Hi. What a gem this site is! Is it possible to stretch the 20x34 into a 20x36? Would 2 extra feet lengthwise be more work in the long run as far as roofing and the other pertinent building features go? Would we have to readjust the distance between floor joists, beams, and all the other pertinent facts? Would it be easier to stretch it to 38' or to 40'? We love economical clean lines of this plan and it looks simple and straight forward. The 34' works great too, but being a newbie home builder the tightness scares us a wee bit. We'd like a little more play room with our inside measurements.
We've been having so much fun coming up with various floorplans for this little jewel and always seem to go back to close to the original version. Love it!
w* Uma and Hi!
The plan length can be incrreased with no problem other than extra materials. Longer beams or foundation, more joists at the same spacing, more wall studs at the same spacing, etc. is all that's required. The extra work gets you more space. IF you were wanting to go wider, well, that's more of a problem as joists, rafters etc would all need to be recalculated. Extra length is easy.
Thank you MountainD for the warm welcome and the info! I was hoping we wouldn't be wasting materials or resources while expanding a bit. Leave it to me to make a simple project difficult. :) Thanks!
Welcome to the forum Uma.
The Universal Cottage can be framed with either the full span I-joist option or an interior beam with standard 2x floor joists. Lengthening the I-joist floor plan is the easiest as it just adds a few more of what you are already doing.
If you lengthen the interior beam and post layout you may need to adjust the post locations in a longer plan to make sure you are not exceeding the design spans for the beams. Alternatively you could have the new beam layout checked locally and the beams sized for any new spans.