capable of helping you and we have the knowledge to go through and make sure that you’re set up properly to have an understanding of what’s going on with your project. So it’s easier for you to budget it and build it.

Interviewer: Well, OK. That’s going to do it for this episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But before we head out, Steve, tell our listeners once again how best to get hold of you guys over at Landmark Home Land Company.

Steve Landmark: The best way is to give us a call at 800-830-9788 where we answer the phone. If for some reason you do get a voicemail, we will call you back right away. We like to talk to our customers to find out what we can do to help them and we’re responsive. And then you can also check our website out. The company is Landmark Home Land Company and the website is just the initials L as in Landmark, H as in Home, L as in Land, C as in Company dot com lhlc.com.

And you can always email Mike. He works with people up front at [email protected] or you can contact me Steve@[email protected]. And then we’re also on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. So you could find us there to check some videos out and pictures, and cool information.

Interviewer: Awesome! And there you have it. So for Steve Tuma and myself, thanks for joining us again and we will see you next time.

Steve Landmark: Have a great day!

Learn how conceptual home sketches evolve into permit-ready architectural blueprints and precision factory-built wall panels. We discuss the critical differences between preliminary drafting flexibility and locked final engineering plans, showing why structural changes, roof pitch revisions, and window relocations must be finalized before engineering calculations begin. Discover why window manufacturers lack universal rough opening standards, and how coordinating window manufacturer schedules with panelization software ensures precision fit for tempered safety glazing in bathrooms and stairwells. Explore zoning challenges when incorporating accessory living spaces or secondary guest suites, and learn how developing coordinated electrical, plumbing, and mechanical drawings avoids costly change orders and permitting delays.

A: During preliminary drafting, room dimensions, exterior doors, and window placements can be adjusted freely in CAD software. Once blueprints advance to final engineering, changes like widening a patio door or steepening a roof pitch trigger a cascading redesign that forces engineers to recalculate point-load paths, lateral shear schedules, and thermal energy models, resulting in unnecessary drafting expenses and permit delays.

A: Window dimensions are not standardized across manufacturers; a nominal 3×5 window from one brand may require a rough framed opening that is an inch wider or taller than a competitor’s unit. Specifying the exact window brand and model during drafting allows the factory to frame precise rough openings directly into the wall panels, eliminating the need for framing crews to modify wall studs on-site.

A: Building codes require tempered safety glass in high-risk zones where slips and impacts are likely, such as windows adjacent to stairwells, within 24 inches of exterior doors, or directly enclosing bathtubs and walk-in showers. Unlike standard float glass that fractures into dangerous shards, tempered glass breaks into small, dull granules to prevent severe injury.

A: Many residential zoning ordinances restrict single-family parcels from containing two full dwellings. Designing an in-law suite, recreation room, or rental space with a 220-volt stove outlet or full kitchen can cause plan reviewers to classify the home as an unauthorized duplex, requiring designers to specify wet bars or secondary kitchenettes to comply with single-family zoning caps.

A: Increasing a roof pitch (such as changing from a shallow 4:12 to a steep 8:12 or 12:12 slope) significantly alters both the vertical profile and the environmental forces acting on the building. A steeper roof sheds heavy snow loads more effectively, but it also creates a larger surface area that catches high lateral wind loads, requiring heavier truss tie-down hardware and reinforced shear wall bracing.

Interviewer: Hey everyone. Welcome once again to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me, 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, Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how’s it going my friend?

Steve Landmark: It’s an excellent day today. It’s a beautiful day and I think, I think we’re going to talk about architectural plans or something like that, right? Yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah, I thought I might ask you a few questions about developing architectural plans and sounds like you’d be up for that. So why don’t we start off simply, let’s just say I’m a customer, a prospective customer of Landmark and I have an idea for a home, how do I go about turning that idea into an actual set of building plans?

Steve Landmark: It’s actually a relatively simple process for our customers. We’ve got the full capability of doing the architectural design, structural design, and details for the building permit. So we basically just need a starting point.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And Steve, sometimes that starting point is “I need a three-bedroom, two-bath thousand square foot ranch” for city a lad or sometimes people say, “Well, I need a three-bedroom with a gaming room, convertible room office, you know guess room type thing with a two-car garage, with a bigger garage to the side for motor home parking.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: So sometimes if people have that just general idea, a few sentences we can work from there. Other people will sketch things up. They don’t have to be architects you know or really, really trained. They can just kind of draw what they can on a piece of paper and email or fax it to us or text it to us for review. And basically, we take it from there

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: So what we need to do is just get the concept, what is it you want. People may not know the end result of exactly how they’ll come together but they generally know what they want. They want a two-car garage, they want a basement, they want a three-bedroom, two-bath, the master bedroom being a big suite and then a big eating kitchen. You know with the deck up the back to look at a view of a lake or field or whatever may be that they’re lucky to have on their land. So that’s, that’s a general point, you know it starts with a dream, it starts with the idea and then we could take that idea.

Some people have a set of plans, some people may have gone online or sketch something up themselves that’s a little more detailed then we could take it from there. Others have a complete set of plans and generally, we could work with those as well. So basically, it’s the idea, get us your – get us the idea of what you have and then we can help you carry it along from there. So people shouldn’t be intimidated that they need to have professionally drawn plans or that if they sketch something it’s not to scale or you know even dimensions aren’t right.

We’ve actually had people draw stuff on a napkin, take a picture of it and text it to us and it’s become a house. Other people will just tell us and then we’ll start with an idea and move forward. So the key of it is that they were fully capable of taking the concept, putting it on paper and making it a legitimate set of plans they could turn in for permits as well as use for the building phases.

 Interviewer: Hmm. Now, if I, on your website, you guys offer so – oh, I don’t know, it’s so many different plans to choose from for the average customer. But if I – let’s say, I look at the plan that you guys offer and I say I like that basic idea but I want to customize it, what are the difference between using the standard plans let’s say or you know my own kind of adaptable custom plans?

Steve Landmark: Well, we can work with all of them. And what’s really interesting is yes, we have thousands of plans on our website. It was 20 years ago that someone said “I want that exact house.” You know, so everyone does changes whether they’re simple things like add a window, move a door, add a foot to the house or they change 50 percent of the plan and take it from there. So the idea is we can get you what you want in a home. And that’s the key element.

You know we can add different features to it and go from there. But hey, if someone likes the plan as it is, there’s nothing wrong with that. Now, you bring something interesting of standard plans. With the internet, there’s a lot of plan services out there.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And they do a good job of giving options and showing a bunch of different houses and different details and supplying some information. They key to it is that with different building sites, different code application and different parts of the country and then also, to tell you the truth, just a limitation of some of the designers, sometimes there’s issues with the design that we need to clean up and adapt so that it’s useable for your exact building site.

So generally, we would draw plans up, make adjustments, make sure they work for what you want to end your building department. So the key element is we’re kind of the filter to make sure the plans are useable. Because sometimes people will go somewhere and have their local friend draw a plan up and you know he gets – that person might get the idea across. But the full structural concerns, energy calculations, site planning details, other details might not be there, so we’re able to wrap it up and get it put together. So that’s a key thing.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: So, Steve, it can literally be a situation where someone could call us up and say, “Hey, this is what I want. Talk to us for a little while and we get the answer.” or they can send us plans that they’re ready to go with.

 Interviewer: Mm-hmm. Now, how far into the process can I make changes? I mean, I know that you know as I’m sure there are a lot of customers where you know they want to keep making changes up until the very last second. But how does that process work where we got to look – we pretty much got the house the way it needs to be?

Steve Landmark: Well, we can – in the preliminary plan stages, we can make the changes that a customer needs. And some – you’re getting at an interesting point because sometimes people go through and say, “Hey, Steve, I’d like a kitchen like this. I want an island in it and I want my stove on that island.” And then one is drawn up and they think about it, they’re like. “I don’t really want that. I’d rather have my sink in the island so then I can look over the great room and talk to the family.”

Interviewer: Right, right.

Steve Landmark: Or they figure, “Hey, you know the TV is over here, maybe our refrigerator should be closer to the TV,” or you know, they at it. So sometimes it does take a few times to go and draft it and then let people kind of soak it in.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: Now, the double-edged sword to that that you brought up is how far into the process can you do it?

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: There is a certain point that people have to make decisions and kind of buckle down and say, “Hey, this is the final one.” Because I’ve noticed you know since 1993, when we’ve been helping customers or people just cancel and make changes, they’re kind of like chasing their own tail type of a situation and not really accomplishing things. They’ve just haven’t made a decision. So there is a certain point where we suggest when we’re in the preliminary plan stages that that’s the end of changes. And then once they sign up when we do the final plans and all the details that they don’t do changes.

The reason being is that at a certain point, you’ve got to lock this down. You got to do the architectural design, the structural design, energy calculations, and someone may come through and do something as simple and say, “Hey, I want to take this window and make it into a big, huge patio door.” That can – that will affect the structure. That will affect energy calculations and it will affect the architectural design, so.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm. Right, like a domino effect.

Steve Landmark: Exactly. And then it just takes a little bit longer to get it done. And you know we try to avoid additional expenses but there’s a certain point where you know you’ve got make this…

Interviewer: You have to build your house. [Laughter]

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s ultimately our biggest, you know jokingly, you know someone will say, “Hey, I need to get this done by tomorrow. But can you do these five changes?” You know, so it’s kind of like OK. You know there is the impossible request but amazingly, we get it done. So what I tell people is you know do all the changes in the preliminary plan stage. Think it through, take the time, it’s not a race. You know take time to make sure it’s done right. And then once we go through, you know we like to avoid changes.

That being said, we’re extremely customer service oriented. We have violated our own rules. I just did today for a customer. They needed something that made a lot of sense and I’m working with the engineers to adjust it and move it forward and be very accommodating. So the ultimate goal is to get our customers the home that they want.

Interviewer: Make them happy. We talked a little bit of the last episode about foundations. Now, how much you know do I have a choice of what foundation I want? And how much help is Landmark willing to throw in to tell me you know what the right choice of foundation is for my area, my land, etc?

Steve Landmark: Well. I’ll answer that backwards. We’ll do whatever we can to help a customer determine what’s best. And some designs are a little better for certain foundations and then sometimes land conditions dictate the type of foundation. Yeah, we did talk about it in one of the previous podcasts. But basically, Steve, if someone said “Hey, I want to build the most affordable house and I’m on flat land in an area where there isn’t really a need for a lot of engineering.” Someone could just put something on a slab.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: They could put it on a crosspiece. They could put it on a basement. But let’s just say you took that exact same house and stuck it on the side of the hill in Colorado or California. We’ve got other issues with snow loads, high winds, earthquakes. Let’s just say we took it to Florida, suddenly you’ve got a hurricane issue. So let’s just take the example of that house say, the simple house on a flat piece of land in Iowa. You could do a slab foundation or basement very easily.

You go stick it on the side of a mountain in California. We have the earthquake engineer, the nature of the slope of the mountain, it should probably not going to go with a slab. You might go with a kind of a foundation that steps down. Depending on a slope, it might be a crosspiece or it might be a basement, so that would have generally work in those conditions. There are situations where you can get on that grading but that gets a little deeper.

But then let’s just say you took that exact same house and said, “I want to build that in the Key West. I have a perfect lot, it faces south.” I don’t think it’s probably really good to put it on a slab because the storm surge could be eight feet. It will brawl right over the house. So the code is going to kind of dictate that you have to put that house on piers. So suddenly, it’s not just the choice of what the customer prefers but it’s kind of dictated in the sense by the code and the building conditions.

Now, I don’t want to make that sound negative. Most people that are building on the Key’s want the view. They want to be higher up, they understand it. So, therefore, it makes sense to them to put it on piers.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: So all these things are kind of just the nature, the area, it’s customary for the area and it’s something that we can help with. So to answer your question is we will help them anywhere in the design process to do something to make sure the house fits the land, but also the lifestyle and the target the budget as well.

Interviewer: Yeah, it makes sense. I want to hit a little bit on something that we’ve never really talked much about. Well, couple things really but we’ll do, we’ll knock them off one at a time and that’s porches and siding. Now you know, the porches could take on so many unique shapes sometimes. And when – if I want to add a porch to one of my designs, is that like a completely different deal or how does that work?

Steve Landmark: It something that we can typically draft on any design and just add it. Now, there are some designs that are more conducive to it than others. But let’s just say you had a typical ranch home, something 26 deep by 40 feet wide. To put a porch across the font all around it in the back is generally pretty easy to do and we could add details like that. Sometimes people want wood porches, sometimes they want the man-made materials, sometimes they want cement porches.

Some of them want decorative porches, a little four-foot porch to put a chair and some flowers. Other people would like an eight to 10-foot wide porch for you know the outside living room you know type of situation.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: But then you can go in the other designs where sometimes the – you got to work on blending the porch into the design. And also, you also have to look at the grade of the land and you know make sure everything will flow properly with the land. To make sure that if you have a porch and a staircase off of it, you can access the land below it to enter and leave it. You mention something on siding.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Landmark: That’s a good question because that’s one of the finishing details.

Interviewer: And that’s – yeah, it’s something we haven’t hit on before. I thought it would be good to talk about it.

Steve Landmark: Right. So siding, you can put brick, stone, the fake stone, the fake brick, the cement board which is important in areas with fires. Vinyl, real wood, pretty much whatever material you want, log you can put on this home. We could draw it in and then we could put the specifications on the plans so that your building department understands what it is that you’re going to put on it.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: So yes, you could dress it up. And the interesting thing is a lot of people are dressing their homes up more. So they might put a little stone across the front. So let’s just say the front wall of your house was eight feet tall, maybe the first three feet is some type of stone or brick. Then above it, they put a cement board that they would paint. And then they might put different trim around windows or on gables, put a scallop kind of siding on there.

So it’s possible to put all these different varieties of finishes on. It really personalized and dressed the home up the way you want. The flexibility in options are pretty endless.

Interviewer: And it sounds to me like working with Landmark, you can end up with a pretty unique home without a lot of work instead of living in one of these like ticky-tacky neighborhoods where every single house looks exactly the same.

Steve Landmark: Right. Yeah, I live in the grey one on the left and there’s 50 of them you know. But, and that’s the key thing to it because Steven, whether you have $70,000 to build your house or 50 or a million or two million or five million, you want to be proud of it. You want to pull up through it after days at work and say, “This is cool. My family has got what they need. It’s energy efficient. I can afford it. I like it. I’m proud of it.”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And so irrespective of the budget, I think it’s important to go through and detail it out so that people get a house a little bit different. That’s why people I think work with us because they can go through and get the house they want. Instead of like you said these neighborhoods where it’s like hey, it’s you know the whole Henry Ford thing you know. You can have any cars as long as the color is black. Well, you know some of these trucks, places or whatever, it’s like hey, you can have any floor plan as long as it’s one of these three. And the upgrade is you can have a half round window at the front door.

You know it’s kind of like – that’s a little bit different version than what our customers like where they want to go through and say, “Hey, my family gets together and they like to eat outside on the porch.” Or, “Hey, we cook together.” “Hey, we have big holiday get-togethers.” Or “Hey, the kids need a separate room that’s good for them to live in now and study. But when they leave, it becomes a guest room or a hobby room or whatever it would be.”

So a little bit of thinking up front, you can really develop a house that’s a lot more usable than just any house off the shelf. And that’s where we’re able to help with. It’s more bang for your buck. And to tell you the truth, the buck is about the same.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Landmark: It’s just a matter of taking the time to make sure the house is designed right.

Interviewer: Right. And then yeah, I love that what you were talking about the pride in your house. You know that’s – I think that’s so important.

Steve Landmark: That’s very important. It’s a lot of money in anyone’s home, so might as well get something you like.

Interviewer: Yeah, big investment. Well, sometimes with people, it’s the biggest investment they’re ever going to make and want to get it right. So that was just the couple of things we hit on that we hadn’t really talked much about before. But now, I just you know like to reiterate and kind of get over a couple things for people who haven’t heard everyone on this podcast.

But one question your company gets a lot is windows and window sizes and how do you pick that. How does Landmark help someone pick their windows and their window sizes?

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s pretty interesting. Let me point out we don’t supply windows and siding. We could specify them on the plans for people to select exactly what they want and then put in the plans. But basically, on window sizes, we would put suggested window sizes in the first set of plans.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: So that makes sense that meet the egress codes and the light and ventilation codes to make sure that everything flows properly. So we would install, we would put those details into the plans and make it happen and then once the person gets the first set of preliminary plans, they could look at it. You know it’s kind of a basis point, a starting point. They could say, “Hey, I like that.” or “Hey, I want to make it bigger. I only want it single instead of double.” Or “Hey, I want a bigger patio door there.” And that’s how we go through.

So, the interesting thing with windows is window companies are not standardized in their window sizes. So one company might create a three-foot by five-foot window where the next company has a three-foot – one-inch by five-foot – one-inch window. So we’d put the suggested window size in there and then they, in the plans with the window schedule and then they could take it to their window supplier.

And then that window supplier can then go through and give us a rough openings for their exact window size that allows us to build the rough opening right in the panelized wall so that the window just gets installed very quickly and simply on the site.

Now, there’s something else beyond window sizes because there’s tempered glass, there’s different energy efficiencies that may be required. So like say you at a window by a staircase or right by your bathtub. Those are areas where you might slip and fall and fall through the glass, so they want tempered glass.

Tempered glass is more like a car glass. Have you seen broken glass – car – you know breaks in small little pieces.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: You could like roll it in your hand and it’s not really going to cut you. Where regular glass can break in sharp pieces like swords and obviously do a lot of damage. So that’s the key thing with the window is it’s also not just the size, it’s the feature. Is it tempered, is it not tempered? And then also energy efficiency conditions. Windows don’t perform as well as a fully insulated wall but in their world, they’re getting to be bigger, you’ve all been by windows where you could feel a draft or you could feel more of a cold thing. So that allows you to go through.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: And Steve, windows are also part of the decoration. Some people might want simple vinyl or tan vinyl. Other people might want a wood window on the inside, walnut wood to have a particular finish and it gets down to you know what kind of hardware. Do you want polish brush – brushed? That’s a tongue twister, brushed, brush. You know what is it that you want, so people can go through and pick that out.

And there’s double hung windows, single hung windows, casement windows, picture windows so that people can sort out what type of window they want in initial location,

Interviewer: Hmm. Now, another one of the topics that we’ve kind of hit on before but it’s always good to refresh, kitchen and bathroom design. And again, especially for women, especially, I mean kitchens and bathrooms are a big thing and we guys, we’re just like oh, whatever if it’s useable, but…

Steve Landmark: Where’s the food?

Interviewer: Yeah. It’s really an important aspect for women, you know the design of the kitchen and bathroom has to be just right, the right size. And how does Landmark go about helping people design kitchens and bathrooms?

Steve Landmark: Well, we go through the process of discussing the design with the customer. Get the preliminary set of plans drawn up and then do a kitchen layout that should work properly.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: You know could add dimensions and then the people can sort out and say, “Hey, yeah, that works.” Or “Hey, I change my mind. I don’t want an island. I want a peninsula.” Or “Hey, I want a bigger island.” Or “Hey, I need my refrigerator over here.” Or “We decided to go with the double stove.”

Because now, the kitchen is kind of becoming the living room you know and a way with great rooms where it’s a central point of activity and it’s a central point for people to get together. With the way people live, they’re not necessarily get sitting down at 5 o’clock every night at a big round table and having dinner. People are doing this and doing that with the different schedules and activities. So we can get them the plans and then they can design the kitchen the way they want it.

