Sunday, February 11, 2007

Dollars and Cements

I talked to Dan at Thotpro engineering Saturday for about 4 hours and had him look over my plans and make sure I'm up to spec on everything. He said everything looked good, and even liked my idea to "hang" the loft corner from the ridge beam.

Speaking of that, I was over-conservative on the ridge beam because I just looked it up on a table instead of calculating moment of inertia and other more impressive sounding big words, that come along with even more impressive big formulas. Turns out I can use two versalam LVL (laminated veneer lumber) beams that are light weight enough for 2-3 people to haul up ladders. Now I don't need to rig a come-along pulley gizmo or have them deliver it with a crane.

Dan's also going to engineer a foundation. We're not doing a crawlspace or basement foundation because of the cost. Cement walls are about $15 per square foot( vs about $3 for wood walls), and a slab costs more than an insulated wood floor.

Dan didn't charge for his time. I helped him with some video editing for trade.

1 comment:

Johnny Thunder said...

Working with LVL's is a good call, I worked (peon level) with them on a cabin in Utah.

You guys should post a proposed timeline of how you want to build, I know I'd be interested in seeing that.