I’m going to confess that when I decided to be an architect who specializes in residential projects, I didn’t think I would end up traveling around the country doing them. How I got here isn’t all that interesting – it seems like once you become that sort of architect, more people are willing to go outside their own backyard to find someone they want to work with on their project. What has been interesting is the process I’ve gone through when deciding when I need to travel so that I can maintain my standard level of care similar to projects I work on locally. This has been particularly true during the construction phase.
How a house get’s built is incredibly important to me and I won’t take on projects that do not include my involvement during the construction period. It’s simply too important and there are thousands of things that can get missed during this phase that can create a chain reaction of events with undesirable consequences. Since I don’t like taking trips to faraway job sites just for the sake of taking a trip, I have identified certain key moments during construction that I absolutely need to be on site. I think I will make that specific list its own topic but for today, I will focus on just one of the really important job site visits [drumroll please] the Electrical Walk-through!
It’s even more exciting than it sounds!! no, it isn’t
This is one of my projects in California – approximately 3 hours and 40 minutes by plane away from Dallas. What you are looking at above is a partial electrical and lighting plan for the kitchen. As you can see, there is a lot going on in this space.
This is an existing house that was completely taken down to the studs. We reconfigured about 25% of the space, but the entire house received new interior finishes, new windows, doors, plumbing, HVAC, roof, etc. and on and on. What was once the kitchen is now a large wet bar, the old large family room is now the kitchen … there isn’t a room in this house that doesn’t have our fingerprints all over it.
Last week, I was out in Sunny California for two days walking the house, both with the electrician and then again with the owner, to review all the locations of lighting, electrical boxes, and wall switches.
One of the other things I do when I go on job sites is that I take a million pictures. Technically for this trip, it was closer to 300 but the point it, I document EVERYTHING. I now have a record photo of every wall, floor and ceiling of this house and where everything is located. The picture above is in the kitchen and in this space alone, there are recessed lights, pendants, speakers, sprinkler heads, freon lines, and ductwork.
Is everything there?
Are the in the right place?
Does everything line up?
I’ve got to figure this sort of stuff out prior to insulation going in and sheet rock going up. Plus, I want to know where everything is buried. Knowing where all the plumbing runs are located is exactly the sort of thing that I am on site documenting when I make these sorts of field trips. Hopefully, we’ll never need it, but I don’t like to hang my hat on “hopefully.” The other key component to a trip like this is a walk-through of al the electrical outlet locations and light switches with the owner. It’s pretty easy to change or modify something now, so this is the time to do it.
Here’s a look at another section of the electrical and lighting plan for this house. We did the mechanical system (re: air conditioning) as design-build for this project. We had several meetings with the HVAC contractor, and once we marked out the loads and duct pathways, we coordinated alignments on site. If this were a commercial project we would have retained the services of an MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing) engineer – but as a residential project, it is common that we will do our own lighting and electrical design, and then coordinate HVAC with the sub-contractor.
Duct work. Exhaust Fans, Sprinkler pipes. HVAC registers. Outlets. Light switches. Plumbing lines … most of this stuff will disappear in a few weeks and it seems that this is the sort of stuff that gets skimmed over unless you have someone with the specific task of double and triple checking locations.
If I had to put a number on it, I would guess that there were about 1,200 items to be coordinated from this scope of work. The good news is that the various subcontractors did a good job and there were only a handful of items that needed adjustment. The owner and I had gone through the layouts a few times on paper prior to this point of construction so there were only a few things they wanted to modify after walking through the project. For the record, I really like being a part of this walkthrough with the clients. This is one of those “in real time” lifestyle moments where they pretend what it would be like to use their house. Trying to re-imagine the entry light switch sequences to determine if our paper walkthroughs were close to the real thing.
Pictures like this one are purely for record keeping purposes. We know where studs are located, and how the plumbing fits within the walls.
This is a look at the “wet wall” (construction jargon for the wall where all the water lines are located) in one of the bathrooms. When you’ve spent a fair amount of time on a job site, you can glance at a picture like this and tell instantly what’s going on – not to mention the quality and capabilities of the subcontractors doing the work. Granted, there is some wood framing chaos going on but as I mentioned in the beginning, this was an existing house and the framing was ridiculous in places.
There wasn’t anything magical or difficult about this particular site visit – yet it was an incredibly important trip to make. The secret to well-built projects is really about proper communication and coordination. The sooner you can identify something that needs attention, the more options you have for possible remedies. Not to mention, the remedies will be less expensive to address now even if the owner isn’t paying for them – something that contractors and subcontractors can readily appreciate.