Now, what we would do is add dimensions to the kitchen and bath areas, you know wherever they’d have cabinets. And then they could go to their local kitchen supplier or designer and work out exactly what they want because some kitchens can get very intricate.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: So they could go through and say, “Hey, let’s make sure that you know the bread cupboard works out, the knife holder or the tray station you know all these things go through. And then we could design that layout so that it fits into our house and make sure windows are located in the right place, hallway openings, any walls or different situations that they would need. And that’s also pretty important because it ties into our doing an accurate plumbing diagram as well as an electrical layout.

Interviewer: Right, it makes sense.

Steve Landmark: Right. Steve, if you have an island, you know you’ve got to put a circuit or two there. But that may be someone’s kind of office you know situation or a little homework station or whatever it may be. So getting that laid out properly and that’s actually you know an important part of what we do. But let’s not undercut you know the man caves, you know the entertainment rooms.

Interviewer: Hmm, right. The important stuff.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, all these other areas they come up to where someone says, hey, you know my family likes to work on our bikes or you know we have off-road vehicles or trucks or boats or a hot rod or whatever. And suddenly, the man cave, you know the little extra area in the garage. There needs to be electrical circuits or a countertop or whatever it may be there to you know to be put together.

So we could work with those, the Wreck Rooms, the future Wreck Rooms. A lot of people are doing the short-term rental you know apartments you know things like that. And in some areas where they’re kind of sneaking in a second living area in one house. We’ve got to design that right. A lot of these building departments don’t want a full kitchen in these areas or they’d consider it two homes and it violates zoning.

Interviewer: Right. Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: So sometimes we’ve got to develop a certain type of kitchen for that secondary area.

Interviewer: How far into the process would I as a customer who’s designing my own house, how far in would it be OK to make significant changes? And I mean big things like let’s talk about roof pitches. Lets’ say I decide, yeah, I’d like the pitch of my roof to be a little steeper or a little less steep, where does that fall in when it comes to you guys in your advice?

Steve Landmark: Well, a big change like a roof pitch or big feature like a roof pitch, people generally know upfront.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: They’ll be like “Hey, I…”

Interviewer: You hope.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. “You know I’m in an area. I like this design. It needs to be a steeper roof pitch.”

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Steve Landmark: So we like to get that stuff done upfront. But if they needed it later, we can do it. They kind of depends on the situations, But there have been situations where people, mid-project while we’re designing it, get transferred. We had a person, they work for an airline in St. Louis, then they got transferred to Dallas, another hub. So suddenly, they wanted the same plan but they’re two different areas. They wanted a different look. So we were able to make the adjustments for them to do it.

Now, that’s pretty rare that someone you know is going to say, “Hey, I don’t know if I want to build in Florida or Colorado or New York State.” Generally, people have an idea so we could work with them on the design that makes sense. But I think the point you’re getting at is they might possibly have a plan with a 6-12 roof pitch is basically six units up, 12 units across. That’s a simple way to think of it.

And they might say, “Hey, I’m going to be building in a smaller area or a bigger area,” or “I just like the architectural look of a steeper design.” So we can go through and change that. And it’s not just roof pitch, its overhangs, its eaves, you know just different details that can be added to it. So we could do that and that’s – we’d like to do all of that in the preliminary plan stage where we can go through and draw it up so people can look at it and see what it looks like.

Interviewer: But it sounds to me, I mean my question really was you guys don’t freak out too much if there are even big changes come along? It sounds like you kind of feel those as they come and you’ve probably seen everything.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, we’ve been doing it since 1993. So freaking in us out is probably going to be a pretty interesting thing. But hey, have you do it? You know I’ll be happy to laugh along and go while you got me. But now, I mean if – the idea is to get people the house that they want. There’s no sense in spending the money and not getting the house you like.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So we’re able to do the changes and – but people should understand that at a certain point, they should work to make decisions that make sense and move forward.

Interviewer: Of course. Now, I’ve got all my plans together. We’ve worked them all out. We know what we’re going to build. How do I know the building department in my area is going to accept my plans? And does Landmark help me with that, dealing with building departments?

Steve Landmark: Yes, building departments are interesting. There are places in the country where building departments don’t exist. Or if they do exist, they just really want to know “Hey, are you building a house?” It’s more for government tracking. Then there’s others which are extreme and they could have a list of 5, 6, 700 items that they need in the house plans. Either way, we contact the building department, find out what it is that they need and put the details on there. Every single one of our customers that submitted and gone through the process has gotten building permits.

So the key to it is some building departments are a little more tricky than others. So some will take a set of plans and say “Yeah, that’s good. There’s your permit.” You walk out with it five days later or sorry, five minutes later. And then there’s other places where they just need detail after detail after detail even though it isn’t on the list of what they tell you they need.

So in that case, we just work with the customer and it’s part of our process to supply the details that they need so that they get the permits that relate to our portion on a home – you know the building permits type of a situation. And some building departments ask for some pretty interesting things.

Interviewer: You dove it sounds like with some very picky building departments.

Steve Landmark: Oh yeah. We’ve had some stuff where I scratched my head and say where did this one come from?

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: But the point is we have the right people to get those answers and get them taken care of so that they have the set of plans. Because it’s pretty rare that a building department asks for something that’s completely senseless, they are probably asking for it because they’ve run into a situation before and they want to avoid that situation. So generally, most building departments are you know pretty understanding. Some communicate better than others but were able to work through the process.

Interviewer: And we talked about some things on the last maybe the podcast before but I kind of want to reiterate a couple more things if you don’t mind. But you guys are very helpful when it comes to dealing with things like energy codes and site plans and we talked about mechanical system design. And can you just once again go over for maybe some of our new listeners who haven’t heard how you guys go about all of that?

Steve Landmark: Well, we’ve got a – this is our kind of wrapping up the complete plans set for the building department. Some building departments want a site plan drawn up. And a site plan is basically saying hey, how does the house fit on your land? OK, whether you’ve got a city lot that’s 50 feet by 100 feet or 200 acres you know somewhere in the rural area. They still want to know, “Hey, where is your well, septic, water connection? Are you within the setbacks? Where’s your driveway?” And we can draw that information up.

And it’s a key point because you do want to make sure the house fits on the land you know. And you know on 50 acres in the country in the country is not as big of an issue. But on a 50 by 100 lot in the city, there are certain setbacks that you – the house has to fit within. So it’s good to have a site plan and lets people understand what they’re doing. It also helps your scheduling and the actual processes of going through in building the home.

Energy codes, not every building department requests. But what energy codes are, is a theoretical calculation showing, basically gives you the end result of how you need to insulate your home. And in some cases, what type of furnace to use, what type of hot water heater and trap in the pre– you know just a little while ago, we’re talking about windows. They may go through and say you need a certain performance factor in your window to make sure that your home is energy efficient.

Now, this is one thing that’s interesting. A lot of people say my building department doesn’t require energy efficiency. It’s not necessarily that you need to satisfy the building departments. You want to know that you’re building a good home so your energy bills are less. So that’s it. And then – oh, you asked about mechanical system design.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Mecahnicals are basically considered plumbing, electric and then heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. So some building departments will just want to know a plumbing layout showing hey, where does the water come in and where does the water go out? Others will want to know pipe sizing. And others, plumbing is also gas pipe, the black pipe for plumbing. So some building departments will ask details and the size of piping, how long the pipe has to go and other stuff like that. We can supply that.

We can also do the electrical layouts and complete electrical engineering if the building department or the customer requests it. And also mechanical system design. The manuals S, D, and J which basically sort out you know heat loss calculations. It all sorts out the sizing of the furnace and it also shows a ductwork layout. So that’s – those are important things if someone wants to monitor and understand what is going on with their home because – especially with HVAC design, the heating and ventilating is – a lot of people will go get an estimate and say hey, this guys is one price and this guy is half the price.

Well, you got to wonder why the guy is half the price. Maybe one guy is too expensive, maybe one guy is not giving you the right amount of ducts to heat or cool your house properly. So we can help with that if the building department requests or the customer requests, we can supply those details to make it there. It’s one of these things you take a little bit of time doing it right. Now, the building will be easier and the enjoyment of the home will be better.

Interviewer: Hmm. Well, this has been a pretty informative podcast. But that’s going about wrap at us – wrap it up for us for this episode of the Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But before we leave, Steve, tell our listeners how best to contact you guys over at Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Landmark: We’re very easy to contact. You can call us at 800-830-9788. And if we can’t answer your phone call right away, we will get back with you. We’re very responsive, we’re very proactive, and we’re very communicative to work with you to understand your project so we can help you best. We have our website, our company name is Landmark Home and Land Company and the website is basically lhlc.com. So, L as in Landmark, H as in Home, L as in Land, C as in Company, lhlc.com.

And then you can also email Mike. Mike generally works with people upfront at [email protected] or if you’ve got questions for me at [email protected]. And like I say, we’re responsive, supportive, we’re on top of your projects. So whatever we can do to help is fine and people shouldn’t be embarrassed to contact us and ask questions. It’s – we understand it could be someone fifth time around or it could also be their first time around. So whatever we can do to help, we’ll gladly do it.

Interviewer: And there you go! So for Steve Tuma and myself, thanks for joining us once again on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. And we will see you next time.

Steve Landmark: Well, thank you.

Learn how licensed structural engineering and precision mechanical designs protect custom kit homes from extreme weather forces, permitting hurdles, and long-term maintenance costs. We discuss the engineering principles that prevent lateral wind bowing on 15-to-20-foot tall window walls and examine how continuous tie-down load paths anchor roofs directly to foundation footings. Discover how Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fire hardening—including boxed soffits, Class A roof assemblies, and defensible space planning—safeguarded an actual customer home during the historic Camp Fire in Paradise, California. Explore the structural and insulation trade-offs between 2×4 and 2×6 wall framing, and find out how ACCA Manual J, S, and D mechanical calculations prevent contractors from installing oversized, fuel-guzzling HVAC equipment.

A: Tall two-story walls and cathedral ceilings (15 to 20 feet high) act like massive sails when exposed to high winds, creating lateral flex that can crack interior drywall and shatter large window panes. Structural engineers calculate these specific lateral wind pressures and specify reinforced 2×6 or 2×8 wall studs, intermediate structural steel posts, and engineered shear nail schedules to keep tall walls rigid without bowing.

A: Wildfire embers can travel up to two miles ahead of a fire line on strong thermal drafts, lodging in vulnerable roof vents, open eaves, and wood deck crevices. WUI building codes mandate ember-resistant boxed eaves, non-combustible fiber-cement siding, Class A fire-rated roofing, and specialized mesh vents that block embers from entering attic spaces and igniting the structural framing.

A: While 2×4 framing reduces initial lumber costs, 2×6 framing provides superior vertical load capacity and creates a deeper 5.5-inch cavity for higher R-value insulation. This extra depth meets strict regional energy efficiency codes, prevents seasonal draft infiltration, lowers utility costs, and increases overall resale value.

A: Manual J calculates the exact heating and cooling load (heat gain and loss) for each room; Manual S matches and sizes the HVAC equipment to those specific requirements without oversizing; and Manual D engineers the supply and return duct sizing to ensure balanced airflow. Together, they prevent short-cycling, eliminate hot and cold rooms, and verify that the heating and cooling system runs at peak efficiency.

A: An oversized furnace or air conditioner heats or cools the home too quickly and short-cycles, shutting off before completing a full operational run. This rapid on-and-off cycling consumes excess fuel or electricity, wears out mechanical components prematurely, and fails to adequately dehumidify indoor air during hot weather, resulting in an uncomfortable, clammy living environment.

Interviewer: Hello and welcome to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me 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 things going over there at Landmark?

Steve Landmark: Yeah, it’s a busy day. We’re having some fun and a lot of people are building interesting homes, nice families building unique homes, fun homes in different parts of the country.

Interviewer: Yeah. Your job of just helping people design their – that has got to be a lot of fun just helping people get into a brand new house.

Steve Landmark: Well, it is. It’s interesting and even after – since 1993, every single project is interesting because it’s not just a house that someone is going to live in. It’s their home and it affects the way they live. It affects the relaxation, their good days or bad days, the hobbies they have and their attitude about like their savings, their retirement. It’s a big move but you know, we try to simplify it so people can get a house that they enjoy at a price that makes sense for them and works on the land and our plans make it easy for them to get permits. So it’s a lot of fun because you’re transforming people’s lives by getting it done properly.

Interviewer: That’s pretty cool. I thought today we would talk just about general design and some of the things – I’ve read through some of the questions that potential customers have sent to you guys and I thought some of them might be interesting to cover. Not so much specific questions but just general overall inquiries that people make. Let’s talk about structural design and design details. Can we get into that a little bit? Yes. A lot of people think you just get some wood together or have someone give you some rough idea about oh, this beam works here and this post works there and this stud works there.

But there’s actually a little bit more of a science behind it to make sure that the home is structurally sound. There are more and more areas that are requesting engineer-stamped plans just for snow load situations, high winds, hurricanes, flood situations, earthquakes and whatever it may be. What has happened previously, if people have put houses together, maybe they failed or haven’t been as good as possible, so they request structural engineering and a lot of people kind of think, “Well, that’s just a guy stamping something.” I could just go buy a set of plans and have someone stamp it.

Well, that’s not really structural engineering. Structural engineering is actually doing calculations and justifying why the components of the home are strong enough, making sure that the truss is designed as properly, making sure the foundation is designed as properly.

So some areas of the country, they don’t require it in simpler homes. But if you get into something more complex where the site conditions or the natural conditions like wind speeds or snow loads or earthquakes are bigger, the building departments will want it, generally all along the West Coast, most of Colorado. You know, anywhere along the East Coast now with the hurricanes will require and then we’ve read in spots in other parts of the country where the building departments require it. Sometimes because they just want to know that it’s done right and kind of pass the buck to the structural engineer involved.

So that’s what we like to do is make sure that the structure is right. So what I want to do is get rid of the myth that structural engineering is someone that just stamps plans. No, they’re actually doing calculations. They’re generally conservative. So beams will be a little bit bigger. The connections from the floor or the foundation to the floor, to the wall, to the roof will be reinforced and everything will be justified.

Now there are also other situations where people are getting into different designs. Homes with 10, 15, 20-foot tall ceilings, chalets with big glass walls. They need a lot of reinforcement. So it’s good to know that it’s built properly to make sure that it’s structurally sound. A lot of people think you’ve got to support the snow or the roof going down to the ground. Well, there are other things like winds. You can have a wall that’s 20 feet tall. Well, that wind, if it pushes against there, can bull the wall. People say, “Well, what’s the big deal?” Well, then you end up with cracked windows or cracked drywall. It’s better to avoid that.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So the proper design of that is what we help people with and I think they will find it to be very important in the longevity, in maintaining the value of the home and not just that but making it easier to build and making sure that the building departments give you permits.

Interviewer: There’s something I wanted to – I had just heard about it recently, something I wanted to ask you about. It’s something called the “wild land-urban interface”. I want to know what it is. Why is it important and how does it affect the overall home design?”

Steve Landmark: Well, every year the fires in Colorado or the West Coast are getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger for whatever reasons that they’re started. What that basically is, is a situation where you’re creating a home that has fire-resistant materials, fire-resistant roof shingles. The eaves are covered. Cement board sidings, stones, different situations like that. Different design elements that are resistant to it. A lot of people don’t realize it but an ember from a fire can fly two miles.

Interviewer: Wow.

Steve Landmark: When I first heard that, I was like, “This is crazy. What are you talking about? Doesn’t it blow out?” I mean a birthday candle blows out.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: It’s like how does this happen. So what they’re doing is they’re developing regulations to make homes that are resistant to the fires and we had one up in Paradise. It survived. Everything around it burned.

Interviewer: The house that you guys built up in Paradise?

Steve Landmark: Yeah. We helped a customer. They built it and I thought with the mass disaster up there, the campfire, that it was gone and they said, “Steve, it survived,” and I saw the layout from the campfire and it was the only house within blocks. I’m not quite sure. I mean we did a good job designing it but there probably could be a little bit of luck there. But we do work to make sure that’s taken care of.

So in this family’s case, it saved their house. Just a little bit of design, making sure you have the right roof shingles, the right window situation, the right types of siding. You know, the right types of defensible space and things like that.

So it’s a very important thing. When I first heard of wild land and urban interface, I thought, “OK, we’re keeping bears out.” But it was – it’s a situation to make it safe and the interaction of communities as it goes into wild lands. You know, wooded areas, open areas, whatever it may be. So we’re able to help people with that, to make sure that the home complies with the regulations and then make sure that the house is built properly.

Interviewer: For those of our listeners who aren’t aware of Paradise, California, in northern California this past summer was completely wiped out. I mean virtually wiped out by a major fire.

Steve Landmark: I think it’s the biggest one ever.

Interviewer: Yeah. Every storefront, every Laundromat, every garage, everything just …

Steve Landmark: Except for our house.

Interviewer: Well, it’s not something to laugh at but of course we’re happy that the house that Landmark built or that the Landmark customer put together is still standing and they’re one of the very few. So that says a lot about Landmark I would think.

Steve Landmark: Pretty cool.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about something that will be near and dear to the carpenters’ heart out there in the audience. Let’s talk about the differences between two by six and two by four walls. What are the benefits and the pros and cons of each?

Steve Landmark: Well, generally most people today will build with a two by six. There are some parts of the country where there aren’t a lot of structural engineering concerns or the insulation doesn’t have to be as high. So generally two by four, you’re going to save some money just because the materials are actually less, so that they cost less. So a lot of people go through that and then the areas where there’s a climate that doesn’t have the extremes – you can justify it or if energy costs are low.

Pretty much every house that we build is two by six. It’s stronger. It allows more space for insulation. It helps the resale value because people ask for it and it’s just a stronger situation for supporting the home. So generally two by six construction is the way to go. Sometimes people come through and say, “Hey, I heard about value engineering. I could go two by six instead of sixteen inches on center. We could space the studs at 24 inches on set.”

Interviewer: Oh, yeah. Wow

Steve Landmark: Yeah. They’re working with the idea that hey, that’s using less wood. It does use less wood. But depending upon the code application for your area, you may or may not be able to do that. Then there are other situations that happen in the insulation, the finishing of the home or it could be a little different. But basically two by six walls are the way people do it. Sometimes they will go two by four in the garage to save all the money because that’s generally not a heated area.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: In all situations. But we like to go through and make sure that we’ve got a well-built home, a solid home. We kind of consider the framing system that we supply. The skeleton, you know, and Steve like you know, if you have a bad back, life is a little harder. We like to know that your house is a solid home so that it retains its value. It looks good. It’s comfortable to live in.

Interviewer: So it’s not moving about like an old man.

Steve Landmark: Exactly. Hopefully it’s not moving at all. That’s the idea.

Interviewer: Let’s go from the walls now to the floors. Floors are pretty darn important in the house. Let’s talk about floor joists. What are they and what are my options as a home builder?

Steve Landmark: Generally the options are dimensional wood like two-by-tens and two-by-twelves, which are very common. Sometimes people will go with an engineering I-joist or an open web floor truss. So the dimensional wood, the two by ten, two by twelve, they can be spaced in certain increments and they have limitations on the span. The I-joist can – they’re engineered. They can span a little farther as the open web floor trusses. Sometimes it’s not a structural issue but a convenience issue in the construction of the home.

An open web floor truss, you can actually run duct work through it and plumbing and electric. So it’s easier for plumbers, electricians, heat people to install their items into the home. Some of those, more and more people are getting in the clear span areas. They want basements 26 feet wide without posts in them for entertainment rooms, workshops, hobby rooms, whatever it would be.

