County Requests Revisions
Wed, Sep 12, 2018The county got back to us on our build permit application today, and has requested 11 corrections. Let’s go through them!
It appears not all the truss sheets may have been submitted for this project, and they do not appear to have the proper snow loads. Please provide the complete set of truss sheets for this project, reflecting a roof snow load of 174 for a heated roof, and 190 for an unheated roof.
This is just a labeling issue. The truss manufacturer put the wrong snow load number on a cover sheet. All the calculations were done correctly.
Please provide a geotechnical report that is stamped by the licensed geologist who completed the report. Also, please have them confirm that there are no required setbacks from the slope? The report appears to say that the setback requirement from the county is waived, implying there are now no setback requirements from the slope at all for this property. A more detailed site plan notating the slopes and basalt in relation to the house may help to clarify.
This is going to be a tough one. The original geotech engineer is unreachable.
I haven’t shared with you yet, but I’ve been contacting geotechnical engineers for the last 6 weeks to try and find one that will help me design an extremely large retaining wall (30 feet tall, 100 feet long). Its for the cabin, and it’s a story for another day, but it’s worth mentioning because I’ve already got a geotechnical engineer lined up for that project, and can easily extend the contract to include this work.
Our geotechnical engineer said he could take on the additional work, and would prioritize getting us this report so that we can get back to the county ASAP. He is going to meet us for an on-site visit at the end of this month. We will have to rent an excavator to dig a few test pits. We may need to have a topographical map produced by a surveyor as well. This one task is going to have a lot of moving parts.
Please confirm that the architectural and structural drawings are representing the same intended design and layout. It is difficult to tell in some areas that the structure and window locations are aligned as the sets of plans are oriented different directions.
The architectural plans had north pointing to the left, and the structural plans had north pointed to the right. I re-oriented the architectural plans to have north pointed to the right so that they matched.
Please provide additional detail in some of the sections, such as, insulation values and types, overall building height, floor heights, and interior ceiling heights.
Most of the insulation information was already present, but I called it out better in the plans. As for some of the floor heights, we did not actually know these when we submitted the first time. I’ve since does some more surveying and can more accurately determine all our floor heights. Plans updated!
Please provide stamped engineering calculations and drawings for the masonry fireplaces. We need calculations accounting for their weight within the structure down to the foundation. They are not drawn in the current structural drawings, so we need to please see details and drawings accounting for the chimneys design and construction, as well as the chimney within the structure.
Most of this feedback was pertaining to the interior fireplaces, which the county had thought were masonry. That part was an easy clarification.
Our structural engineer needs to update some of the calculations for the outdoor fireplace. It’s a masonry (brick) fireplace, and it will be quite tall since the chimney must clear the roof line. We originally had this on the concrete deck, but after some discussion, decided to move it just off the deck. This way the deck does not need yet more reinforcement, and we don’t have to deal with penetrating the roof that is just overhead.
It appears that a roof snow load of 174 was used for some of the deck beam calculations. Please confirm that a minimum snow load of 190lbs was used for the structural calculations on the decks/unheated spaces. Please adjust structural member sizes accordingly.
This is a task our structural engineer will handle.
Please provide calculations for the concrete headers, they do not appear to be in the calculation packet.
This is a task our structural engineer will handle.
Please confirm the height of the retaining wall along the patio by the garage (sheet S2.1)? Per engineering calculations, there appears to be large loads along that wall from the roof and patio above, and we would like to make sure there are not supposed to be footing supports along this wall. Please confirm that some of the other point loads called out in the calculations do not need a footing as well.
This is a task our structural engineer will handle.
Please provide information as to how the roof will be ventilated per IRC R806.
IRC R806 specifies how much ventilation your roof needs based on the size of the roof. The roof will heat and cool depending on the inside vs outside temperatures. This heating and cooling can cause condensation. If the moisture does not have a way to adequately vent out, it will lead to mold.
Now that I understand the code, I just need to calculate the size of the roof, and ensure our vents are wide and long enough to account for the required ventilation.
One important note is these vents must at least be placed at the tall end of your roof. Since we have a rake roof, I am placing vents at the low end and tall end so that we can have air movement across the roof. Insulation must leave a gap of at least 1” between it and the roof to account for this air movement.
Please provide information for the whole house ventilation. Where will the whole house fan be located?
Honest answer: I don’t know. I never really got good clarification on what was being asked. We have fans in all the bathrooms and kitchen, and our HVAC system has duct work throughout the home, with returns in a number of places.
I talked to several HVAC contractors at a home-show and asked about this and still wasn’t getting much clarification.
I think the reason this caused so much confusion is we were already accounting for our whole home ventilation. It would be provided by the duct work for our HVAC system, and the HVAC system would supplement clean outside air into this system as needed. We may use a component called a heat-recovery system as well, which would help capture any heat in the air being exchanged.
The plans will now include a more detailed description of our HVAC system, and its duct work. This description seemed to satisfy the county.
Please make sure all safety glass is labeled in appropriate locations per IRC R308.
Have you ever noticed a few lines of text etched onto all your windows in one corner? I had never paid much attention to them, but they’re always there. That text is information as to the insulation value (called u-factor) of the glass, and its safety classification.
If any kind of glass, more generally called glazing, is near a hazardous zone, as defined by IRC R308, then that glass must be safety approved. In other words, if you have a glass window at the bottom of a stairwell, if someone were to fall down the stairs and into the window, you wouldn’t want large sharp pieces of broken glass to cascade down on them. You would want the glass to break into harmless beads, or even not break at all.
The definition for a hazardous zone is pretty wide. Any glass near a door, stairway, or bathroom must be safety approved. There are a number of exceptions too, so you just have to read through the code and figure out which windows (and doors if the door has glazing on it) are applicable. I already had a table of windows and doors (the glazing schedule) in the plans, so I just added another column to this table and marked if it would be safety glass.
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