20x34 Universal Cottage Tahlequah Ok.

[FarmerBill]

So I understand the basic idea between the FD cottages. The bents built 3ft oc to accept standard windows and doors. I like the laminated lumber bents because they fit together like a puzzle.  I think I could design the bents and put them together. The only issue will be in the details and knowing what is safe (sturdy). For example is it important to use 2 inch sheathing and flooring or can you use 1". 1x6's for example to sheath the home and floors. I can buy used T&G flooring all day long for $.50 a board foot. But it is typically 2 to 6 inches wide and 1/2 to 1 ' thick. I kinda like the idea of mixing and matching wood types. For example there is 450 bd ft of T&G maple 1x6 on craigslist for .50 a foot We could put maple in the living room and oak in the dining, pine in the bedrooms, and cedar in the closets, so on and so forth. But if I have to have the sheathing and decking 2" thick that could get expensive. So am I overthinking this or underestimating the complexity of the project? 

[Don_P]

I was doodling more earlier this evening;
Birds eye, partially assembled, the lower section is assembeled the left kneewall post is in, right is not, 1 ply of rafters, the rafter tie and collar tie are in. So one more kneewall post and a pair of rafters to go;


I checked the floor joists using the code tables for #2 syp 2x12's @ 19.2" spacing... using a pair every 36" as in the FD is a little less stress on them than one every 19.2" so that table should be fine.
Doing the same thing with the rafters #2 syp 2x8's passed. The rafter tie needs double the nails specced and the closest table is for 24" centers, use 10 nails at each end of the tie, 5 from each side rafter into the rafter tie.

This is with 5' kneewalls, 12/12 pitch and the rafter tie at 8', putting that tie in the lower third of roof height.


You will need to use 1-1/2" thick decking for the floor and roof, 3/4" is fine for the walls. I'd use 2x6's for the posts myself.

I understand the superior insulation seal they get by not having projecting rafter tails but if the walls rot there is far more energy lost in replacing the siding than the loss in a well sealed projecting tail.

I hear you hpinson, I blew several components and layers in that sketch, I'll try to remember to post a good one. I have the same problem, I don't use sketchup enough to stay sharp and I'm still using version 8, I think they're on V13 now. Sketchup for dummies is a help.

Must be my connection MD, no joy at my end, just tried again, I'll check it when I'm on hi speed.

Found a really cool old updraft cast iron intake manifold today... with the bush hog, gonna be welding tomorrow  .

[FarmerBill]

sheesh, Don_P you could not be more helpful. Thank you so much.
   So I could get away with 1" or 3/4" sheathing on the walls but I need to stick to 2" decking on the floors and roof correct? And I also am confused when you say I can use 36" on the floor joist, but only 24" on the rafter ties what do you mean? Will that mean the rafters will need to be spaced 24" apart and the floor joists 36" that wont work. Or does that mean the rafter tie need to be 24" long?
  My wife and I are seriously thinking about building this way. We have the 20x34 Universal plans. We are thinking about a hybrid 2 story universal/Victoria cottage. this is the floorplan we are thinking: http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=13150.msg171133#msg171133
  In your models you do not give me the span of the 2x12 floor joists. Are they 20' or do they need to be less without a post in the middle? What is the maximum width we can go up to 20 feet?   

[hpinson]

Hi Don_P. I was playing with your model last night and was wondering what alteration would be needed to remove the very center upright post.  The reason I ask is that my plans are also along this line - post and beam 20x34 - however there would be no second floor. Just a gable roof, perhaps pitched at a lessor angle - perhaps 4:12 or 6:12, or maybe a hip roof which is very characteristic of local historic homes here in New Mexico.

[FarmerBill]

Just got a photobucket account. Trying to upload an image. This is the floorplan we are thinking about using. By the way it is totally stolen from this forum. And we are wanting a different window and door arrangement. And we want to separate the right bedrooms with French doors and relocate the closets.   

[John Raabe]

That's a very nice layout. The large mudroom/bath works well and the main floor feels spacious. Is that a large pantry space that extends into the upper right of the bath? This layout looks to be done on Home Designer or 3DHA. I think it was done by another forum member right? Do you have a link?

It is interesting thinking of doing this in a FD type timber frame using standard cut lumber and decking. Makes for a nice wood rich interior. It also has all the drawbacks of timber frame IE: expensive to insulate and more trouble to do wiring and plumbing.

I think Don_P's cross section frames could also work on standard platform frame walls and floor with the 5' pony wall above.

[FarmerBill]

Yes the floorplan is totally stolen from these guys. ( http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=13150.msg171133#msg171133 ) But they are building a full two story. We are thinking about a 1 1/2 story now on a 20 x 34 footprint. My big concern is obviously structural integrity. It also seems to easy to build it the way FirstDay has it designed. I am a little concerned because most firstday cottages are 15 ft. wide and 3ft o/c for each "structural piece. Every floor joist span I can find online limits us to 24 o/c and 17 ft span on all types of wood. Do we need to a large beam down the length of the house? We could easily do this using a osage orange  post at the stair well like I mentioned in the my first post. and making the mudroom walls load bearing. Does that sound about right?
  Also does anyone have any comments on the idea of French doors separating the two bedrooms? I have two daughter's the oldest wants her own room but we figure they can open the French doors to increase ventilation. We also want to put  French doors on the closet for the same reason in the master. We plan on putting 3x3 windows on all the walls so with the windows open and the French doors open, the south breeze will blow straight through the bedrooms.