So in those cases, you go beyond the capability of dimensional wood, the two-by-tens and two-by-twelves. So you go to I-joists or open web floor trusses.

Sometimes people prefer the open web floor trusses because it will allow you to have a taller finished basement ceiling. So if you have an eight-foot basement cement wall and you have to put duct work underneath the floor system above it, you might lose a foot of your ceiling in certain areas with a soffit.

So it makes it a little bit less usable. Now it’s still usable but there are soffits running around or dropped areas. It’s not a big deal but some people say, “Hey, I want a big walkout basement. I want to have usable space. I want to make it feel like a regular part of the house.” So in those cases, the open web floor truss is a work. Where people just want a larger span at a lesser cost, the I-joist will work.

So that’s one of those conversations that we have like I mentioned previously. How is the family using their home? What’s their intent? What’s their budget? What are they going to do with it in the future? A lot of people will have a basement with the idea of a future bedroom or a future workshop or home office. So we have to design the home to have proper egress windows but also the proper structure so that they can do what they want.

We’ve got a lot of customers that have hobbies whether it’s restoring old cars, sewing, gaming, wood shops, whatever it may be. So these different floor systems allow us to design the usability of the home. A lot of people are – they will do like garages with living space above it. You know, for toys, jet skis, boats.

Interviewer: Oh, right, yeah. I see.

Steve Landmark: Motor homes, bigger trucks, whatever it may be and with these different floor systems, we’re able to get rid of some of the posts and beams. Sometimes all of them so that it works. Steve, I’m sure you’ve done it.

If you’re pulling a boat into the garage, that post is always in the wrong spot no matter where you put it.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So this allows us to have bigger clear span areas for people to enjoy the space.

Interviewer: I’m going to throw an overall at you because you’ve been getting – your company for one reason or another, you guys are asked the question of layouts in your design. There’s like plumbing layouts, electrical, heating layouts, ventilation and air conditioning layouts.

What are these exactly and how does Landmark tackle that?

Steve Landmark: Well, basically what it is, is like electrical layout. We will show where the electric sockets are, where the lights are, ceiling fans, different circuits, different circuits for kitchens where you need dedicated circuits or layouts for front door lighting, yard lighting, whatever it is.

So an electrician could look at it and know what work he needs to do but also so a building department understands what’s being done. So that will happen for electrical layouts. Some building departments will ask for plumbing layouts or your contractor might just to know, “Hey, where’s the water coming in? Where is it servicing in the house and then the house and leaving and the sewage system and where is it going to?”

So they want to know for layout where to place a toilet in the floor system and the slab, cement slab or whatever it may be. Then the same thing with heating, ventilation and air conditioning. HVAC, HVACs some people may call it and in some places, they will just want to know, “Hey, where is the furnace? Where is the air conditioning unit outside?” and it’s simple.

But what’s happening is more and more people are realizing that hey, stuff isn’t always being done right. So sometimes people will go through and say, “Hey, what’s the price to heat and air my house? And someone will say a certain price and someone else will be higher and someone else will be lower.

Well, the idea is to make sure that it’s done right. So since there have been issues before, some building departments are asking for pipe sizing and plumbing, load calculations for electrical to make sure that there’s enough power going into the house. But also calculations for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems to know that furnaces are sized right so that someone isn’t getting a low ball quote just to find out that it can’t heat your home properly.

So that’s where we’re able to help is if someone just needs a simple layout, we can supply it. If they request or the building department requests or their contractor requests the different calculations, pipe sizing for plumbing – and plumbing also includes gas piping. It’s not just water.

We can do those. We can do the electrical load calculations. But we could also do the HVAC system as well and it’s pretty rare. But more and more building departments are asking for it, what they call the manual J, S and D. There are three different calculations that have to be put together. The manual J is to calculate the heating and cooling loads. Like what needs to be done to this house? How much air or how much heat will it need? The manual S is sizing the equipment to know that hey, you need a furnace of 1000 BTUs or whatever or a two-ton, 14-SEER air conditioning unit.

Then a manual D shows the duct layouts to make sure that the air is heated or cooled properly and then removed from the house and circulated properly. So the key element to that is you don’t want to pay for a furnace and find out it’s not big enough or it’s too big. Too big of a furnace will eat up energy as well.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Or to make sure that the duct work isn’t done right, to make sure that air can’t be properly distributed and circulated around your home. So again it’s a little bit of plan work upfront to make sure that things work properly. As you know, people are using more and more power. You know, bigger TVs, more TVs, more computers, kitchen appliances. Now some of them are becoming more and more efficient. But the thing is, it just seems that houses have more and more utility needs. So that’s what that is. You want to make sure that those things are designed properly and we can help whether it’s a simple design or an engineered calculation to justify the plumbing, electric or the HVAC systems. It’s very important to know it’s done right.

Interviewer: So let me see if I got this straight. So I can’t just build my house and then start thinking about where the electrical wires and the heating and air conditioning will go.

Steve Landmark: We don’t suggest that. We don’t suggest that. There’s a funny little analogy. That’s kind of like going to the grocery store and saying, “Hey, let’s get food,” and so a guy goes and gets hamburgers and chips and beer to watch TV and then the wife is thinking of cooking a salad and chicken. I mean you should have an idea of what you’re doing.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Landmark: So it’s a situation where you want to go through and understand what you’re doing. That’s what the planning phases are for to know what it is. The time you spend upfront planning it properly will help with permits. It will help with your schedule. It will help keep you on budget. It will help with your sanity as well. You’re not doing changes. You’re just following a well-planned home and people will learn that that’s the best way to do it. It makes it easier for them.

Interviewer: One of the things that I’m hoping we achieve on these podcasts is to let people know just how knowledgeable you are and everyone over at Landmark Home and Land Company. You have so much knowledge and you know what you’re talking about and that has got to be a comfort to somebody who’s sort of going into a situation, like a deer in the headlights building a new home.

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s exactly right. Like the heating and air conditioning situation that I have, someone might say, “Hey, I can save you $1000.” Well, are you really saving $1000 if that furnace is going to eat more fuel or if your family is not warm? No, you’re not saving money. You’re – it’s going to cost you more money in the long run. So doing it right the first time is the way we like to do it.

Interviewer: Great. So we’re going to bounce out of here and just want to thank everybody for joining us again on the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. Before we go, of course Steve, as always please let us know how to contact you guys at Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Landmark: Well, we have our website at www.lhlc.com. It’s just four letters for Landmark Home Land Company. It’s actually Landmark Home and Land Company, but it’s www.lhlc.com. You can call us at 800-830-9788. You can email Mike. He can work with people initially at [email protected] and I could be contacted at [email protected]. We’re very responsive and customer service-oriented. We enjoy what we do. We want to help people build their house properly.

We’re also on like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube.

Interviewer: Nice. Well, all right. There you go. So for Steve Tuma and myself, thanks again 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 site topography, natural grade changes, and parcel dimensions dictate custom kit home foundation engineering and site planning. We examine how to evaluate raw land—from compact urban infill parcels to large multi-acre tracts—to identify the ideal building envelope that avoids natural drainage swales and unbuildable slopes. Discover the practical and financial differences between concrete slabs, raised crawlspaces, full walkout basements, and elevated storm-surge pilings in high-velocity coastal flood zones. Explore how civil grading and drainage plans verify maximum driveway slope percentages, calculate emergency vehicle turnaround radii, and direct stormwater away from foundation footings to prevent site erosion, water intrusion, and neighborhood runoff disputes.

A: Building a flat concrete slab on a sharply sloping parcel requires extensive, costly excavation to cut a level pad, accompanied by tall engineered retaining walls to hold back the cut earth. Stepping the foundation down the natural hillside instead enables the builder to install a daylight or walkout basement, turning natural grade changes into accessible living space, natural light, and lower cost per square foot.

A: Coastal flood zones subject to hurricane storm surges require open foundation systems, such as reinforced concrete or timber pilings, that elevate the lowest finished floor above the Base Flood Elevation (BFE). This design allows high-velocity wave action and storm surge waters to flow freely beneath the structure without exerting lateral hydrostatic pressure against solid foundation walls.

A: Municipal building departments and local fire districts typically cap residential driveway grades between 12% and 15% to maintain safe vehicular braking and ensure heavy emergency apparatus can access the site in rain, snow, or ice. Driveway designs must also incorporate specific turning radii and transition slopes near the road and garage apron to prevent vehicle undercarriages from bottoming out.

A: Introducing a new roof, concrete patio, and paved driveway creates non-permeable surface area that prevents rainwater from soaking into the ground naturally. A civil drainage plan calculates the volume of this displaced runoff and directs downspout discharges into engineered swales, retention basins, or drywells, ensuring concentrated water does not flood adjacent properties or overwhelm municipal storm drains.

A: County GIS mapping and high-resolution topographic data allow designers to analyze boundary lines, contour intervals, wetland overlays, and nearby utility easements prior to physical site visits. This preliminary review reveals whether a parcel contains sufficient flat area within mandatory zoning setbacks to accommodate the proposed home footprint, septic leach fields, and driveway access routes.

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

Steve Landmark: It’s another great day.

Interviewer: Good.

Steve Landmark: We have more projects and it’s kind of fun talking about these different details. You know, taking our experience from 25 years or more and trying to help people out, to give them ideas so that they can sort out planning their home.

Interviewer: Right. You guys seem pretty busy. I mean it just seems like your building schedule is helping people design and build their homes. It takes up a lot of your time. So we’re glad you found time to be here.

Steve Landmark: Well, we have fun doing it and I think that’s the key point is actually enjoying what you do and taking pride and helping our customers because it’s a – it’s kind of fun. You know, everyone’s project is different. Someone might say, well, it’s a 1500-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath home. But where it is or how it is or the type of people that are building it, it really makes it completely different. That’s what we’re able to do is take the time to make sure the house makes sense for the customer.

Interviewer: Yeah. I thought today we might talk about something we’ve touched on in the past but we haven’t really gotten heavy into and that’s foundation type, the actual foundation of your new home and fitting it to the land, you go and buy a piece of land and not every bit of land is going to fit every house design.

So if you don’t mind, let’s touch on that a little bit. Why is knowing the site important to home design? You know, sloped lands, city lots, big acreage. How well should you know your site before you design?

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s kind of important because say if you’re on the side of the hill. That could affect your driveway. It could give you the ability to have a walk-out basement. It might give you a better view. It might restrict septic if you’re in a rural area.

If you’re in a city lot, generally they’re limited in size. Sometimes 30 feet by 100, sometimes 50 by 100, sometimes 100 by 100. So the house you could fit on there within setbacks and how do you get everything on there.

So just the slope of the land. It’s something to consider. Is it flat? Is it on the side of the hill? Is it off a cliff? How big of a space do you have to build on? Sometimes – you brought up acreage. Someone could have 20 acres but there are two or three better spots to build. You don’t want to build in drainage ditches. You want to build in places where the septic or water and sewer connections make sense and utility connections can make sense and sometimes it’s just something where people enjoy the view and they want to take advantage of a certain situation that the land offers naturally.

So the reason it’s important is you want it to work properly. You don’t want to put a type of home into a piece of land that’s going to cost you more to build or just doesn’t make sense. Sometimes people don’t realize that there are restrictions on the slopes of dry waste to make sure it’s comfortable to drive in. Cars need a certain turn radius in order to be able to access driveways. Then there’s a lot of just regulatory things which we can help with. Like I mentioned the setbacks. Where are the utilities coming in? Are they at the front or the back? And just a little bit of stuff to think about. Our customers generally will go through and say, “Hey, I found this lot. I want to put this house there.” But we will work with them to fine-tune the other issues to make sure that it flows properly.

Sometimes people come to us and say, “Hey, I want a walk-out basement,” but they’ve got a flat piece of land. So there are ways to make it happen but sometimes it opens up an opportunity or sometimes it’s a little more restrictive. So that’s the key thing and by the way, these different types of land can dictate different types of foundations.

Generally, people will build on basements, crawlspaces, cement slabs and we’re seeing more and more piers because of flood situations or hurricane situations.

You know, so sometimes people just want to raise it because there’s a little flood in an area. Other people want to raise the home and build on piers because of the environmental impact. It’s less impact. You’re not digging a whole area. So in some parts of the country, there are foundations that are more typical. Generally, in the southwest and California, people are more accustomed to slabs. You get in the Midwest, plain states up north, more crawlspaces and basements.

So then you get into Florida. Generally, it’s slabs. We have done some crawlspaces in order to take care of the slopes. So sometimes it takes a little bit of thinking, which we can help with to sort out the best way to take care of this.

Interviewer: Now you were mentioning the different foundation types. Now somebody like me and I just don’t have a clue walks or calls you guys up and says, “Hey, I want to build my own house. I want to design a house. But I don’t even know what – I don’t know – I kind of know what a basement is. But what’s the difference between a basement and a crawlspace?” and you’re talking about slabs and piers. Those are very different things. Yet in my mind as the customer who – first-time builder, those things can be a little daunting. How much customer service can they expect – the customer expect from Landmark just deciding those basic things based on where the land is?

Steve Landmark: Well, we will help them through the process. We will need to know some details on the land. So generally if you’re in Florida on flat land, you would build a slab. But people have done slabs in Minnesota as well.

So sometimes it’s a personal preference. Sometimes it’s driven by cost. But to go through and determine that, yes, we can help someone sort it out. I’m working with someone out in central lower Michigan where they’re trying to decide, “Hey, should they go with a slab or a crawlspace?” and it’s becoming an economics situation with them where they’re going to go for their building site and their conditions and it doesn’t apply to everyone but in theirs. They found that going with a crawlspace is better.

So basically, a crawlspace, depending upon where you’re at – and, you know, in the south it might be a little shorter. It might be a two or three-foot stem wall basically where the concrete wall will hold the wood floor up. In other places, it could be four, five feet or even more depending on the grade or the frost lines.

But we can help determine those. A basement is generally something that you would use as living space. Say seven, seven and a half feet or taller where you could go out there and put a little workshop down there or home office, additional bedroom. Generally, basements are about eight feet or more.

So – and then piers would be more the flood situation where there’s a storm. It creates a surge where the water needs to run underneath the house. So you’re not generally going to put a house in a basement, crawlspace or slab in the coast in Florida. It’s generally going to be in piers because of the storm surges. So there’s a lot of situations where codes will dictate it. Sometimes common sense, sometimes people’s budget, sometimes just personal preference.

That’s what we’re able to do is walk through the process to determine what makes sense because sometimes people have a nice rolling piece of land and not realize that there’s enough space there to put a walk-out basement.

So a basement is fine. You can have – you know, let’s just say for simplicity you can have a 26 by 40 house. You know, with just a basement, just a room down there. You can have a workshop, whatever, put some windows in or egress windows for future bedrooms. But let’s just say part of that wall was exposed where you could walk out into the lower part of the yard. That then makes it more usable. It kind of becomes more living space. There’s more light coming in, more access to outside. So basements are very affordable ways to get additional square footage.

Interviewer: Now that’s an interesting point you bring up because a lot of – for many, many years in this country, I mean that was kind of a regional thing. People in certain areas have basements but people – where I was born and raised, California, I never knew anybody growing up with a basement. Crawlspaces, yes, but not basements. But now with people moving around all over the country, very few people stick to where they were brought up. Everybody just kind of ups and moves. Do you see people from one region calling you up saying, “Well, like I’m in Florida right near a swamp. Can I have a basement?” and how do you deal with those situations?

Steve Landmark: I’m actually working with a family in that exact situation. But they actually have some land that actually has little hills in it that are actually big enough to put that walkout basement.

Interviewer: Oh, wow. And like you said in California, people are used to crawlspaces or slabs. Well, as they move into the mountains with houses that crawl down the sides of hills, suddenly that lower level, which might originally be a basement, becomes a walkout basement. They may not see it at that. But that’s the way it is.

So there are different conditions in different parts of the country where what’s normal might need to deviate because of the ground conditions. But yes, we do end up with different people that are accustomed to one thing where they came from and then they go somewhere else and it’s limiting. Sometimes there are people that have grown up in two and three-story houses back in the east, big, tall, old farmhouses and then you go to other communities where they want to take advantage of the views and make sure that your house doesn’t block someone else’s. They will limit the height of the house.

So those are little things that we can work with. It’s all easy for us to work with. It’s all very interesting and the people that sometimes see these differences, they actually see the benefit of it. You might not take a New England farmhouse and put it on the side of a hill in Colorado in a ski area.

You might have a different design. So sometimes people will say, “Hey, I originally thought I wanted this. But this is really what I want,” after they think it through or just – you know, we have a couple of conversations to help them develop the house that made sense for them.

We’re not going to tell someone what house they should live in. We’re going to make suggestions and they might happen to agree and if that’s the case, we can move forward with it or we can work with them on the design that they want.

Interviewer: But that brings up another good point. I’ve never asked you this before. But what kind of research on your end goes into it? Just knowing what that plot of land that somebody is building on is all about. How much do you have to dive into that to know all these answers?

Steve Landmark: Well, we generally request details on site plans if it’s available, topographical information. There is a lot of information available online through the GIS and also Google Earth. So we’re able to get ideas and then a lot of customers will send us pictures just to say, “Hey, here I am on flat farmland in Iowa,” or “Here I am, an oceanfront in Florida,” or in the gulf somewhere or “Here I am in a mountain range in Colorado,” or California or in Washington State.

Wherever it may be, to get ideas. So what we will do is we will work to get direction, to clarify those points. So a picture can say a thousand words but it can also leave a few things unclear. So if we see something – sometimes we get scale off of pictures. But a lot of times, we will just ask them to have a survey or a foundation guy go out there and look at it and say, “Hey, how big is that drop? Can we put a walkout basement there?” and amazingly, most customers are pretty up to speed. They understand this. They have the vision. They might just need a little help tweaking it so it really comes together right. But they understand that you need a certain amount of space for a walkout basement or a lookout basement or there are certain places you want to put your driveway or angle your porch.

So we’re able to take the ideas that a customer has, whether they’re basic ideas or more developed to put it into a finalized situation because Steve, we’re all able to go through and develop this concept of the house that we want. We have this picture in our mind. But getting that picture on a piece of paper or getting it permitted or getting it built, it takes a little bit of work and that’s what we’re able to do is take the vision and bring it to life.

Interviewer: Well, it sounds like site planning is really important. So let’s talk about that a little bit and also I would like to talk about – I know building department requirements. They vary a lot from location to location. Tell us about how Landmark digs into that and helps the customer get through those situations where maybe they’re not expecting the building department to be quite as stringent as they are or whatever.

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s the interesting thing. You can go from building department to building department in towns right next to each other and they could be completely different and you can go within inspectors or plan reviewers within the building department and have totally different feedback. Overall, building restrictions are getting a little bit tighter. You know, in the East Coast you see the hurricanes. In the West Coast, you see fires and there’s just a lot of different things that are happening.

So the building departments want to enforce codes that add to the safety and enjoyment of the home. So the key thing is we’ve worked all over the country in over 25 years developing different methods of answering the questions. First of all, we review the project with the building department. Find out exactly what it is that they request and supply the information.

A lot of building departments will issue permits the first time. Others in California, West Coast, Colorado, they might develop a checklist of items that they need clarification or even items which they didn’t originally request.

Then we supply it and that’s something which I think is very nice and the support that we provide to a customer is they’re not working on this on their own, trying to figure out what this means. We’re here to help them. So we just get the plans. We get it to them. The customer turns the plans in, fills out whatever paperwork the building department may request and then they get us the – let us know when a permit is issued or let us know if there are checklist items.

