Show Notes:

Structural engineering and its benefits for the intended use of the home and the building site.  What is done in the structural engineering processes? Can I put a grand piano in my bedroom?  Why do homes sink and sag and how to avoid this in your new home.  Standard plans and their relationship to structural engineering.  Engineering a home plan to the specific building site.  What are stamped plans?  Geo-technical reports and their importance.  The value of customer service in home design and engineering.

Transcript:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interviewer: Right.

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