   

[John Raabe]

As you know, the Universal Cottage plan is designed for standard platform framing not timber frame. There will be a lot of changes and complications.

If you want a timber frame floor for the upper level you will likely want a center beam (to cut down the span) then floor beams (perhaps 3' o/c spanning under 10') on top of that. Then you can use 2x6 T&G decking to span the under 3' between the floor beams. If you do this with solid timber it will be a nice looking system. The First Day built-up beams and posts will not look as much like timber frame.

It doesn't look to me like french doors will work in the small bedrooms. (Do you have two standard doors and a french door as well?) I would stick with the two standard wood doors and build a temporary framed opening between the two rooms and hang a curtain for now. When the girls later want more privacy you can infill the opening or do a bookcase or something more permanent.

I would do the same thing with the master dressing area. In my house I framed an opening to our closets and hung muslin curtains anticipating installing bifold wood doors in the future (when we had more $$). We found we like the opening curtains better than fussing with bi-folds. French doors would be even more intrusive as they have to have dedicated swing space and you have to get around them each time.

[Don_P]

Lets see, alot has happened today;

So I could get away with 1" or 3/4" sheathing on the walls but I need to stick to 2" decking on the floors and roof correct?
Yup

And I also am confused when you say I can use 36" on the floor joist, but only 24" on the rafter ties what do you mean? Will that mean the rafters will need to be spaced 24" apart and the floor joists 36" that wont work.  Or does that mean the rafter tie need to be 24" long?
I was really just referencing the codebook heeljoint table for a description of how I arrived at the 10 nails in the rafter tie connection. So yes the double rafters are on top of the 3' on center posts, all is good.

    In your models you do not give me the span of the 2x12 floor joists. Are they 20' or do they need to be less without a post in the middle? What is the maximum width we can go up to 20 feet?
Using the codebook you can go 20' with #2 SYP 2x12's BUT the codebook is printed and thus dated. This summer SYPine was derated strengthwise, using the new strength numbers it would take #1 grade to make a 19'6" span, so you're good. The region that caused the derate was up here not in the southern part of the range from my understanding. Now to put a bug in your mind, Select Structural (pretty much clear) red oak 2x12's will also work. This frame would look good in oak. SelStruc SPF works as does #1 DougFir-Larch

Yes my section sketch can be just as easily viewed as a platform frame. I've mentioined this many times, if the kneewalls are about 5' tall the rafter ties can drop to the lower third of roof height and life is good.

This next part is going more into hpinson's Q and John R's comments;
To use heavy timber for the upper floor joists (non FD method, more like my initial post and beam drawing) I agree that a center wall or post and beam setup is required. With ~16' from the stairs to the exterior wall that beam is going to be a honker, it'll be along the lines of a 6x12 glulam or LVL. For a single story timberframe with no floor load on the ties/ceiling joists, I would make the roof system out of heavy timber kingpost trusses and purlins, space the trusses about 8' apart and run purlins on 2-3' centers over them in the 34' direction then sheath with 1x decking running up and down the pitch.
I think this sketch has that arrangement;
independencefarmersmarket.org/timberframe/marketbuilding.skp

For the french doors, double pocket doors meeting in the middle?

[John Raabe]

Don

That market building timber frame is very handsome. I love the way the model wordlessly unfolds the structure.

[FarmerBill]

I tried to open the link you pasted but it required me to download a program. Do I have to download a program?

[FarmerBill]

So if I put a post in the middle of the house to support a large beam that would support the 20ft floor joists in the upper floors and then used the mud room wall in the left side of the house would that work? See pic

[John Raabe]

You need to install the free Sketchup program. Here is the latest version: http://www.sketchup.com/products/sketchup-make

After it's installed, click Don's file and save it on your desktop if needed - then Sketchup will load it.
You're on the right track with your beam and post diagram.

[Don_P]

If you can handle a post out there where you drew the osage post it'll help cut down on the size of a support beam. More terminology, a girder is a type of beam that supports other beams, so that honker beam is also called a girder since it is supporting other beams, the floor joists. In timberframing it is also called a summer beam, from sumpter, a farmer's biggest ox.

Other things to think about, John mentioned difficulty plumbing, look at the upstairs bath and think about how you're going to get the drains down...

He mentioned cost, go ahead and price the foam, that might be a deal breaker. Also think about the sealing details well, somebody is having a real tough time with plumbing right now I suspect due not to lack of insulation but due to infiltration, poor sealing. All the insulation in the world is of no use if the breeze blows thru the cracks. The engine that drives drafts is temperature differential. On the coldest day of the year a gap is drafting the worst. One mantra to remember on the order to take care of things from my passive solar days, infiltration, insulation, insolation (the sun).