So we’ve got all the engineers, energy code people, site plan people, professional designers, engineers for plumbing, electric and heating systems. So the chance of a building department stumping us are probably pretty low. They do ask some interesting questions. Just today I got some questions on things that I never thought would be asked. But they ask for whatever reason and we have no problem justifying and that’s part of our service.

We don’t come back and say, “Oh, your building department is a hassle. We’re going to charge you more.” It’s just part of what we take care of. We understand it.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: I work with the customers and the building department to go through that and make sure that the details are addressed properly to make permitting easy. By the way, most building departments aren’t out to get you or make it hurt. They just want to know that it’s built right. There’s a lot of places where there isn’t enforcement, where if people can do something wrong, they will do something wrong to save money. But it affects the safety of a home. That’s generally what the codes are about. So it’s not a big deal for us to move along and help a customer through the situations with any building department.

Interviewer: Well, you were talking about strange and unusual requirements. How often do you run into a building department that’s looking for grading and drainage? Is it a good thing to have a grading and drainage plan?

Steve Landmark: Yeah, it’s pretty interesting. Generally the places with floods, they ask for it. Everyone has the situation or they’ve had a relative or friend in a situation where a neighbor does something to their land and suddenly there’s more water in your land. They move a gutter. They do this. They add on to the house so that addition creates a lot more rain that doesn’t dissipate into the ground. It goes down a gutter and maybe they angle the gutter into your lot and suddenly your backyard is flooding.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So what ends up happening – oh, and that’s more in a drainage situation. But then a grading plan is accessing the land, making sure that you can get in the land, get out. Like, say in a mountain area. In older areas, you might see driveways that are very steep or inaccessible or not accessible by fire departments or there isn’t enough space for a septic system or access to build a house properly.

So sometimes the grading and drainage plans are done together. Sometimes they’re individually. We’ve worked in parts of Texas where they don’t necessarily want a grading plan just because there’s so much flat land in general. But they want a drainage plan to know that hey, if you’re in certain areas, if water is going to run on to your party, whether it’s just running across land or it’s dropping out of this kind of roof, to make sure it’s taken care of properly so that you’re not flooding your neighbor out.

A lot of grading plans are happening in California, Colorado. You know, anywhere where there are mountains because there could be restrictions on how steep your driveway needs to be, how wide your driveway needs to be. Fire department access, emergency vehicle access, different situations to make sure that a house isn’t on a cliff for a landslide situation.

So those are situations that ultimately they do help because I don’t think anyone wants their house to flood. I don’t think anyone wants to push the water somewhere else that creates a problem for someone else in the community.

So some areas are asking for them. Others are not. Generally, if there isn’t a big flooding problem, they don’t ask for it. But planning the house, understanding the topography, this kind of ties into the basement. If you’ve got a sloped lot, you might be able to put a walkout basement and understanding how things need to drain so that your basements don’t flood or you just don’t end up with back-out issues or your driveway getting washed out.

So it can get a little complicated but we’re here to help and do it. Ultimately, you don’t want to save a dollar now and flood your basement next year.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So you want these things done. You do want the house to be built properly, so your car can get up safely, so if emergency vehicles had to get in safely. So that the land is used properly. And a lot of people don’t realize. They say, “Hey, why am I paying this engineer to do a grading plan?” A lot of times, they pay for themselves because they find out ways to build your house or how to build it or a location in there that’s more affordable.

So it’s just a little bit of planning. It could sound a little far out there for people. But in areas where they’re required, it’s a good plan and we’re able to tie the architectural plans in there to show that the grades are consistent with the architectural plans, the structural plans, and the grading plans and the drainage plans, so that everything is uniform and sending the same message to the building department and also the contractors or subcontractors that would build the house.

Interviewer: Yeah. It sounds to me like good grading and drainage makes for good neighbors.

Steve Landmark: That’s pretty right. An example is my parents. They have some people that live next door to them and he’s kind of a Rube Goldberg kind of designer, just kind of puts things together with whatever is there and he got this nice little gutter that goes right by their basement window. I mean it’s – anyone could walk by and see that. But sometimes people don’t understand or they don’t see the issue. So it’s kind of nice to preplan it as we always suggest on paper to make sure that it works and it doesn’t have to be a big complicated process. It’s just an understanding just to make sure it’s done right. Sometimes it’s just general details of sloping the land away from your house. So that once water comes off your roof, falls down onto the ground, it flows away instead of creating puddles around your house.

Interviewer: Right. Before we wrap it up for this episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show, Steve tell potential customers and anyone else who might want to contact you guys over at Landmark Home and Land Company just how to do that.

Steve Landmark: Best way is just give a call. Mike will work with people initially and I jump in when they’re ready to move forward. But Mike, you can reach Mike at 800-830-9788. You can email him at [email protected] and you could view our webpage at www.lhlc.com. It’s just kind of the initials, Landmark Home Land Company, www.lhlc.com. You can email me directly at [email protected] and we will take care of you. We’ve also got Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter.

Interviewer: Nice.

Steve Landmark: YouTube. So people can kind of check things out and kind of see what we’re doing. But we’re more than available to review specific topics on anyone’s project.

Interviewer: And a lot of internet platforms you guys are on. You’re not trying to be invisible, that’s for sure.

Steve Landmark: Well, the people in the internet, it’s a big place.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So we’re trying to make it easy for people to understand how we can help them.

Interviewer: Well, for Steve Tuma and myself, thanks once again for joining us and have a great day wherever you are and we will see you next time.

Steve Landmark: Thank you.

Learn how thoughtful architectural space planning, sightline orientation, and structural truss selections maximize property value and everyday living comfort. We explore modern floor plan trends—demonstrating how multi-functional great rooms and centralized kitchen islands are replacing obsolete formal dining rooms as the active core of family life. Discover universal design and ADA-compliant building principles, evaluating how barrier-free entry thresholds, zero-entry walk-in showers, and wide turnaround pathways accommodate aging-in-place and mobility devices without compromising aesthetic appeal. Finally, examine the engineering differences between standard scissor trusses, parallel-chord trusses, and structural ridge beams when creating open vaulted and cathedral ceilings in your panelized home package.

A: A standard scissor truss typically provides an interior ceiling pitch equal to roughly half of the exterior roof slope (for example, a 10:12 exterior pitch yields a 5:12 interior vaulted ceiling). A parallel-chord scissor truss matches the interior vault slope to the exterior roof pitch (yielding a 10:12 ceiling beneath a 10:12 roof), delivering maximum vertical volume and dramatic visual height while preserving space for required attic insulation.

A: While engineered scissor trusses span from exterior wall to exterior wall without interior load-bearing points, a structural ridge beam system relies on a large heavy timber or engineered glulam running the entire length of the roof peak. Rafters hang directly from this central spine down to the exterior walls, creating a wide-open cathedral space that requires massive point-load columns and specialized foundation footings at each beam end to support the concentrated roof weight.

A: Accessibility planning begins with site grading to create a zero-step threshold entry from the garage or walkway, accompanied by minimum 36-inch interior door openings and 60-inch turning radiuses in hallways and bathrooms. Bathrooms are engineered with curbless roll-in showers, reinforced wall blocking for future grab-bar installation, and open under-counter knee clearance beneath bathroom vanities and kitchen sinks.

A: Modern lifestyle patterns emphasize informal gatherings and flexible multi-use areas over partitioned formal dining spaces that remain empty most of the year. Open great rooms merge casual living space with deep kitchen islands that serve as homework desks, casual breakfast bars, and food prep stations, giving a 2,500-square-foot home the practical usability of a traditional 3,500-square-foot layout.

A: Aligning expansive view windows along a south- or west-facing elevation captures lake, mountain, or valley scenery, but it also increases solar radiant heat gain during afternoon peak hours. Designers must balance these view corridors with engineered roof overhangs, exterior covered porches, and high-performance Low-E window coatings to protect indoor thermal comfort and prevent the air conditioning system from being overloaded.

Interviewer: Hey everyone and welcome to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me as always 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 you doing my friend?

Steve Landmark: Excellent. How are you doing today?

Interviewer: Good.  I thought today we might hit upon the topic of design ideas and just the best – the way to get the best home possible when you start out and start thinking about how you want to plan your home project.

For one thing, we always talk about facing windows the right way, things like that. So I would like to get your opinion on how best to take advantage of let’s say the views around your land. Positioning the home itself on the land with windows, porches, things like that. So why don’t you run by some ideas for us on how Landmark can help us make that happen.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, we’re very flexible in the planning processes. But I think the point that needs to be made is typically a land will have a focal point, whether it’s in a city lot. Maybe it’s just the location. It’s easy to get somewhere. Maybe it’s literally a focal point of a mountain range, a waterfront situation or whatever it is.

So it’s good to take time in the planning phases to make sure that the value of the lot is achieved and the lakefront or waterfront lots, you’re probably paying a premium compared to a lot without a view.

So a lot of people want to take advantage of that and sometimes people come in and say, “Hey, here’s the plan that I want. It’s not taking advantage of the view.”

So we always like to work with people to see what the site is like. What are you achieving there? Is it just flat land? An ex-cornfield in the Midwest? Is it a city lot, a 50 by 100 where you’re pretty restricted on what you can do? But also what is a view if you are in an area with mountains or water or trees or sunsets and sunrises, whatever it may be? So we could take advantage of that so that people’s enjoyment of the land and the home is improved. But it will also help in the resale value.

Amazingly, a lot of those things will also affect the energy efficiency. You know, I brought up the sunrise. If you’ve got a very strong Southern-facing home, it’s going to affect the way your home is insulated and the heating systems. So there’s a lot of details that we’ve got to tie together to make sure that a house design is proper. It’s the comfort – you know, you liking the floor plan, being able to get in your driveway easy, trying to get in your garage easily. But also the energy efficiency of it as well.

So that’s an important thing for people to take a step back and we can help them with that. But to be able to go through and say, “Hey, what’s happening here?” and some people can envision it. Others will need a little more help. But that’s pretty simple to do on the design phases. We can sort different details out, make suggestions on window sizes, make suggestions where to put porches, where to put garage entries and different details like that so that the property flows well. It makes a more comfortable living.

Interviewer: Yeah, that makes sense. Now, I’m sure this has probably happened a few times. Maybe a lot of times. I don’t know. But what if someone comes to you and says, “Look, we like to entertain.” We want to design a house about – around – like say you have big family events. You know, people getting together a lot or you’re the kind of family that likes to barbecue a lot and invite friends over. If I were to bring that to Landmark and ask you about that in basic home design, is that something you guys would be willing to give good advice on?

Steve Landmark: Yeah, we could help and what’s interesting is we were working with a family in Hawaii where a lot of their family entertaining was done on the porch. So they wanted a huge porch. You know, Hawaii has got some nice weather. So they’re more of an outside situation. Then there are other people where they’re going to want a big inside situation and then also different people are going to live different ways. Some people literally have a table for 15 people. Other people, there are little packs of the family scattered around.

So the formal dining room is kind of becoming a little bit extinct and taking – being taken over by the great room.

Interviewer: Ah, OK. That’s interesting.

Steve Landmark: So some people could be watching TV. Other people could be sitting to the side. Other people could be doing certain – getting food ready in the kitchen. So there’s a lot of different situations. Then there’s also the classic man cave where you’re having a lot of people that have projects or some of them have little secondary living rooms in there. Others have a project car or something that they’re working with and it goes.

So the way that family lives I believe is very important. There’s no sense in having a formal living room for eight when you have 15 people and they’re scattered around in different hobbies or if you’re in a location where maybe it’s more of an outside activity situation, whether it’s barbecue outside or throw the kayaks in the lake and go for a ride.

So that’s I think a very important thing because a lot of people come through and go through and say, “Oh, I want a big house. I want 4000 square feet.” Well, sometimes a 3000-square-foot, well-designed home is better than a 4000-square-foot home. So I think working with people to find out what they’re after, what their needs are, what it is that they’re particularly looking for in a home and how they’re going to use it is very important. You can’t always assume that a typical husband and wife with two kids is going to live the same as every family that’s a husband and wife with two kids. There are different – just different activities that people take care of. Different climates kind of dictate different lifestyles.

Interviewer: Now what about – we’re talking about rooms, like formal dining rooms kind of being something that may disappear in the future. But there are some rooms that will always be mainstays of a house. One is, of course, the kitchen and the other one is the bathrooms and when someone comes to you and says, “I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for. But I know kind of what I want to do like say in a big kitchen or I know how I want my layout of my bathroom,” can people design their own bathroom-kitchen areas, et cetera with you guys?

Steve Landmark: Oh, that’s definitely the case. They could go to our website, find a plan that they like and still make adjustments to it. So we’re fully capable of making all the adjustments and that’s the key element because – you know, there are dual incomes, people with different schedules or hey, everyone has got to leave the house at 8:00. So sometimes taking a house and putting a double sink in the master bedroom or even the secondary bath – sorry, not a double sink in the bedroom but a double sink in the bathroom. It helps people get in and out.

More people are going where the sinks are kind of secondary and removed from the toilet and the shower. So we can break things up. So depending on people’s flow and their scheduling, they can get it put together. A lot more people are getting involved with larger closets compared to 1900 – modern day people have a lot more clothes. So we’re able to go through and lay the bathrooms out so that it’s convenient for them.

Some people like big showers. They just like to take a big, hot, steamy shower. So we’re finding more people are going with the walk-in showers instead of a tub shower combination unit.

And you know what’s interesting is in the design phase it’s relatively easy to put all those things there. We’re just making changes on paper and we can go through and make sure it ends up in the house. It’s a lot better than framing a house up and then doing the change. That’s the key element is doing it on paper and I think you also asked about kitchens. We can do the same thing there. Some people want simple kitchens. Some people want kitchens, gourmet kitchens. Other people want kitchens with big peninsulas or islands on them or three, four people can sit around. It becomes kind of entertainment central.

So all those details can be worked out and we can work with customers to draw the plans up, show the size of each room. So that then when they’re getting cabinets or appliances, they can go through and say, “Hey, we’ve got space for this,” or “Hey, we need to add something.”

We can lay it all out on paper and make sure everything fits. So the design phases upfront are very important to make sure that you get the house you want.

Interviewer: You had mentioned in passing anecdotally Hawaii. I have a good friend in Hawaii who’s in a wheelchair. She’s a young woman with a young family. She has got a little boy and husband and they just bought a house and had to have it retrofitted for her and let’s talk about that in the Americans with Disabilities Act. Are there certain design elements that you guys can help to add and does it affect the building site overall and how does Landmark help with that?

Steve Landmark: Yes, it’s very interesting because of the American with Disabilities Act kind of lays out details on everything and how the house needs to be designed and how it can work. But sometimes people don’t realize. It just doesn’t affect the house. It affects the site. Like, let’s just say someone had a wheelchair. Can they get their vehicle in? Can they get out of the wheelchair in the garage? Is there a ramp to get into the house? So there’s a lot of details that can affect the sinks and a lot of people generally think that the ADA is generally a physical handicap, like a wheelchair type thing. But it can also be a physical handicap in vision.

So people can – if they can’t differentiate colors or shadows as much, sometimes there are details that are done for colorizing appliance or certain kitchen items or different details. So depending upon how deep someone wants to get into it, we can do it all. A lot of people just say, “Hey, make it wheelchair-friendly. I’m OK now. But I had an accident from high school football and I’m 70 now. It’s kind of catching up to me. I might need a walker or something in the future.” So some people just say, “Hey, make it wheelchair-friendly or walker-friendly.” Other people want to get a little deeper into it.

But that’s the key element is understanding that all this stuff can be done on paper up front, making it real easy and then make sure that you understand the process. But the ADA deals with like the handicap situations or the disability situations I should say. But there are also situations in design much similar of hobbies.

You know, if someone is into writing music, if someone is into building model airplanes, if someone is into riding their bike. We’ve had people that are into equestrian activities and they need certain tack rooms or accesses or clean-up areas.

So just as with the ADA, just your lifestyle and how that all gets put together is very important as well and that’s what we’re able to help people with. I think people will see the value in taking the time upfront to make sure that details like this are put together.

Interviewer: That’s interesting what you bring up about things like – you had mentioned man caves earlier or even just TV rooms, home theatres. Nowadays, there are so many different things that just didn’t exist 15, 20 years ago and your business has been around longer than 25 years. So I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of changes in the sort of overall design that people are asking you to do.

Steve Landmark: Oh, there is. There’s a big difference. Just if you look at people’s lifestyles, home computing, home offices, home-based businesses, gaming rooms. You know, the dining rooms go in the way of the gaming room. You know, it’s better to have a place for the family to sit in comfortable chairs and play some games together. You know, there’s a lot of the attitudes and that’s the key thing.

So yes, trends change. Lifestyles change. Technology changes. The way people work change and sometimes people work at home. Sometimes it’s two generations of families combining to be able to afford a nicer home in a better location.

So it’s kind of interesting to see what’s happening with the economic crunch and the economy getting better and just the cycles that it goes through. It’s interesting to see how that affects it.

The bottom line is people want a comfortable home that they’re proud of. So you can still have a simple home and make it comfortable, usable and enjoyable to be there and also achieve the utility of taking care of you and what you need, if you have a home office, if you have a – you know, if you’re someone that has a work truck and you need a bigger garage door to get the truck in there or whatever it may be.

We had one person that had a little home-based business. They needed a separate little warehouse in their – or sorry, after the side of the garage so that for their tax situations, it was a separate little business. We also have people building little in-law units and the short term rentals like Airbnb situations where they’re adding little apartments for in-laws, rentals, a future place for kids to live after they get out of college. So the economy is kind of adjusting the design of the home. But it can all be put together.

Interviewer: That’s interesting because I have a friend who started a business and actually built a little factory right next to her house.  She and her husband had this separate but right on the same property. What I found also interesting is what you were saying about sort of – it seems to me like a design can actually bring a family together. They’re always talking about getting the kids off of their iPhones and get them sort of engaged with the overall family and house design, it seems to me, is a really good way to do that.

Steve Landmark: That’s exactly right and it can mold the lifestyle, the flow and how the family interacts. So it’s – you know, you have an eat-in kitchen. People get together at a certain time to eat or there’s the weekend barbecue or get-together. It allows people to engage. You know, remain human in this electronic world.

Interviewer: I was reading something about the kitchen island is becoming the new place. It’s where the family gathers. They’re just sitting right there in the kitchen and people are eating as they’re standing, as they’re walking.

Steve Landmark: Right.

Interviewer: Everything is changing.

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s becoming the kind of focal point, the central point. Way back, someone might have sat in the living room and talk. Now someone is leaving, someone is coming in, someone is in between something. So it’s kind of the crossroad where they can do it and so that’s what’s important.

But you bring up the kitchen. A lot of people are eating healthier as well. You know, the expensive eating out and then compared to eating at home, people are able to do it. They’re spending a little more time in the kitchen, making sure that they get the right food.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So …

Interviewer: Yeah, that’s great. It’s amazing how the actual design of your home can bring the family together just by how you’re thinking of how – where everybody is going to be.

Steve Landmark: Right.

Interviewer: Let’s jump to another subject and that’s ceilings and different sort of – I’m a fan of cathedral ceilings. What are the different design methods used for putting in a – let’s say a cathedral ceiling or something along that line?

Steve Landmark: Well, a lot of the times there are cathedral ceilings also kind of interchangeably called vaulted ceilings. Sometimes it’s just tall ceilings. You know, a tall wall with a flat ceiling, 9, 10, 12 feet tall. There are also tray ceilings which are kind of an indent into the ceiling. So if you had a flat ceiling, seeing a 12 by 12 room, you might have an indent going up 6 inches or a foot. Say that’s 10 by 10 within here.