Cheers,
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Thanks for the post! I got my start in residential (and hope to do more of it in the future) and doing the electrical drawings in-house is a lot of fun. Do you go out to an engineer to do calcs and single-line diagrams or do you do those in-house too?
More though, I’m curious what you bring with you to these jaunts? I assume you have a full sized field set – but do you like to bring a laptop with CAD and the drawings loaded into it so you can fine-tune locations and the like in the field?
We do not do any single line diagrams – other than us telling what and where we want things, it is coordinated on site with the electrician.
I used to bring drawings with me to job site meetings but now I just load the pdf’s onto my ipad and look at them electronically. I only bring printed drawings to design meetings when I travel.
Great post. We learned a great trick on a job not long ago. The electrician bought a box of pint sized plastic containers, like yogurt comes in. They tack these up where all the lights go. Quick and cheap way to locate the lights, allowing everyone to see placement, but before all the labor to set cans and J-boxes and wire. Like your project this one is complex, so we made a ton of adjustments. Much time saved.
not a bad idea – thanks for sharing, I’ll be sure to share that with some of the contractors I work with.
I like job site visits, there is always more to be learned.
there’s always more – and I don’t have any problems asking “why?”
Ah, the joys of seeing the “bones”.
Nine studs?–that sounds like old-school wing it on the fly CA construction. We want a wall here–so corner studs get massed up. No, we need it to move over 3″. Wit, we meant 3″ the other ways. Oh, screw it, we’re deleting the wall!
Is the orange pie PE or a rigid PVC? Did you have to meet 13R?
Oh, it being a small world filled with gratuitous synchronicity, I’m off to Tampa to do close-out punch list/CSC for a project I’ve only seen the once. Oh well, back Tuesday to grind away on Tulsa, North Richland Hills, and Flower Mound (gotta love small offices).
the sprinkler pipe is CPVC and we were not required to provide a interior sprinkler system, but we did anyways – we conformed to NFPA 13 requirements
This is my favorite time of the construction process. All the guts, veins, and intestines of the house in clear view. I too like to photograph everything I can at these visits. It has come in handy on more than one occasion.
You’ve cut the heart out of the joists in photo #3 for that hvac duct. Has the structural engineer approved this? I look forward to some finished photos of this project.
Agreed. These photos illustrate the one thing I continually try to remind the youngsters in this business – don’t underestimate the amount of studs used in wood framing, particularly in school and institutional work (my niche). Trying to pack light switches, fire alarm pulls and extinguisher cabinets in a wall next to a door can (and often does) lead to unpleasant surprises.
wall switches presented us with some challenges once the drywall was removed and we discovered some of the size of these ganged together stud columns. In one spot, we have to furr the wall out because there wasn’t room to recess a j-box, just so that we could install a light switch in a location that made sense.
We had a local engineer do an inspection and there was extensive back and forth on the sizes vs. runs of ductwork and how the various TGI’s could handle them. The framing in this house is ridiculously overbuilt in areas – finding walls where there are as many as 9+studs ganged together for no apparent reason are fairly common.
I like the metal straps over the pipe locations on the studs. A nice touch to keep a wayward nail from causing a water feature later in the home owner’s life.
We call out for those metal cover plates in our drawings but it must be required or standard practice now – everybody does them (and I’m not sure it was because they read all the notes in our drawings)
Code required – UPC 312.9 Steel nail plates. Besides it’s just good practice.
nicely done
code always trumps. since I don’t do residential I am not familiar with those requirements. always good to learn something new.
Another great post. I’m curious about the last photo. I see water supply and drain lines where you’d expect them to be, but what’s with the smaller white pvc pipe? The lower vertical leg looks like it will be proud of the wall surface, right where the vanity wants to attach.
it a condensate line from the unit above this bathroom
My projects are all institutional (miles of metal studs and CMU), so all that wood framing blows my mind sometimes. Still looks like it’s going to interfere with the vanity installation, unless that wall gets furred out.
I see what you are referring to – the 2×4 stud running horizontally is set back from the face of the studs running vertically. It’s hard to tell in this picture but you can kind of see it once you are looking for it.
I’m thinking that is the drain line for the a/c; it will tie into the sink drain.
you are correct!
Nice work Bob. Is this the project in Los Gatos? I noticed your second drawing shows the retaining walls – does that thickness include the 2×4 furred wall on the interior as shown in the pictures?
It is and it does. The graphics are a little misleading because we don’t shade existing walls in renovation work. Just looking at the drawing, and if I didn’t know better, it appears that you are simply looking at a monolithic concrete wall. The only way you would know (other than it is an existing wall with no new wall construction work) is at the window well.
I still think it would be clearer if we added a line distinguishing the concrete mass from the wood framing. I think I might incorporate that method moving forward.