When it’s necessary to design a building for a site that’s not level, the designer needs to know just how high each point is above the lowest part of the site. This information is obtained by the surveyor and delivered in the form of contours on a property boundary, and is called a contour map. • Read More »
A shop detail drawing is a graphic representation in some form of a part or the whole of a structure member like a beam or a column, that gives enough information to fabricate of the parts shown. Detail drawings should include, but aren’t limited to: Sufficient accurate illustrations of the member to be manufactured, giving • Read More »
A dimension is the measurement of one point to another. In the case of an architectural floor plan, it’s what guides a framer to build the building. So in fact, dimensions are one of the most important elements of a floor plan drawing. Without them there would be no way to determine the geometry of • Read More »
An advantage of solid wood structures that log cabin owners are pleased to acknowledge, is the energy performance of a properly constructed log cabin. The inherent ability of solid log walls to “store” heat helps to guarantee less fluctuation in your homes inside temperature, leading to lower energy bills and reduced consumption of fuel. Both • Read More »
There are quite a few details involved in designing a new house and it’s very easy to overlook certain aspects of what will make that house a home. I have been a home designer for over three decades now and have come up with a list of things that are often forgotten in the layout. • Read More »
There are very few things that are closer to our hearts than the houses we live in. And there are even fewer things that we take a greater interest in than the homes that we personally own. The actual size of the house doesn’t matter really. It’s our personal little castle. It is really hard • Read More »
It wasn’t until I started teaching it, that I realized how many were interested in the field of architectural drafting. But having an interest and actually being committed enough to complete the education are two distinctly different things all together. There has to be a certain amount of ambition that goes into learning such a • Read More »
Colonial architecture was and is the architecture of rectangles. On the floor plan, these rectangles intersected each other much the same as they would in a game of dominoes. In the elevations the parallelogram was used almost exclusively, with its looks enhanced by a great deal of horizontal lines. Arches, curves and oblique shapes were • Read More »
To design a small home that has artistic and economic features where the construction can be completed for a minimum amount of money is not one of the easiest problems of the architectural profession. We achieve the best solutions by the process of elimination, resulting in a compact plan possessing the essential requirements of the • Read More »
What are tankless water heaters? One of the latest technologies to surface in the water heater industry is the tankless water heaters which are very powerful source for water heating and will convert all the cold water that it intakes into hot water. These tankless water heaters are to be commonly used in areas where • Read More »