So people can recess lighting or they just like the effect in the vaulted ceilings. The key element to this is there are always different ways of doing it. You bring up the vaulted ceiling. Like seeing a chalet type of home, which might have a 10-12 pitch roof, which is a relatively steep pitch roof.

A lot of people don’t always understand the connection of what that means to the pitch or the cathedral on the inside.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So you could have a steep pitch roof on the outside and still have a flat ceiling, a flat ceiling that’s eight feet tall.

Interviewer: Right, right.

Steve Landmark: You can then go through there, put a tray ceiling if you wished or if you want the full cathedral ceiling, you could do it in a variety of different ways with a variety of scissor trusses or in some cases, the scissor truss will allow for roughly half of the exterior roof pitch.

So a 10-12 exterior roof pitch will give you approximately a 5-12 interior roof pitch with a scissor truss. But you can also go through and do a parallel chord scissor truss which will give you a 12-12 or 10-12 pitch outside, 10-12 pitch on the inside. It’s a little bit easier.

Then the other one is a rafter and beam system which is a little more complicated and can sometimes be more dramatic. So it all really depends on what it is that the people are looking for, budget ranges and the desired effect.

Some people just want a cathedral on the inside that’s – you know, just has a little more volume. Others want a steep 45-degree angle going up. So it’s really dramatic. They could have big windows to look outside, you know, over a mountain range or water or just to let the sunlight in.

So that’s the important part and I’ve – I’ve never done a complete analysis of this. But I think a big expense in the house, at least the structure, is the roof system. There’s a lot going on there. If you’ve got a lot of ridges and valleys and corners in the home that complicate the roof, it can add to the cost.

So if someone wants a certain look, like a chalet design, there could be different ways of achieving that to control the cost. That’s what we’re able to do is look at this and say, “Hey, what is it that you’re looking at?” and let us kind of help you cut in the learning curve. We’ve got a lot of experience. So we could go through and come up with ideas to kind of value engineer and value design the home to make sure that you get what you want at a price that also makes sense.

Interviewer: You guys are so known for your customer service and being able to answer all these questions and that’s a good thing because this is – there’s a lot to know about designing a home.

Steve Landmark: Oh, definitely.

Interviewer: When you’re deciding to build your own and not buy a pre-built house. So yeah, it’s a good thing Landmark Home and Land Company is around.

Steve Landmark: Well, the key to it is taking the time upfront to understand what you’re doing, pay attention to it and we can help. We’ve got the designers and engineers, the energy code people, the site plan people, the green code people to take this. So someone doesn’t have to be an expert architect. They could just say, “You know, this is what I’m envisioning. I’m envisioning a big garage with a workshop at the end. I’m envisioning a kitchen with an island for four people.” We could take that concept and put it on paper.

Interviewer: That’s great. Well, we’re about out of time for this episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But before we leave, Steve, tell our listeners how best to contact you guys over at Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Landmark: Now the best way is you can just give a call. We have 800-830-9788. You can view our website at www.lhlc.com. That’s basically just the letters for Landmark Home Land Company, so www.lhlc.com. You can also send an email to Mike at [email protected] or I’m at [email protected]. We’re also on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So we have a lot of information out there.

Interviewer: Well, all right. So for Steve Tuma and myself, thanks for joining us once again and we will see you next time.

Steve Landmark: Thank you.

Learn why off-the-shelf stock house plans and cheap online drafting services frequently fail municipal plan checks and cause extreme construction budget overruns. We discuss the hidden pitfalls of standardized blueprints designed for generic flat lots, showing how failing to account for regional frost depths, steep grades, and expansive soils creates severe site-engineering conflicts during excavation. Discover how licensed structural engineering applies across diverse geographic microclimates—from seismic fault zones in Southern California to 100+ mph hurricane corridors in South Florida and alpine snow loads in Colorado. Explore how coordinated custom home drafting and design eliminates outdated construction myths, protects owner-builders from selective building code enforcement, and delivers a permit-ready panelized kit home tailored to your exact budget.

A: Standardized stock plans purchased online are typically drawn to generic baseline codes assuming a flat lot, mild weather, and standard soil bearing capacity. They lack the site-specific structural calculations required by modern municipal plan examiners, including regional ground snow-load formulas, seismic tie-downs, lateral wind shear engineering, and local energy compliance documentation.

A: Independent designers often add complex architectural elements—such as multiple roof valleys, non-standard structural steel spans, and custom glass assemblies—without tracking real-world framing and material costs. Coordinated kit home planning designs directly to the client’s financial ceiling from day one, value-engineering structural spans and foundation connections so the final blueprints match the owner’s actual construction budget.

A: Yes, residential construction across the United States is governed primarily by the International Residential Code (IRC), but each municipality enforces local amendments tailored to regional environmental extremes. A single qualified engineering team applies these universal structural load equations to local site conditions, whether designing for hurricane storm surges in coastal Florida, seismic shear walls in California, or heavy snow loads in the Rocky Mountains.

A: Selective enforcement occurs when individual plan reviewers or field building inspectors interpret ambiguous code sections through their own subjective preferences or local priorities. Providing an exhaustive, fully engineered blueprint set—complete with clear structural point-load paths, fastener schedules, and MEP schematics—gives inspectors the written mathematical proof required to approve permits without delays.

A: Building codes undergo significant updates every three years, adding rigorous mandates for continuous load-path tie-downs, higher wall insulation R-values, fire-hardening standards, and tempered safety glazing that did not exist decades ago. Relying on advice from friends or online forums who built under older code cycles leads to unpermitted framing errors that fail modern rough-framing inspections.

Interviewer: Hey everybody. It’s once again time for the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. Sitting in the studio with me is my co-host, 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, what’s up my friend?

Steve Landmark: It’s another great day. Good to talk more about panelized homes.

Interviewer: Yours and my favorite subject.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, it’s – well, it’s an interesting process. All of us live some place. So it’s kind of neat to have an understanding of an option that’s out there to help people design and build a house that they actually like and enjoy.

Interviewer: Well, we’ve been spending a lot of episodes going over just the basic construct and conception of what panelized home building really is and what the processes are and also we’ve been covering a lot of questions from customers and potential customers, which has been great.  But I was thinking I might like to get in a talk today about some of the more interesting situations you’ve come across while helping people build their new homes. I’m sure there have been plenty of unique challenges along the way in your company’s 25-year history. I’m sure that there are – where there are probably – for every 100 customers, that everything goes pretty smooth. You’ve probably had a couple where the customer runs into some problems with their particular area, dealing with permits and such. But does anything strike you off the top of your head right now about the unique situations lately that you’ve run into?

Steve Landmark: Well, the key thing is people’s understanding of what’s required for a good set of plans. It’s kind of interesting. As technology progresses, you can jump online and draw your own set of plans. You can buy a simple little program and draw them that way. You can hand sketch them. You can go buy a standardized set of plans and what people don’t realize is the quality of plans can vary considerably. Not all set of plans are the same. So just because your friend won an award in high school doesn’t mean he knows how to draw a set of plans. It’s possible they may work. But most likely, there are a lot of details, especially in the more sophisticated areas where the plans need to be detailed properly. So what we suggest to people is get an idea of the concept of what they want to build and then have us develop the plans because like you take for example standardized plans. They’re typically built for one portion of the country, under a certain code that may or may not apply for what your building department chooses to enforce.

The building conditions of those plans, they’re generally built for a flat lot. Well, what if you’re building on the side of a hill? What if they’re designed for a slab and you need a basement? So there’s a lot of different detailed information that we need to put on plans to make sure that they’re done properly. So what we suggest is to contact us with the concept of the plan and we will go through and refine the plans, so they’re suitable for your specific building site, for your specific building department. People will find that to be very important. It’s easy to think that you have an understanding of plans. You probably do have a very strong understanding of what you want to build. But the ability to develop the plans properly, so they’re good for actual budgeting, scheduling, permitting and building is very important. So one hurdle that people run into is they will contact us after they have a set of plans developed and later say, “Hey, I spent X amount of money,” and sometimes those dollars are very big. They say, “I can’t afford the house.”

I worked with a designer and I told them I wanted to spend 350,000 on a house. I got a budget of 700. Well, they just helped that designer develop his portfolio. But he didn’t make sure that they would get the house built. We look at the process of let’s help the customer get the house built, not just draw a bunch of dream ideas that never will have the concept of being built, but also to make sure the codes work. Make sure the energy codes work. Make sure the electrical layouts are proper. Make sure the HVAC design is proper. Make sure the foundation design is proper for the site and the soil conditions.

There’s a lot of elements there which generally standardize plans and not all designers understand. There’s a difference of saying, “Hey, I had this guy draw these plans up. He’s my friend. He has done it. It was a couple of hundred bucks,” compared to making sure that the plans were done properly and that are actually usable. So it’s kind of one of these situations. You can save a penny now and it will cost you a dollar later. You’re better off spending a fair price to get the plans done properly for your lot. It will save you money and headache in the long run.

So that’s the key thing is proper planning upfront and we’re fully capable of helping and we could do it nationwide and international as well.

Interviewer: Now I had a friend of mine, a young woman who inherited some land up in Idaho and there was a great barn on it. The only structure really on it was an older double-wide mobile home. She was talking about building and I had turned her on to your website, to the Landmark website. She said, “You know, it just seems a little overwhelming to me,” and I said, “No. Really if you get to the right people who have the right answers for you, that they can talk you through it. It may be easier than you think.” Do you ever find you have a lot of customers who contact you, who just say, “I don’t have a clue where to get started”?

Steve Landmark: Yes. In some cases, that happens. In other cases, there are different levels of that. So the people might have an idea. They know how to get started but they may not have done it or maybe they’ve done it once or twice.

But the idea is they know they’re at step A. They want to build a house. Z is move into the house. So they know that there’s a design. They know that they have to dig a hole for the foundation. They know they have to pour a foundation. They know they have to frame the house. They know they have to get an electrician and plumber. But filling in all those gaps of how do you do that effectively is the key. Basically I think what you’re asking is how do we make the learning curve shorter.

Interviewer: Well, it can seem a little overwhelming even to somebody, even if you’re going to your website and you’ve got all the answers there. Even a lot of answers can seem overwhelming.

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s true because your friend in Idaho has a different situation than if she decided to build the same house in South Florida with hurricanes or if she decided to build in Southern California with earthquakes or anywhere in California actually. So that’s the point is none of us are born knowing everything. We would like to think that. But the reality is, is it’s kind of unchartered territory and that’s where we come in with the customer support, the proper set of plans and the knowledge to help someone, is to fill in those gaps. So when someone says, “Hey, I don’t know where to start,” we can develop a general timeline and say, “Hey, let’s get a set of plans going.” You know, first of all, what do you want to build? Oh, I want a 1200-square-foot ranch with a two-car garage. I’m into horses in Idaho. I would like a little tack room in the back of my house.

So we could design a house like that. Then once the architectural design processes are put together, we can then go through and develop the final set of plans for permits. Now that’s a simplification and it is simpler for them because we are doing all the behind-the-scenes work. They don’t have to know the size of a window. They don’t have to know the exact size of a door or kitchen cabinet. They don’t have to know the size, the span of a two-by-ten or two-by-twelve or an I-joist or floor joist. We can go through and get them that end result. So they could say, “Hey, I want to have a basement. But I don’t want any posts or I want to minimize the posts.” We could then review with them the different options of floor systems to minimize beams and posts, so that their basement is more usable. That I think is what you’re getting at is we could fill in the gaps, where they need the help and help them completely through the process. That’s extremely important because you can buy wood in a lot of places. Someone will sell you a set of plans. But how do you know that it will go together? Who do you call if you have questions? That’s what we’re able to do is be supportive, responsive and help the customer get to the end result of turning that key into their brand new home.

Interviewer: Are you usually able on a first phone call to kind of assess where the home buyer’s experience is and kind of what you’re going to need to do to help them achieve their goals?

Steve Landmark: Well, yes. So we’re able to have a simple, easy communication, just a discussion. A lot of customers will say, “Hey, I need more help,” or someone will say, “I’ve done five homes,” or someone will say, “I’ve got this background. I’ve remodeled my house. I’ve flipped the house. I’ve done this.” So we’re able to go through and through the process fill in those gaps to be supportive, to make sure that they get the house they want. We’re not going to sit here and tell them, “Hey, you need to build this house.” We’re going to support what they choose to do, to say, “Hey, I want to build this house about this price and this community with this type of a design, with a basement, two-car garage,” and those situations. That’s the key element. It sounds weird. It’s basically listen, pay attention and be supportive of our customers’ needs and go through and help and people shouldn’t be embarrassed about it. Not everyone knows how to build a house. But we give them the support, so that they can go through and do it. We’ve worked with a lot of people that have never built a house. We’ve worked with professional builders, developers, individuals that are handy, individuals that have remodeled, individuals that have built homes. Some have built multiple homes. So we have the knowledge and the attitude to help the people where they need. We’re not going to tell you, hey, you must do this. We’re going to say, “Hey, where do you need help? What is it that we can do to enhance your ability to control your project and get the house you need?”

Interviewer: There’s something we’ve hit upon in the past and I’m bringing it up again now because we’re talking about people who – you know, some people who don’t have the experience or the knowledge and when it comes to dealing with things like – let’s say a building department, a very challenging building department in a certain area. I know just from working with you on this show, that they’re quite different from region to region. How far and how wide can Landmark go to help you get through those difficult requirements that some building departments are looking for?

Steve Landmark: We can help anyone. We’ve worked nationwide for 25 years since 1993 all over the country and helping people do it. So we’ve worked with some extremely picky building departments. Picky to the point where you’re wondering why they’re being so picky. They usually are asking questions just because they want to make sure the house is built right. Codes are a result of safety. So we have the knowledge to go through. So if a building department throws you a curveball, chances are we’ve seen it before. If for some reason, they’re really unique, we will get the answer. Now a lot of people think, “Hey, a challenging building department is bad.” Steve, there are places out in the US still where you don’t need a building department and a lot of people think, “Well, I could do this and I could do that.” Irrespective of a building permit or not, we want the house built properly. It’s not our house but it’s a representative of our work and a lot of codes are there for the purpose of safety. I take the simple example of the size of a bedroom window. It needs to meet egress. So if there’s an emergency, like a fire, you can jump out the window easily. So there’s no reason to save $20 on your window and then risk the safety of your home. So I think the bottom line situation is building departments and proper direction can make sure that you can go through. But I think your main question was, “What if a building department is a little trickier?”

Well, we’ve probably experienced it before. So someone that may not have the experience would think it’s tricky to us. It’s just part of what we do every day. We work with those. We have the proper architectural designers. We have the structural engineers, green code people, energy code people, HVAC design, electrical engineers, plumbing engineers, foundation engineers. We’ve got the team of people to get this put together and we have an understanding of the codes. So the concept of moving forward isn’t bad. Now sometimes what happens is there’s a selective enforcement or different interpretation of a code.

You know, it’s – and it’s not just building department by building department. It could be an inspector within that building department. They can each have different opinions on how to go through and take care of an issue and that’s fine. A couple of times a year, we will get requests from building departments that we’ve never heard of anywhere. It’s not necessarily a code issue. The inspector says, “Hey, this makes sense.” At a certain point, let’s just get them the information. Make sure the plans are right. Go through. Get it built and then your house is – it’s a good home. So we’ve never been stumped by a building department. There have been some curveballs. But we get through them. We take care of it and every customer supplied has ended up with a permit. We’re pretty good at taking care of this. Oh, one other thing I want to bring up. We do work nationwide. A lot of people think, “Well, I got to have an engineer in my town,” because for some reason they think that the knowledge of the code in that town is restricted to the geography of that town. It’s not true. It’s a nationwide code. It’s the enforcement within a specific community that’s different. But it’s not limited to the geographic area. So because you’re building in Miami, Florida doesn’t mean your engineer has to like have lived there or grown up there, gone to school there. It’s that you have to understand the situation.

A lot of people don’t understand it. They think there’s some geographic limitation of knowledge and there isn’t. It’s a national code and it’s the application of the code to your building site that’s important. So if you go take a particular code and put it in Florida, like say Key West, it’s going to be a storm surge and high speed winds because of the hurricanes. That same code will cover Leadville, Colorado, the highest populated city in America with high winds and the snow loads and possible expansive soils. Then again let’s jump over to Los Angeles. That exact same code will have a different application for earthquakes. So it’s the understanding of the code and how it applies to your situation. So, let’s just take Los Angeles. There are mountains. There are flat areas. In Southern California, there are mountains. There are areas that are closer to fault lines. There are snow loads. There’s expansive soils. They can all be in the same geographic area. So it’s the understanding of the application of that code for your particular house and that exact piece of land. That I think is where we really shine because we have an understanding of it from all the exposure we’ve had to projects all over the country.

Interviewer: Well, let’s face it. With the internet, it’s such a wide and wonderful world. But there’s also a lot of misinformation out there and I’m sure you must be dealing with people who get a lot of information that’s wrong off the internet and then come to you with answers on how you can fix certain – basically to boil it down, you guys must do a lot of work just getting the customer to understand their own building project, after all that has been – their head has been kind of imploding with information that they’re getting out there.

Steve Landmark: Well, we do help people if they’ve got a – you know, they’ve got their friend. They’ve got someone else. They’ve got this. They’ve got a TV show. I joke about the internet PhD. You can read so many articles and opinions that some people can think that they have a knowledge. The reality is, is we work with them to develop that plan that actually makes sense. Sometimes it’s not that it’s misinformation. It’s that the person you’re listening to built under a different condition or they built 20 years ago. So you go look at the codes, like I talked about in Florida and the hurricanes. The code 20 years ago was different. So when someone says, “Well, when I built it, I didn’t have to have holdouts. I didn’t have to put my house on piers. I didn’t have to worry about storm surge.” Well, 20, 30 years ago, there weren’t a lot of the tight codes that we had today. So it’s not that they’re misrepresenting. They just don’t realize that the world has progressed and we have a better understanding of snow loads, earthquakes, hurricanes, storm surges and details like that. So it’s working with the person so that they understand it. We don’t want to just say, “Hey, this is the way it is.” But so that our customer has an understanding of why what they’re doing makes sense and needs to be done. The code isn’t just there saying, “Hey, let’s do this. We want to make your house more expensive.” The code is saying, “Hey, let’s do it, so your house is safe.” So your family is safe. So the value of your home is retained, so the value of your community is retained. So I’m not always a fan of all these different codes and everything. But the reality is, this stuff is put together for the safety and the longevity of your home. So yes, we are able to work with people, so that they get a better grasp of how to build their home properly. So when someone comes through and say, “Hey, I’ve been in this area. We haven’t had an earthquake forever,” or “Hey, we haven’t had a hurricane,” we can talk about different situations as to why it makes sense to properly design your home and engineer it or if people say, “Hey, energy is not expensive in my community. Why do I have to worry about energy codes?” Well, sometimes it’s not just the cost. It’s the comfort of the home.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Landmark: And it’s retaining the value and knowing that you have a well-designed home. So it’s kind of neat. We develop an interesting relationship with people. We’re not just trying to say, “Hey, here’s a panelized home. We’re the best on earth.” We’re trying to say, “Let’s work together so you understand why you are getting the best home, why it makes sense to do this,” because sometimes people know what they know, but they don’t know what they don’t know. So when you’re able to have a communication and say, “Hey, let’s put these bigger overhangs on your house,” that will restrict the light coming into your living room in summer, making it more comfortable and your air conditioner having to work less. Suddenly people are like, “You know what? That makes sense.” To extend an overhang in a house is relatively little cost. But if it makes it more energy-efficient, more comfortable and my bills are less, the financial return on a simple design element like that is huge.