You mentioned the breeze and gave a relatively small window height dimension, remember every bedroom needs an egress window with specific requirements. Manufacturers usually denote egress windows. VERY important.

In the market file, I think John knew how to play the assembly file. The sketch loads on scene 12. Right click that tab and click "play animation". This is one way a designer can show how details or entire buildings can be assembled, way cool.

[John Raabe]

Here's how the other Universal Cottage project is going. Sounds like plumbing is the current project and isn't much fun right now. 

http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=13150.new;topicseen#new

I hope everyone is staying warm. We're getting record cold in Western Washington for the next few days. This isn't MN but we may get down to 15º-18º tonight.

[FarmerBill]

So are we here in Oklahoma. Ice storm has got us shut down this weekend. I will take a look at the link. Thanks for the help guys. So how big a girder would we need? I think we can handle the plumbing with some creative sheetrock but I have some more thinking to do about that.

[UperJoe]

Wimps!
Just drove down from Finland, MN to TC's
Duluth hills still pretty much shut down - Two Harbors had close to 35" of snow in past 2 days and this afternoon 4 degrees and windchills about -15 and headed straight down tonight. Getting chilly up here.
Fun watching Lake Superior rollers hitting the shore - the ore boats reporting 12-16' swells out there and maybe around 10'-12' hitting the rocks on shore. Beautiful but cold...

[Don_P]

66 here today , beginning to rain, supposed to convert to ice tomorrow just in time to drive the tractor in the Christmas parade Sat. Santa better hold on.

What is the span from post to wall?

[FarmerBill]

10 feet from post to front and back walls. 14 feet from post to left hand or west wall. We escaped the ice, woke up to a couple inches of snow and still coming down 

[Don_P]

The "tributary area" the beam will be supporting is that center 10' of the house X the 14' beam span, or 140 square feet. For the upper floor you can use 30 pounds per square foot for the live load + 10 psf for the dead load. So, 40 pounds per square foot X 140 square feet = 5600 lbs, uniformly distributed along the 14' span.

At 4 ply 2x12 in #2 SYP it blows out at about 150" span. It does work at 4 ply 2x12's in #1 SYP at 168". (check headroom under the beam if it's dropped under the joists, they can also frame into the sides of the beam. They can be smaller as their span just got cut in half, they could be #2 SYP 2x8's.

[mwhutch]

Hi there FarmerBill  We really like the idea of using exposed beams for the upstairs floor, we actually wanted to do that for our house too. The main reasons we didn't go through with them were trying to figure out HVAC and plumbing lines. One idea that we had was to move the bathroom slightly farther back and transition to some type of drop ceiling for the back half of the house. We eventually decided to go with floor trusses 16"deep at the suggestion of the building inspector. Now working on plumbing and electrical rough ins we are really glad we did. The location you show that post at the corner of the stair opening we actually had to put at least a 6x6 post to support the opening(we used a 6x8 red cedar). One problem we have run into is we decided to use nine foot ceilings downstairs which messed up our calculations for stair clearance  . Since your house will be about two feet longer this may not be an issue. Also we made a few changes to our mud room/half bath area after seeing the space framed up. I'm not sure if you will have central air installed, but the chase from the crawlspace to the second story didn't need to be as big as we had drawn. Our installer put it in the back right corner of the mud room, we shifted the half bath to the outside wall and were able to make an alcove for a stackable washer and dryer and cabinets in the space. This set up really made a lot of extra room in the actual "mud room". Hope some of this helps, and we really look forward to seeing your project progress. Feel free if you have any questions we'd love to help!

[FarmerBill]

MWhutch,
    Thank you for the words of encouragement, you have a lovely house. We hope we can be as successful with ours as yours. We are thinking instead of a dropped ceiling to hide the upstairs plumbing, we might do a raised floor in the bathroom.
   Don_P, you mentioned egress windows. We were thinking French doors or big windows, or doors on the endwalls upstairs with balconies for fire escapes. Do you have any comments? See pic.
Also if we run a girder all the way across the living area supported by a post by the stove what size will the beam need to be. I would rather run that girder underneath the floor joists but if it is 12'' thick than that will get in the way.

 

[Don_P]

Based on that section view it looks like several things are changing. Doors or egress windows from the sleeping rooms are fine, that doesn't appear to work for the girl's rooms.

The width of the building in that last section is 16', we've been talking about a 20', the tie is too high, the main ceiling too low. Let's get that straightened out, I suspect that is an old drawing but who's to know  . Once done, with a new floorplan if it has indeed changed, we'll need a span and trib width to calc a beam size.

[FarmerBill]

Yes that is just an old cut and pasted drawing from FD to give an idea of what I meant. The span is still 20 ft. I will work on a real drawing in that new sketch up software and get it up on here. I just have to figure out how to use it.

[FarmerBill]

Man that sketch up is difficult to use    Is there a easy to use program to just do simple elevations and floorplans? For dummies