Wednesday, April 27, 2005

design on a dime

I love designing.
I like building, even to someone else's plans, but there is an extra joy in solving the design puzzle yourself.
I have been busy designing a room addition in my head.
Usually the day before I build a section I will ponder the problems that may come up. Some are spaciall considerations, where does a wall intersect the ceiling slope and how much head room will there be above the stairs? Some are structural; How much weight in snow will this support, and how to prevent overloading from ice.
Everything is a bit more challenging in the mountains. we deal with earthquakes, high winds and snow loads. I am an amatuer at design, yet not afraid to get out there.
One way to avoid errors in structural design is to over size your lumber - but that seems a waste. Strong is enough, mega strong ( to hold the maximum load in the worst situation) is really not needed, particularly when you are attaching to a house that was built decades ago to older standards.
( yikes - i even bore myself sometimes)

More later

4 comments:

Bar L. said...

You're far from boring

Jenny said...

i agree... far from boring

David Edward said...

i deleted some spm above
I adore my two fans above and count them both as excellent friends

carmilevy said...

I find this fascinating. When I was in journalism school, I was part of the team that interviewed applicants to the school. We tried to look beyond the coldly academic to select candidates who we felt would make great journos.

Well, one guy came in for an interview, and I was frankly unimpressed with his resume and transcript. But when we began to talk, he took us through the process he used to design and build his own house. Two hours later, we knew we had a winner.

(Hope you don't mind my digging through your archives. I love doing this on occasion with my favorite reads.)