Interviewer: Right. I would say just from listening to you through our show and just hearing you talk about panelized home building in general, you’re the guy to talk to. I think people – it would behoove them to get a hold of Landmark because let’s face it. It is – building a house is a big deal and it could be the one home you build your entire life. So yeah, anyway –

Steve Landmark: It’s also a lot of fun. There’s a lot of details. People just have a natural tendency to kind of like and want to know about where they want to live. We’re getting a lot more people that have craft rooms, gaming rooms, man caves, workshops. You know, different – convertible rooms. You know, the empty nesters or the younger people with their first house. They need a house that’s kind of like – or sorry, a room that’s kind of like a guest room, but home office type thing. So just understanding what the customer needs and putting these details together is pretty interesting to make sure that they enjoy the house that they’re building.

Interviewer: Yeah, that’s kind of an important deal.

Steve Landmark: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. It’s pretty cool to move in a house and go, “This makes sense. I’m glad I did this right.”

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: That’s the point.

Interviewer: Well, once again we’ve come to the end of another great show. But before we head out, Steve, tell our listeners the best way to get information and how to contact Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Landmark: Well, the best way to get in touch with us is to just check out our website at www.LHLC.com. That’s just the initials of Landmark Home Land Company, so  www.LHLC.com. You can also give us a call at 800-830-9788 or you can send an email to Mike at [email protected] or send an email to me at [email protected] and we will take care of you right away. We will get you an answer. We will acknowledge your communication to us and do what we can to help you make the project happen.

Interviewer: Awesome! That wraps it up for another episode for the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. So for Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma and myself, thanks for listening and we will see you next time.

Learn how owner-builders maintain financial control, schedule predictability, and structural quality by utilizing factory-built panelized home kits rather than relying on inconsistent on-site stick framing. We examine the core operational differences between purchasing isolated material packages and partnering with an integrated one-stop supplier who unifies architectural drafting, state-stamped engineering calculations, and local building permit support. Discover why resolving every dimension, cabinet layout, and rough opening on paper during preliminary design prevents expensive on-site framing changes and material waste. Explore how clear blueprint packages empower first-time owner-builders to obtain transparent subcontractor bids, whether building a compact single-story ranch or customizing selections when you browse 2,000+ kit home plans.

A: Traditional on-site stick framing exposes raw lumber to rain, snow, and site theft while relying on the unpredictable availability and skill level of local framing crews. A panelized home system manufactures wall panels, floor systems, and roof trusses in a climate-controlled factory to precise laser measurements, locking in primary structural framing costs upfront and allowing owner-builders to dry in the weather-tight shell within days.

A: Making structural changes in the field—such as moving an interior partition, relocating a window opening, or adding plumbing fixtures—triggers costly change orders, wasted materials, and structural rework that halts subcontractor schedules. Finalizing revisions during CAD drafting ensures that structural point loads, roof truss designs, and mechanical pathways are fully coordinated before materials are cut, protecting the construction budget from cost overruns.

A: Subcontractors often insert high contingency margins or submit vague estimates when bidding from incomplete or un-engineered sketches. Providing a comprehensive, stamped blueprint package—complete with dimensioned floor plans, electrical schematics, and structural details—enables framing, plumbing, and electrical trades to calculate exact material quantities and labor hours, resulting in accurate, competitive, apples-to-apples bids.

A: Rather than leaving the owner-builder to coordinate independent architects, structural engineers, local code consultants, and truss plants separately, a unified provider handles the entire process. This includes developing preliminary concepts, producing engineer-stamped permit plans, conducting HOA reviews, managing factory component fabrication, and delivering the assembled framing package directly to the jobsite with step-by-step assembly drawings.

A: Yes, owner-builders without prior general contracting experience succeed by leveraging precision-engineered components and dedicated technical design support. When factory panels arrive pre-numbered to match an exact assembly plan, the on-site erection process functions like a structured assembly project, allowing the owner to act as a confident project manager overseeing site preparation and trade contractors.

Interviewer: Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me as always 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 how they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993 and that man is Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you doing?

Steve Landmark: Excellent. It’s a nice day today and I guess we’re going to be talking about panelized homes more.

Interviewer: Yeah. I thought we would break from our usual mode today and talking about prefab home building design planning, et cetera, and get into something I think future home builders will find interesting and useful and that’s Landmark Home and Land Company’s history, the main mission of the company and sort of your overall goals and objectives that you’ve put forth since your inception – what now? Twenty-five years ago?

Steve Landmark: Twenty-five years, right. 1993 we started this and just grew and grew and became a nationwide and international company.

Interviewer: Good. So to start with, let’s talk about Landmark Home and Land Company’s main mission. Can you run through the company, sort of basic all-around mission plan for us?

Steve Landmark: Basically the idea is we want to be available with the right knowledge to help a customer design and build their own home. People may understand the general concepts of hey, I want a nice floor plan but they might not know how to develop the floor plan or the plans for permits or the plans to assemble the home or finish the home. Then also how to actually build it. With the processes we have with our panelized home system, we provide the key elements, the hardest components of designing and building a home, so that it’s easy for them. So the bottom line is help them design and build a house that makes sense for them where they can control the building process and understand what they’re building in the specific home, but also make sure works in their budget and then their goals for the end results of the house that they want.

Interviewer: Now, there are things you provide like assistance and good design, easy permitting and a great panelized home structure for the new home. Tell us a little bit about what you think your goals are and what you hope to achieve with each customer when it comes to just putting together a great panelized home kit.

Steve Landmark: Well, basically it starts – a lot of people know – have a general idea of what they want. They know they want a two-story home or a ranch home, about 1500 square feet or whatever the size is. They may know that they want a two-car garage. They typically know hey, I want to build it in this town or in this area and go from there. But sometimes that’s the beginning step. But how do they get to the end? So how do you take that idea of hey, I want a three-bedroom home, build it for this price and this community? How do we kind of target those things? And that’s where we supply the knowledge and the bridge in a sense to get them from the concept to the actual set of plans, permitting, then building the house, so it’s a house that they can move into. So we’ve been doing it for 25 years and that the knowledge and kind of help that we provide helps fill in the gaps that customers need. Some people are very advanced and they know what to do. They’ve already built a house, two or ten. Others, it’s an idea and they want to get it going. So we’re able to help them get those ideas together and the design concept. You know, making sure it’s a good design, making sure it fits the land, making sure it’s energy-efficient. You know, all those details come into it. Make sure it looks good. Make sure it ties into the community and then also the permitting. Make sure that your building department will accept the plans. You can’t just walk in with some hand sketches on a piece of paper in most building departments and say, “Hey, this is what I want to build. Just let me go.” There are some that will allow that but most of them, they’ve got to have pretty sophisticated plans to make it clear what needs to be built, so that they can inspect it properly to make sure that it fits the code. So we’ve done this for so long that we have the knowledge to help people long. So like I mentioned, some people need more help. Some people need less help. But we’re there as kind of a reference point, a support system, a knowledge base to help people do it and we do that through open, clean, easy communication. We’re available to help people build a home. I should also bring up the panelized home because that makes it easier. The quality of labor that’s generally available isn’t as good as it was a long time ago. There are weather conditions. Some areas, you’ve got a shorter building season and also with our panelized system, you as the owner/builder can retain control of the project and an understanding of what’s going on there. So you know one of the biggest elements of cost in the panelized system, but you also know the specifics and by working with us on a panelized system, we also developed a set of plans that allows you to understand and control your project, so that you know what needs to be built. You can understand the budget and then keep on path to make sure that it gets built properly. So it’s a – I guess it’s kind of a long answer to say we take care of the customers and help them along.

Interviewer: Well, Landmark is – you guys have built a reputation for great customer service. I mean it’s just well-known. But how does a company like yours achieve that sort of reputation? Is it a passion for what you do? Is it a dedication to common courtesy? Let’s talk a bit about the history of Landmark, how you got started and what those years were like.

Steve Landmark: Well, the thing that you bring up, taking care of customers, how does it happen? Yes, it’s definitely a passion. When it’s a passion, it’s all fun. You enjoy it. You like going the extra mile to take care of people and yeah, let me review the Landmark Home and Land Company processes of what we do to take care of people. We communicate with them. We answer the phone. We provide answers that are clear and understandable and if someone needs a little extra time, we will take that extra time to review the process with them. So yes, it’s basic common courtesies, which sounds weird but it’s missing in today’s world and any place that provides a service. So we go the extra time to make sure and I work specifically and individually with each customer to make sure the house is done right, all taken care of properly and they end up with a very high quality home. So I think the customer service thing is a result of passion and our dedication. We’re the owners of the company. We started it. In a sense, it’s our baby as such. So we just like to go that extra mile to make sure that people are taken care of properly. That allows us to develop a very strong reputation. We like to stand up to it and exceed it and go that extra mile. If people need help, we are always available to help them through the process. If they run into a situation where they need help or they just need help to make sure that the home is designed properly, the home is assembled properly, that’s the key element. It’s the communication and not just one-on-one with the customer but also in the clear set of plans because Steve, the plans are communication. You draw a plan. You say, “Hey, this house is type of siding. The rooms are this big.” That’s what contractors know. They’re going to be able to develop how much drywall they need or what electrical materials they need or what heating materials they need by a clear and accurate set of plans. So that’s the key element in what we provide. It’s not just the kind of trusted knowledge base and availability so that we could communicate with people. But it’s also in the product of the actual set of plans that are accurate and then those plans matching the panelized home package. So it just makes it easier. I think we wrapped that up into a one-stop shop. So if you need something, give us a call. We will help you through the process.

Interviewer: Now in 1993, I mean the whole world was different when you guys started.

Steve Landmark: Very different.

Interviewer: The internet wasn’t there. Nobody had cell phones. I imagine you guys have seen a lot of changes in your company and the way that you reach out to people and how you get your company’s concept and the concept of panelized home building across.

Steve Landmark: Well, the basic fundamental issue of take care of the customers and help them along is the same. But with the advent of the internet, cell phones, availability, the technologies that are there, it has changed it and it has made it easier. Some people call us. Some people email. Some text us. Some do all of them. In some cases, we mail them plans. But most people now can receive PDFs. They have the technologies there to look at things on smartphones. There are more computers. There’s generally broadband internet access all over the country.

So we’re able to take care of it. But the fundamental point of take care of the customer was there in 1993 just as it is there today. It’s just a different method and communication. A lot of people think, “Hey, do we need to meet? Do we need to do this?” Well, you can call us at your convenience and get you taken care of instead of setting an appointment further out. We’re available all the time and I think that’s a key element. People, you know, they need help when they need help. If they have a question, saying, “Hey, I’m thinking about a kitchen cabinet. What about this?” or “Hey, I’m going to talk to my heating guy tomorrow. What about this piece of information?” The availability to be able to send an email, a text or a call and say, “Hey, how do I get this answer?” is very important and Steve, not everyone understands it. A lot of people think, “Hey, this is simple. Let me do this. There are little complexities where people will have questions and we’re able to take care of it.” A lot of people say, “Well, doesn’t everyone help?” No. We can help with the design, the understanding of the building processes, the permitting, the delivery of the panelized home package, the assembly plans. So there’s a lot of details of what we supply. It’s not just hey, here’s a pile of wood. Put your house together and good luck. It’s to say, “Here we are. We’ve planned it, so it’s easier for you to build the house. It’s easier for you to get permits. It’s easier to go through and achieve your end result of getting the home that you want.” That’s dedication, passion and just enjoying our business.

Interviewer: I think that you hit on something there people underestimate. Just the fact that if you – when I’m trying to get customer service, just to get somebody on the phone is great or to write an email and not have a robot email return saying, “We will get back to you in 48 hours.” That study is annoying and I think just the ability of having somebody available to pick up the phone or at least to get back to you on a timely manner means a lot to people nowadays.

Steve Landmark: Well, we answer the phone. We take care of people and if for some reason someone gets a voicemail or something, we will get back with them right away and that’s the key element is our dedication of making sure that we provide the right product. The plans are done right. The communication is right. The panelized home is right but also the customer is taken care of. So they understand that we’re really there as a partner to help through the building process. Building a home isn’t always just as easy as hey, one, two, three. There are little things that come up with different sites, different codes, different building regulations, different design elements, different types of materials, different foundation types. That’s the thing that’s helpful. But you know what’s interesting? I call some of this doing your homework upfront. It’s plan it all upfront when we’re working on paper, when we’re doing the initial preliminary plans, the final plans. Have all the details in the plan. So that when you’re building, you’re executing it properly. Some people think, “Well, isn’t prior to home building doing changes onsite?” I’m like, “Well, it can be done, but that’s expensive. It hurts your schedule and you will go over budget. So why not do it all, all the planning on paper? So that when you’re building, you’re executing a well-thought-out process.”

That’s one of the elements that we really try to point out to people is hey, by planning it out upfront, all on paper, you will keep your budget better. Your financing will be better. Your scheduling will be better and to tell you the truth, the headaches will be down considerably. I think that’s what makes it a very enjoyable process.

Interviewer: Now you’re talking about – you had mentioned three words, “one-stop shop” and it sounds to me like that one stop includes basically supporting the project. It means supporting the builder throughout the project, not just leaving them hanging after they’ve bought the product, so to speak. So I imagine you think that’s – customers appreciate that much about working with Landmark Home and Land Company. But what do you personally think are the strongest assets that you provide your customers when – you know, with what they’re looking for and how you’re able to step up to the plate?

Steve Landmark: Well, I think the key to it is the dedication to our customers’ projects. We enjoy – even though we’ve been doing it for 25 years, it’s extremely enjoyable to see a family get a home and that’s whether it’s a basic, simple home or a big mansion or whatever it is. It’s pretty cool because you actually change people’s lives, their ability to live different ways, to sleep better, enjoy times with family, work from home, enjoy hobbies. You know, those types of situations. A properly built home will really help that.

So I think the dedication and understanding and the passion for the customer’s need to get a home is one of our main situations. Now secondary to that but equally as important is just communication. We stay in touch with people. We’re available. We’re proactive to helping on with your project. We’re knowledgeable. We’ve been doing things for 25 years all over the country. We understand situations that people may end up in. We understand the pitfalls and we’re knowledgeable in helping people through and yes, even if the problem is – or I shouldn’t say it’s a problem. The question that someone brings up doesn’t directly involve our product.  Like hey, what should I do with different kitchen cabinets? Well, we’re involved in designing the kitchen but we’re not involved in the kitchen cabinet. There are still a lot of things we can help them through with the process to put them in the right step, to sort those items out. Now amazingly, our customer base are people that have researched what’s going on. They understand what’s happening. They know what they’re getting into. Every once in a while, we got someone that has never done it. But they have the mindset and understanding and aptitude to do so. But every – no matter how many homes you’ve done, there’s always something different. Maybe it’s a different state. Maybe it’s a different piece of land. There are always little details that it’s nice to have someone to talk to, to develop the process and the plan, so that it’s easier for someone to plan the home out and – I don’t want to make this sound like it’s hard. It is a lot of work. But the point is if you plan it through, and develop a plan for building, it’s much more enjoyable. The quality of the home will be better. Your schedule will be better and your budget will be a better situation. So it’s taking the time to think it through and that’s what we like to do is make sure that we’ve got a quality product going on, a quality project with a good customer that is intent in building the home properly. That I think is the main point. It’s just – and also the continued support through the project. We just enjoy it and it’s also a situation where hey, if our customer is happy, hopefully they tell a friend and the friend buys from us next year. That’s a huge portion of our business with people buying in the end or telling a friend. You know, whether it’s the next day during the process or a couple of years later. It’s pretty interesting. It’s pretty interesting to see how people enjoy it. So the main advantage is not necessarily just a set of plans in the panelized project. But it’s the care for the customer and making sure that they have the proper support to build the best house possible.

It’s just caring. So that sounds interesting but it’s that simple. It’s caring.

Interviewer: Well, that’s kind of what I wanted to get to today is just the fact that – you know, we’ve talked a lot about the actual technical aspects of building a prefab home. But today, I think we’ve got a much clearer idea of exactly what Landmark is all about and the way you approach your unique business plan. So anyway, once again, we’ve come to the end of another great show. But before we head out, Steve tell our listeners the best way to get more information and how to contact Landmark Home and Land Company.

Steve Landmark: Well, the quickest and easiest way, you could do it right now. It’s look at our website. It’s  www.lhlc.com. It’s basically the initials of Landmark Home and Land Company, so www.lhlc.com. You will see our website. There’s a variety of plans. There are different discussions on kit homes, panelized homes, engineering situations like that, what we supply in our package. You can also call 800-830-9788 or you could send an email. Mike can work with you. It’s [email protected] or you can email me directly at  [email protected]. Like we talked about, the key to it is taking care of the customer. We will try to answer the phone right away. But you can also – we will be extremely responsive to emails with complete, thorough answers, so that you’re able to see the service that we can provide that really will become the support system to the best home you can build.

Interviewer: Awesome. Well, we are about wrapped with this episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. So for Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma and myself, thanks for listening and we will see you next time.

Steve Landmark: Well, thank you.

Learn why building a custom home eliminates the financial risks, hidden structural rot, and layout limitations commonly encountered when remodeling an existing older house. We examine the economic impact of functional obsolescence—explaining why older properties with undersized two-foot closets, scarce electrical outlets, and partitioned dining rooms struggle to support modern multi-generational families and smart-home technology. Discover how building codes protect homeowners through practical safety engineering, including 4-inch deck baluster spacing, emergency egress windows, and minimum door widths. Explore how high-efficiency 98% AFUE HVAC equipment, maintenance-free fiber-cement cladding, and flexible architectural layouts outperform aging resale houses, allowing owner-builders to design customized living spaces or adapt blueprints from our panelized home plan catalog using a precision panelized building system.

A: Functional obsolescence occurs when an older home’s physical design, floor plan, or mechanical capacity no longer aligns with modern lifestyle demands, drastically reducing its everyday utility and appraisal value. Common examples include 2×2 foot bedroom closets, single wall outlets per room, isolated formal dining rooms, and tiny single-car garages. Custom new construction eliminates these bottlenecks by designing spacious walk-in closets, dedicated circuits, open-concept great rooms, and flexible spaces tailored to contemporary living.

A: Remodeling projects carry severe financial risk because tearing open existing walls frequently uncovers decades of hidden defects, such as unpermitted structural modifications, concealed plumbing leaks, termite damage, or rotted load-bearing studs hidden beneath fresh siding. Remodelers must pay premium labor rates to remediate these structural surprises, whereas building a new panelized kit home provides locked-in upfront pricing, predictable material quantities, and brand-new engineered assemblies built directly to current building codes.

A: Building codes enforce specific dimensional standards to eliminate common household hazards. The requirement that deck and staircase balusters prevent the passage of a 4-inch sphere is specifically engineered to keep small children and toddlers from getting their heads trapped between railings or falling through elevated balconies. Similar mandates, such as minimum window egress sizes, ensure occupants can escape and firefighters with full oxygen gear can enter during an emergency.

A: Decades-old residential furnaces typically operated at 80% Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency (AFUE), meaning 20 cents of every heating dollar was vented out through the flue as wasted heat. Modern high-efficiency condensing gas furnaces deliver up to 98% AFUE, converting virtually all fuel into usable indoor warmth, while tight building envelopes and advanced Low-E window technology significantly decrease baseline heating and cooling demand.

A: Designing a custom layout enables families to balance shared social spaces with essential acoustic privacy by creating dual primary suites situated on opposite wings of the home. Central shared zones—such as expansive kitchens with dining islands and dual family rooms—provide community spaces for grandparents, parents, and children to gather, while private secondary suites give each generation quiet living quarters.

Interviewer: How are you doing everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me today as always 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. How are you doing Steve?

Steve Landmark: I’m doing great today.

Interviewer: Good.

Steve Landmark: It has been a great day and we probably have a few interesting things to talk about.

Interviewer: We always try. We always try to keep up with you because when it comes to this subject, you are the king. So one thing I would like to touch upon today is new technologies. In the last episode, we were talking about people going online and looking at these software programs where they can design their own home and all that. But everybody thinks that they can go online and understand the new technologies and knowledge of building a properly – building a home.

So I would like to talk to you today about that, about these brand new techniques and learning curves and everything else to help our friends out there listening to build their home correctly.

So why don’t we start with that? Give us a little feedback on that.

Steve Landmark: Well, the interesting this is computers have been around for a little bit. But now the actual software, the designing elements, the CAD systems, the rendering systems, all these different things, give people the capability to understand their home a lot more.

So just in the actual design, someone might say, “Hey, can you adjust the kitchen cabinet? Can you do something with the garage? Can you add a man cave? Can you put a workshop in the garage? Can you put an island in the kitchen? I need to be able to feed four people or entertain four people in the kitchen.

So the actual designing processes are there. Not just for the 2-D CAD programs but also architectural renderings, kind of walk-through situations in the house or work around the house, looking at it in different perspectives. So the technology has vastly improved in just the last few years.

It has been around for a while. But it’s harder to use and it wasn’t as good. Now it’s very, very complete. But there’s the technology of the design but then there’s also other technologies. You and I really don’t think about siding in a house with technology. You think of technology like electronics or a faster car or a more powerful truck or something. But do you think about the cement siding on my house as high-tech?

Well, in a sense, a lot of this stuff is. They’ve got cement sidings, vinyl sidings, metal sidings, wood sidings, fake wood sidings. They’ve got all these different materials and the bottom line to it, with everyone’s busy lifestyle is it makes your quality of life better, maintenance-free, more options.

So that’s a lot of the details, different flooring systems, different types of windows. Some windows that are better to put on the sunny side of the house, some windows that are better to put on the shady side of the house, some windows that are easier to clean.

So there’s a lot more details into the house that make it a financially better move, but also for a quality of life and comfort of life. So the technology has really come along. I mean HVAC systems, the air conditioning and heating. There are different systems where you put a dollar in the gas line. You get 98 cents of heat out of it. Twenty years ago, it was 80 cents of heat you would get out of it.

So here’s a variety of different situations and a lot of this is in places that people don’t think about because we’re so used to it. If you work in a modern office, there are electrical sockets all over. There’s the proper amperage. There’s the availability of it. A lot of people are putting in sockets in that have USB connectors, occupancy sensors in houses.

You will notice that a lot in commercial places. You walk into a bathroom and it knows you’re there. Well, before it used to know that you’re there and then it also knows when you leave. In a lot of these cases, you have to turn it on and then it knows when you leave. The reason being is why turn it on if the room is already lit enough.

Interviewer: Oh, right, yeah.

Steve Landmark: So it wants you to go through the action. So all these technologies and codes can change and that I think you will find to be very interesting into the comfort of your home. You know, a lot of people don’t look at it in the benefits of the home. They will look at it as, “Oh my car, it’s key-less entry,” or the windows close automatically or it already – it knows the temperature or where I want the seat. You think about that with your car but you don’t necessarily look at your house as a piece of technology.

When you look at smart homes, better energy efficiency, better designs, better materials to make it easier, to enjoy your home, there’s a lot going on there. That’s how we can help people.

Interviewer: You were hitting on codes there for a moment and that’s one thing. We all feel that codes are kind of a necessary evil and sometimes a real pain in the behind. But explain to us how building codes are actually good for us, how they provide for a safer and more energy-efficient home.

Steve Landmark: Well, it is interesting. A lot of people think that the codes are there to get you and some of them might seem a little ridiculous. But if you kind of go to the reason as to why they’re developed, there’s probably something really, really good. The simple one that probably a lot of people have in their home are things like the spindle spacing on decks or on staircases.

Someone says, “Why do I have to have so many spindles? Why can’t I just have it open?”

Interviewer: Right. Well, the code is you can’t pass a four-inch sphere through it. Meaning your kid can’t stick his head through it and strangle himself. So until someone tells you that, you don’t think of it until you see it. A lot of times people go through and say, “Well, why do I have to have such a big door?” Well, they want you to be able to get into your bathroom easily or get into a bedroom or, “Hey, why do I have to have a window in my bedroom? I sleep there. I want it to be dark.”

Well, the idea is you still need light and ventilation. Some people get depressed without the right amount of light. But it’s also an emergency situation like an egress. So some – you could crawl out of a window say in the case of a fire.

So a lot of these code situations are there for safety issues and when people can play with codes, I think you will see that in the long run, the quality and the value of the neighborhood is upheld.

Interviewer: All right. That makes a lot of sense. Again, things that can be – what we would consider a pain in the behind or actually help us economically and functionality-wise, everything. So that’s good to know and here’s another thing I’ve been hearing a lot.

Functional obsolescence. I have no idea exactly what that means. Can you go over that for us?

Steve Landmark: It sounds like something that should be on a game show.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Landmark: Like you win a pizza or something for knowing.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: People may not know what the word is but they definitely know what it is. Like if you go into an old house and you go into the closet and it’s two feet by two feet, you’re like, “OK. So where do I put my shoes and my suit, my coat, my shirt, my winter coat and this and this and that?”

Interviewer: I will take functional obsolescence for a hundred, Alex.

Steve Landmark: Exactly. So the idea that comes out of that is a properly-designed newer home. It’s going to be for today’s lifestyle. Like in a lot of older homes, there are formal dining rooms. You don’t see theater rooms. You don’t see game rooms. You don’t see family rooms all the time. It’s a formal dining. That’s the way people live. The dining rooms kind of go in the way of the dinosaur and even though I think it’s still a good thing to do.

But a lot of people end up with gaming rooms. Their life is different. The technology has changed their life. How many cars are in a home? You go into the homes in the ‘50s, it was cool. They have a one-car garage. We’re building where people have 10-car garages.

So there are different lifestyles. There are different things that come out of it. Some people entertain. They want big dining areas or they want kitchens with big islands or they want to take advantage of a view.

So the basic idea behind the functional obsolescence is that as time passes, our lifestyles change. So sometimes these are actual floor plan issues. Sometimes it’s things like one electric socket in a bedroom. How does that happen in today’s world with all the electronic and gizmos that are in people’s houses?

So it’s proper energy efficiency, so it’s comfortable, availability of energy. You know, the right amount of electric sockets, computer circuits, if you need hard-wired computer circuits. Then also just livability factors and safety factors like the egress window or a wall in the house for your 100-inch TV. I remember growing up with an 18-inch black and white TV or 19-inch. It was pretty cool. It’s like wow! Check that out!

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Landmark: I was in a store and they have 100-plus-inch TVs. It’s like you need a wall to put that on. That’s going to change the design of your house if you’re someone that wants that type of a home theater.

Interviewer: All right.

Steve Landmark: So it’s pretty interesting. We had one situation where the husband liked to watch the game. The wife liked to cook. So her girlfriends would come over. They would cook. Then the guys would get together, watch a game or racing or whatever they’re watching. We actually designed a wall that they could slide between the two rooms. So that when it’s time to socialize, they can do it. But then when it’s time for the game to come on or whatever, their voices or noises weren’t canceling each other out.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: So yeah. So in a situation like that, it helped their marriage. They were able to have fun, have their friends over but not get in each other’s hair. So sometimes design elements like that are very important. Oh, and bathrooms. Bathrooms now, they’re not just a toilet, a sink and a shower. I mean some of these have showers, sinks, hot tubs, private little toilet rooms, his and her, walk-in closets.

Interviewer: Entertainment sections.

Steve Landmark: Right.

Interviewer: TV and – yeah. It’s amazing.

Steve Landmark: Even if you go into the big mansions of the turn of the century, they still had closets for like three shirts. It’s kind of weird. You have this big mansion and you have four shirts or something. It doesn’t make sense. So today’s life is different. That’s basically what we do to get rid of functional obsolescence is design the right panelized home and home package, so that you get a house that makes sense.

Interviewer: Right. Do you adhere to the old adage that renovating a house is harder than building a new one? I mean that seems like a concept that not many people could get their heads around.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. A lot of people get into renovating. They’re like, “Well, I could just do it over time or I could do this or my brother will help with this.” The problem with renovating is it’s probably an older home and overtime things happen. Foundations settle. People add on. They fix things. They do whatever it is to get through the situation. But it’s not always done right.

So when you get into a situation and you’re tearing a wall apart, you’re not exactly sure what you’re getting into. That’s the problem with budgeting and your time commitment. Sometimes these – you know, renovating a house, you’ve got to adjust your budget and do it to deal with the unknowns.

In some cases, you still end up with a functional obsolescence we just spoke about. So with a new home, you could plan it out and execute the construction of the home where with a renovation, there’s just a lot of unknowns. You could tear a wall apart and find out it’s all rotted from a leak that was going on for 10 or 15 years.

Interviewer: Sure.

Steve Landmark: But the previous owner just did a great job putting siding over it on the outside, but never fixed the actual results of the problem. The problem being the water leak. The result, a structural wall that isn’t solid anymore.

So we’re seeing a lot of flippers are getting out of flipping and it’s a new home building because they can control it.

Interviewer: Yeah, that seems like a lot of iffy propositions when you think about it. There’s a couple of things that I wanted to go over that Landmark sort of prides itself on and talks about on the website that you guys are pretty much known for.

One is controlling the quality of your home. Why don’t you give us the lowdown on what Landmark means exactly when they say that you as the builder can control the quality of your home?

Steve Landmark: Well, the basic idea of that is you go through and develop the design. So there’s the quality as far as the quality. You know, three bedrooms, two-bath, three-car garage, whatever it would be. But then there’s the quality of – you know, longevity of the home, the type of materials that you’re putting in.

So some people, if they’re building a baseline home, something simple, they still want it to be built right. But you don’t necessarily have to have the $500 faucet. You can have the good, solid everyday $40 faucet.

But depending on your attitude, you might want to dress it up a little more. You might want to keep it basic.

Interviewer: Sure.

Steve Landmark: We always tell people build the best quality that you can because in the long run, it will pay off. It’s better to pay a little now and get it done right than it is to pay a lot over time.

That’s the point that I can come into. So people couldn’t put in the features that they want. Say if there’s a fireplace. They could fit the fireplace in that they want.

If they want brick on the side or stone or a certain roof or ceiling height, they could put them in. Now, we’ve worked for people in all budget ranges, going from the tens of thousands for a house and the multimillions to build a house. Everyone has the same problem. It’s just how many zeros are behind their budget. So the difference can go through. So some things you can change. You can always change your carpet. It’s not as easy to add a basement. So sometimes when someone is there saying, “Hey, Steve. Should I put a basement in or get a nicer carpet?” I’m like, “Well, if you want a basement, I would put the basement in because you can change your carpet.

So there are things that we can do and we always suggest that people have a set of plans with the proper information so that they can budget their house properly and know what’s going into it. You can say, “Hey, I’m having a basement. I’m putting tile on the bathrooms and the kitchens and I’m putting hardwood in the living areas and I’m putting this type of window here,” and you can add it up and come up with a budget and that I think you will find to be extremely important, so that you can grasp the project and understand what you’re doing, but also make sure that your wallet matches up with what you intend to build.

Interviewer: Sure. One thing when I’m talking to you that always strikes me is right now we’re talking about new building technologies, et cetera. But I think one thing that Landmark does really well is you guys take that new technology and that knowledge and you still add it to that old sort of Ben Franklin common sense kind of thing and you combine those things. I think that’s what people really appreciate about your company.

Steve Landmark: Well, what we’re trying to do is make it understandable because there are a lot of cool things that can go into your house. But do they make sense?

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Just because you can get a car that goes 250 miles an hour, does that mean that you should have it, that you should do it?

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: By the way, do the people with 250-mile-an-hour cars really drive them 250 miles an hour?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Landmark: So it’s kind of one of these things that we’ve gotten feedback from customers, seeing what makes sense. We’ve got a very strong basis. Now, we’re not going to go through and tell a customer and say, “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Customer, you must do this.” We’re going to present the options to them through conversation and then they could prioritize what’s there.

If they want to build a 1000-square-foot house and a 5000-square-foot garage, that’s great. If they want to put an airplane hangar on it, that’s great too. If they want a pool inside, that’s great too. If they want to say, “Hey, I want to build a 4000-square-foot house, my whole family is going to move in there and we’re not going to have a garage,” if that’s what they want, we can work with them.

So that’s the idea is to be a support system and a resource to give people the information so that they can make a decision on what’s best for them and their house. Everyone lives differently.

Steve, over the course of time, people will live differently in different parts of their life. When they’re a student, when they’re newly married, when their kids have left, when they’re retiring, when they’re remarried, whatever the situation is.

People live in different ways and those needs are different. People’s hobbies change. People live different ways. Some people care about their garage. Some people don’t care.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Some people are really into cooking, so they want a nicer kitchen. Other people don’t know what a kitchen is. They always –

Interviewer: That’s me.

Steve Landmark: They always get a carry-out. Yeah. So there are different priorities and I think that’s the important part of it is build a house that makes sense for you.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: Now you still want to look about resale if you want to do it. So you don’t want to do things that are really crazy. But there are things where I think if you’re going to spend the time building your house, one of the main reasons is not just the pride that you did it but it’s also you know what you’re getting and you understand it and it works out well for you. That I think is the key issue.

You know, building a house is cool. But pulling up to it every day after a hard day’s work and going, “I’m proud of this,” that’s what it’s about.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: That’s how we can help.

Interviewer: Let’s go to another thing that Landmark – on the website you talk about. Building the floor plan that you want. It seems pretty basic but run it down for us. What exactly does Landmark mean when you guys say that we will help you build the floor plan that you want?

Steve Landmark: Well, that gets into the design element. It’s not just floor plan. It’s the overall design. But fundamentally, the floor plan, because people will live different ways. We’re currently working with a family that’s going to be a blending of the parents. There are three generations – the grandparents, the parents and the kids.

So there are reasons why it helps and makes sense for them to live together.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: The parents, I call the middle generation, have to go to work and the grandparents enjoy the kids. So they go to work. There’s kind of a built-in babysitter. It’s good for the grandparents to have active people, have the family around.

So we were able to work with them and take their ideas and get them on paper, so that there’s a floor plan that makes sense. So in the center, there’s the common living areas, two living rooms. You know, so the families can be there.

But then there’s also the joint places where they could work together and spend time together. But hey, if they need a little privacy, they have their own little TV areas and reading areas and then two separate master suites.

So for that family, it makes sense. Now that floor plan for a single guy may not make sense. So the single guy or some of the things – say they might be married in a few years. They might look at it a different way. An empty nester may design a complete different home.

Steve, the world is changing. So some of these changes, it’s kind of interesting of how people in their 20s and 30s seem to want a floor plan that may be somewhat of an empty nester. Say someone retiring in their 60s or 70s. They may want two or three bedrooms and a home office “convertible” room. Home office but if a friend comes over, there’s an extra bedroom.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: The younger people might want a gaming room or an entertainment room. Well, that room could also be called a library for someone else that’s retiring or they have a hobby room. So in some of these cases, the different lifestyles blend and that’s what we talk about by the floor plan that you want. Let’s get you the house that makes sense because a lot of people may not realize it. But the environment that you live in makes your life easier. If you enjoy it, if you enjoy reading or watching TV or cooking or working on your car, if you have that right space, it enhances your life. So that’s what it’s about, making sure that it’s right.

Steve, the simply analogy, you don’t just go in a store and say, “Give me a shoe.” You say, “Hey, I’m into hiking. I need this type of shoe. I want this material, this type of tread.” You buy that shoes. That allows you to enjoy hiking.

If you went into a shoe store and they gave you a high heel and you went hiking, you’re probably not going to enjoy your hike. So the same thing happens with the proper design of a home and it’s the floor plan as we discussed but it’s also put a window where the view is. Have the exterior look that you like. Do you like sitting outside? Do you live in a climate where you’re going to need a porch? Do you want a porch on the front, the back, both, all around? Whatever it may be. So it’s the design elements where we will spend that extra time to make sure that the house is the way you want it to be.

Interviewer: So why don’t you run down for us how we find you guys over at Landmark Home and Land Company?

Steve Landmark: Well, the quickest way that someone can look at 24 hours a day is right on the internet. They’re at our website. It’s www.LHLC.com, kind of the initials of Landmark Home and Land Company, but it’s www.LHLC.com and you can also send us an email. You can email Mike. You can help customers in the preliminary stages. It’s  [email protected] or if you would like to email me directly, it’s [email protected] and then there’s also the telephone. So we will communicate with people at their convenience in a method that makes sense at 800-830-9788. Yes, we talk to people. If for some reason, we can’t take the call right when you call, you can leave a message and we will get back with you right away and take care of you and spend the time to make sure that you’re properly taken care of. It’s the service that matters.

Interviewer: Well, fantastic. This has been a really great episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show and well, for President and Founder of Landmark, Steve Tuma and myself, I want to thank you for joining us and Steve, thanks for a very informative episode. I really appreciate it.

Steve Landmark: Well, I think we got more to come.

Interviewer: Oh, great.

Steve Landmark: People should check back and listen to the – what do we have? We have a few podcasts out there people can listen on, listen to the different topics and gather some knowledge.

Interviewer: And we’re creating more all the time. So keep an ear out for more of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. Until next time, see you later everyone.

Steve Landmark: Have a great day.

Learn how owner-builders bridge the gap between preliminary napkin sketches and permit-ready blueprints while avoiding the structural traps of consumer floor plan software. We examine how amateur drafting programs frequently overlook interior and exterior wall thicknesses, required plumbing clearances, and structural point loads, resulting in unbuildable layouts and contractor bidding errors. Discover the science of passive solar and organic architectural design—exploring how calculating seasonal solar angles, sizing roof overhangs, and utilizing concrete thermal mass slabs lower heating and cooling bills naturally. Finally, learn how combining crawlspace insulation, mechanical energy compliance calculations, and a pre-engineered panelized home package with dedicated custom architectural drafting services ensures your project sails through municipal plan reviews.

A: Consumer-grade drafting software allows users to draw generic interior lines without accounting for actual structural wall thicknesses (4.5 inches for interior partitions and 6.5 inches for exterior 2×6 assemblies). Dividing a 40-foot footprint into four 10-foot rooms fails in the field because structural stud cavities, drywall layers, hallway widths, and mandatory toilet clearances steal cumulative square footage, requiring a professional redesign to make the floor plan code-compliant.

A: Passive solar design positions the primary living spaces and major window glazing toward the solar south. In winter, when the sun sits low on the horizon, sunlight penetrates deep into the home to naturally warm interior spaces. In summer, when the sun is high overhead, properly engineered roof overhangs shade the windows completely, blocking radiant heat and keeping cooling loads to a minimum.

A: Thermal mass materials—such as concrete slab foundations, tile floors, or masonry hearths—absorb and store heat energy during peak daylight hours when struck by direct sunlight. As ambient indoor temperatures drop in the evening, the dense mass slowly radiates stored warmth back into the living space, stabilizing indoor temperatures and reducing nighttime furnace cycling.

A: Unconditioned, vented crawlspaces allow cold air to circulate directly beneath the living area, creating substantial heat loss through subflooring and exposed ductwork. Modern energy codes evaluate the thermal performance of the entire building envelope, meaning that adding continuous rigid foam insulation along crawlspace stem walls or under raised floor joists is often the decisive factor in meeting prescriptive energy standards.

A: Modern building codes prohibit engineers from simply reviewing a generic layout and applying a stamp. Licensed structural engineers must produce rigorous mathematical calculations documenting load-path continuity—verifying that roof truss live loads, shear forces from high winds or seismic activity, and soil bearing pressures are safely transferred to the foundation through specific hardware, anchor bolts, and hold-down brackets.

Interviewer: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me as always 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 and that’s Steve Tuma. How are you doing Steve?

Steve Landmark: Excellent. It’s a great day today and hello out there panelized home building world.

Interviewer: What do you say we talk about panelized home building? I think that’s a good place to start.

Steve Landmark: I think I know a few things about it.

Interviewer: I think you do. One of the things we’re being asked about by customers and potential customers writing in is about the building-planning phases, the different phases after you’ve – you decide to build a house and you want to start designing and understanding that whole process. A lot of people I imagine just figure you can grab a piece of paper or a napkin at a restaurant and design a home by drawing it on a piece of paper and I would imagine it’s a little more complex than that.

Steve Landmark: Well, the initial concept can start there because someone might have an idea of hey, I want to build a 2000-square-foot ranch with a three-car garage or gaming room, a home theater, a master suite. You know, big Eden kitchen or a kitchen with a peninsula or an island or something like that.

So yeah, they could draw it up. But sometimes where that falls short is that people don’t always realize that there are details that go into the plans. So sometimes they will go through and say, “Well, I drew this house and it’s 40 feet by 30 feet.”

But Steve, when Landmark drew the plans up for my new panelized home, the rooms weren’t the same size or the house had to get a little bigger, whatever it may be. The reason being, there are certain dimensions for wall thicknesses. There are certain things that have certain codes.

So for example, people will draw a house. Say there was a 40-foot wide house and they wanted four rooms, they will draw it up as being four 10-foot rooms. Hey, that makes sense. It’s 40-feet wide. But the issue is they forgot the thickness of the interior and exterior walls. So you can lose a couple of feet in there and that’s one of the reasons – just to make sure that the plans are accurate, but there’s also code issues. Hallways have to be a certain thickness, a certain amount of space around toilets, a certain amount of space to work in kitchens.

Windows have to have certain elements for egress and light and ventilation codes. Ceilings have to be a certain minimum height. Doorways have to be a certain height. So even though you could draw it up with your pencil on a napkin and it all fits, once you consider all those details, the plan can change a little bit and a lot of – now it seems like you can go anywhere and buy some draw-your-house software. You can even go online and do it and people say, “Well, I drew my plans up.”

It’s like yeah, but that software doesn’t make sure it’s structurally sound. It doesn’t make sure the codes are adhered to. It doesn’t make sure that the plan makes sense.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Landmark: It’s basically taking your idea, so you could get the concept on a paper so then we can help you with our complete planning phase. I think that a lot of – this is one of those things of you don’t know what you don’t know. So it’s interesting as people start if they’re – you know, just sketch something on a piece of paper and then they see the final set of plans. It just happened to me today.

A customer said, “Steve, wow. There’s a lot of detail. I didn’t even know this. I didn’t even think of it. All of my friends that said they knew everything didn’t tell me about it either.”

So that’s part of the reason. But the – it’s not just to make sure it’s planned out right. When you go to a contractor and say, “Hey, can you give me a drywall quote or a heating quote?” when they see a real set of plans with real dimensions, they can do a better job to provide you a quote.

If someone has just a sketch on a napkin, it’s kind of like the idea of garbage in, garbage out. So the better information you have, the more serious they’re going to take you. You’re going to need a real set of plans for a bank to finance if you’re using financing. It will just help you budget your project, schedule it better and just have a better building experience.

So even though people say, “Hey, plans are in. I could buy them for 50 bucks. I can go online and get a copy,” you’re not just looking for a piece of paper. You’re looking for the proper information to build the home properly. It pays off. It’s kind of – you spend a dollar here. You will save a lot more down the road.

Interviewer: Yeah, I think that’s interesting you’re talking about these online home designing programs that you can buy and the software. It’s like watching a Major League ball player and they make it look so easy. Oh, I could catch that fly ball to center field, right?

Steve Landmark: Right.

Interviewer: Get out there and try it.

Steve Landmark: Right. Hey, this guy just walked up with a stick and hit this ball and it went out of a park and the crowd went wild. It took him five seconds. Why can’t I do it in ten? It’s similar. There’s a technique.

Interviewer: Yeah, the internet does allow us to deceive ourselves a lot.

Steve Landmark: One of my friends came up with a funny word, Steven. He said a lot of people have internet PhDs. You can learn a lot but you got to understand you have to get accurate and valuable information, not just whatever seems to be floating out there for someone else’s priorities.

Interviewer: Right. Yeah. One thing I wanted to talk about today, I asked you about, is energy efficiency. I’ve heard you talk about that in the past. Help me and help our listeners understand energy efficiency and just what’s involved there.

Steve Landmark: Well, that’s another one of these situations where people don’t understand. They will be like, “Well, my dad built a house 20 years ago and he just stuck R-14 insulation on the wall,” or R-19, whatever it may be, and you do this and you buy a good window and you do that. You got it put together.

But if you look at the homes of years past, the materials are different. Windows aren’t as good. You know, on air and filtration, on our ratings, on new ratings and just a whole variety of ratings and then the understanding of knowledge, of heat loss and heat gain. The efficiency of hot water heaters, furnaces, air conditioning systems. It’s all those details that are important.

So what a lot of people sometimes do is like I mentioned, they know what they know. So they revert back to what someone told them or what they think they heard or maybe what they saw on a show. But they don’t understand that there’s actually a little bit of a science to determining how to properly insulate a home.

Some people will say, “Hey, I should put all the insulation in the roof,” and in general, that’s fine if you’re in a place where you heat more. But there are actual times where the difference of passing and failing an energy calculation is insulation around your foundation. Not a lot of people think about that. They’re like, “Hey, when was the last time I went in my crawlspace and laid down there to make sure that it was just comfortable?”

People don’t realize that hey, it still either adds heat or depletes your heat. So that’s one of the things that a lot of people say when they will call up. They will say, “Hey, Steve. I will just put R-21. I will do this. I will do that.” I’m like, “Wait a second. Let’s back up.” The proper installation of the insulation but also understanding that insulation, making sure that it’s installed properly, making sure that your energy efficiency of the furnace is right, of the hot water heater. Should you go with an instant hot water heater? Details like that and then just different measures to make sure that it’s installed properly.

So there’s a lot more knowledge that is out there. It just doesn’t hit the street and everyday persons out there building. So again, it’s one of these things of the common fallacy compared to the reality of how it’s done. Everyone has got a job. Everyone has got a business. Everyone has got something that they do in life and what they might hear on the street or through their friends is probably a lot different than the reality in their life, when they’re being a professional at their job.

So just like the baseball player we’re talking about, you don’t just walk up to a plate, swing a piece of wood, hit this ball and it goes out of the park. There’s a lot of work and technique in doing it right. It’s the exact same thing with the energy efficiency. A lot of people don’t realize just the orientation of the house to the sun can affect the energy efficiency of your home. The color of your roof, the size of your overhangs.

Interviewer: Yeah. These are things that people – I mean, you know, the average person isn’t going to – they’re just thinking about here’s the way I want it to look and I want to open the door and walk in tomorrow and there’s so much involved.

Your company Landmark Home and Land Company, the processes that you’re able to help customers go through is – it goes above and beyond. I mean like I understand from the website that you guys are able to assist customers, new home builders with – in dealing with building departments and in obtaining building permits and I think that’s pretty intense stuff.

Steve Landmark: Well, it’s actually a pretty interesting part because sometimes building departments aren’t the best at communicating nor do they really stick their neck out to help. Some are very good. Some are a little more limited.

So for example, you can call some building departments and they will say, “Hey, what do you need for plans?” or I will ask, “What do you need for plans?” They will say, “Oh, just get us regular plans.” Well, I don’t know what regular plans are. It’s kind of a wide open thing. That’s kind of like calling the grocery store and saying, “What do you have?” and they say, “We have food.”

You know, well, I kind of understand that. So the idea is, is we’re able to talk their language. So when they say something like that, if they don’t have a published list or they don’t – we could talk to them and say, “OK, you need plans. So do you need a foundation design? Do you need elevations? Do you need a roof plan? Do you need structural engineering? Do you need energy calculations? Do you need site plans?” and suddenly it’s interesting of how they open up or they transfer you to the person with the proper knowledge.

That’s a key thing to it because again, understanding the process, we’re able to help the customer by asking the right questions, getting things positioned. So that they get the details on the set of plans for a quicker and easier permit application and permit issuance.

So a lot of building departments are like that. They’re limited. But then there are others that are extremely sophisticated but even the extremely sophisticated ones sometimes have follow-up questions that are just beyond the typical person’s knowledge base.

So it’s not a problem for the customers. We call up. We talk to them. We work it through and then we get the details and get it put together, so it’s easy. What we have is a – like a one-stop shop. So someone call up and say, “Hey, I want to build this 2000-square-foot home outside of Denver in the mountains,” and we can help them through the process. They don’t have to understand energy efficiency. They don’t have to understand rebar. They don’t have to understand the different roof systems.

They might say, “Hey, I want a metal roof,” or “Hey, I want a crawl space,” or a basement or whatever it is. But they don’t have to know the technicalities of that. I think that’s how we kind of arm them with the proper information, so they can go get the right bids, working with contractors properly and Steve most importantly is they have a resource to call.

Interviewer: Well, I think that’s the best way to describe your website is that it is a one-stop shop. There’s so much information on there and videos and text and articles and it’s just – it’s a good place to start for sure.

Speaking of understanding, you had talked about structural design a little earlier. Can you kind of go in into that process as well? Tell us a little bit about understanding basic structural design.

Steve Landmark: Yeah. Well, the situation where people get caught up in that is a lot of people think structural design is someone just taking a plan like the plans that you sketched or drew yourself. Then you go to structural engineering and you give them a couple of hundred bucks and he stamps your plans and you go on and get a permit.

Well, maybe 10, 20 years ago in certain states they would do that. But now the code is pretty defined as to what needs to be engineered and the calculations and details required. So one of the misconceptions, which is out there, is that you just find one of these engineers. Well, the reality is, is an engineer has a code of ethics as far as what they need to do to properly design it and a certain standard of care, which is typical for the area.

So there’s a lot of people that think, “Oh, I will just go down to the coffee shop, meet my local structural engineer, get a set of plans stamped for a couple of hundred bucks and go get a permit.” Well, structural engineering has changed considerably.

So in the States, pretty much the whole East Coast now, because of the hurricane situation around the gulf and in Texas, you need hurricane engineering if you’re by the coast. If you’re in a little area it’s not as big of a deal, but there’s a lot of places with expansive soils. That can happen anywhere. But a lot of times, it’s Arizona, New Mexico, California, Texas, Colorado and a lot of other places. There could be some very expansive soils that can heave foundations. So you need proper foundation design.

Of course in the mountains, there are snow loads and high winds. People don’t always think of that. They see pictures of a lot of snow in a house. So we’ve got to do the structural engineering so that a house can support a certain weight and this can be anywhere north. This could be in Washington State. This can be in Northern Minnesota, the Rockies, the Sierras, anywhere in the Midwest. There are snow loads. The East Coast, the Northeast. There are snow load situations and then of course there are earthquakes. You know, commonly California of course comes to mind. You got to design your house. So the house doesn’t fall apart when it gets shaken.

There are fault lines along the Midwest and the East. They’re just not as active and building departments don’t think of it as much even though it’s part of the code. It should be there in certain places. You should do it. But I think the point that needs to come across is structural engineering is an actual discipline where they go through and determine what needs to be done in your house.

So let’s just take a home in Colorado. You got winds around mountains and you’ve got big snow loads and potential expansive soil. You have to make sure that the house will support the snow that falls and stays on it. You have to make sure it will be able to resist the winds that race around the mountains and you also have to make sure that the foundation doesn’t get lifted up in an expansive soil situation. So it’s not just stamping the plan. It’s the actual design of that roof system, the beams and posts and walls that support it and also the cement foundation that supports it as well.

There’s a lot of work that goes into the calculations of this, defining the materials and most importantly – actually it’s all important – are the connections. So for example, a board won’t just snap but the connection of two boards can break.

So there are these metal connectors that need to be specified. So it’s a lot of work. It’s beyond the idea that oh, I just go get an engineer, have him stamped a piece of paper and I run down and get my permit in five minutes. There’s a lot of work that needs to go into it.

Interviewer: I know you guys get a lot of inquiries and questions regarding interesting and unique building sites. You know, like somebody who wants to build on the side of a mountain or they want to build in the sand at the beach or they want to – they’re building on some kind of big slope and what – how helpful are you guys with just looking at an interesting building site and telling the customer the best way to go about building on that properly?

Steve Landmark: Oh, we enjoy that process because it’s unique. It’s different and there’s a lot of stuff to look at. Let me jump back to the structural engineering because this cuts into it as well. We’ve all seen the news of what happened in Mexico Beach in Florida.

Interviewer: Oh, right, yeah.

Steve Landmark: A bunch of houses that weren’t engineered and it looks like someone just took a big broom and just swept the neighborhood out. You can see the pictures online. So part of that is in the proper design. So if we take that idea, you’re on a beach. You want to view the sunset or the ocean, whatever it may be. Well, there are certain conditions they have there. So you can walk out there and say, “Hey, I’m at sandy soil. This isn’t a big deal. There’s a hurricane.”

Well, there’s also a storm surge that you can’t see. OK? So when – like in that case, the winds will push the water up and it could raise the water to where the whole area floods. So there are some things for code situations where it just makes sense because you have to raise the house on a stilt to be above that storm surge.

But let’s just say you were in a mountain, so a mountain sloped. Well, how do you put a house on the side of a mountain? And a lot of people say, “Well, it’s not a big deal. I will just step my foundation down and I will have a tall crawlspace or a basement,” and then the question is, “OK. How are you going to drive up to it?”

Now it goes beyond just the house. You got to have the driveway and then the fire department is going to say, “Hey, we have codes. We got to make sure that our truck can get in there or our guys can get in there in the case of some form of an emergency,” or hey, we don’t want you to block your neighbor’s house, you know, their view of the beautiful vista that you may have.

So there’s a lot of different situations that we can help, some which are plainly obvious. Hey, you’re on the side of the hill. We got to build a foundation at the side of the hill. Others that are very obvious but no one thinks about. Like hey, I’m stepping on this soil on my beautiful lot.

No one thinks about, “Hey, what’s below the ground that’s going to hold my house up?” So geotechnical reports can be very important and that’s where we can guide people because Steve, there’s a lot of misinformation out there. I think it’s important that people have a base where they can call and say, “Hey, what do I do here? I got this great piece of land. How do I do this? How do I know I could get water here? How do I know my foundational fit? How do I know this is even in my budget? How do I know that this design is right?” You know, are there certain things? Because sometimes people have an idea of a design and they don’t realize that it just doesn’t fit very well on the side.

It will do an OK job but certain things can be adjusted to make it fit. So there’s a lot of considerations, some obvious and some not so obvious. I think that that’s a lot of places where people get stuck. They don’t understand that there might be a further little situation to sort out. That’s where we can help them. We’re a phone call, a text or an email away.

That’s what we do when we design our panelized homes. You know, and help people through the process of site planning and designing their house, so that they understand it.

Obtaining a permit is very important. But knowing what you’re building and understanding it and making sure that it makes sense and fits within your budget is equally or more important.

You don’t want to have a permit and find out you can’t afford the house.

Interviewer: Exactly. If you’ve got time for another one, I’ve got something I wanted to bring up here and that’s organic design. You know, things like having the sun actually work for you, having the house pointed in the right direction so that you can catch a breeze or you can catch the sun at the times of the day that you want and roof overhangs, the importance of those.

Something we talked about on a previous episode, thermal masses. Can you talk to us a little bit about understanding organic design?

Steve Landmark: Yeah, organic design is – it’s a very, very interesting concept that was kind of developed and pioneered by Frank Lloyd Wright and the idea being that the answers to your design are in nature. So if you simplify a process so that it’s easy to understand – all of us know that if you stand by a window on a sunny day, that sun is going to come through the glass and it’s going to feel hot in there.

In fact it will be hotter on the inside part of the glass than it is outside at times. So the idea being is if you orient the house properly, you could take advantage of the sun in winter and then with the proper overhangs, you can keep the sun out of your house in summer.

You can do certain things to take advantage of breezes with the proper use of windows and skylights and the proper positioning of them and the proper size. Thermal masses are kind of a – generally masonry or concrete type of components of the house. Like the cement slab of a house. If you have the sun coming through glass, hitting a cement slab, the heat is intensified. So that the cement will hold the heat that it gathers.

So it will gather the heat during the day and then it will release it at night. So there’s a lot of elements there and to the design, the overhangs, looking at prevailing winds, looking at ground conditions to make sure that the design of the home is proper.

So some customers choose to get very deep into it. Others just say, “Hey, I like this design.” You know, kind of put a couple of things in there to take advantage of the basics.

So basically it’s kind of letting nature take care of your house through the proper design. You can get extremely deep into it and rooms that are just comfortable, different effects at different room sizes and ceiling heights can take and choosing different materials.

So it’s blending the house with nature and taking advantage of nature to get the benefits of the breeze and design and a comfortable house. Basically the concept is a properly designed house is going to be more enjoyable and affordable to own over time than one that isn’t designed right.

Steve, a lot of people don’t realize it but a 1500-square-foot well-designed home is more livable than a 2000-square-foot design that isn’t as good. In America, people think bigger is better and maybe that’s true in some cases. But in a lot of cases, it’s wasteful. So that’s kind of the brief overview.

If someone is interested, they should get in touch with us and we can help them at the beginning stages of the design to really, really work through the features of the home to get something that’s very unique.

Interviewer: Well, speaking of that, please run through for us. How does someone get a hold of you at Landmark Home and Land Company?

Steve Landmark: Well, we’re always available to talk or email or text, whatever is convenient. The best thing to do would be check our website out. There’s a lot of information as you mentioned. It’s www.LHLC.com. Kind of the initials of Landmark Home Land Company. The website is up all the time. There’s a lot of information, good videos, these podcasts. Just written information and pictures. They can also call us at 800-830-9788 or they can email in. Just email [email protected] and Mike will be able to help you through. If you want to email me directly, it’s [email protected]. We will do whatever it takes to discuss properly the project that’s there. We’re just not in the business of saying, “Hey, here’s the price of a home.” We’re in the business of saying, “Hey, this is how we can help you get the end result that you need.” How to get from A to Z instead of just saying, “Hey, here’s A. You figure the rest out.” We’re here to help you through the process through the – complete home building process.

Interviewer: Fantastic. Well everyone, that’s about it for this episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. Once again, I want to thank the President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, Steve Tuma, for sitting down with us and going over some of these important details. It has been a great show, Steve. Once again, thanks!

Steve Landmark: Yeah. Well, thank you. I hope everyone enjoyed it and I hope they contact us. Maybe we can help them out.

Interviewer: Awesome. All right everyone. Thanks for joining us and we will see you next time.

Steve Landmark: Thank you.