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Let's take a look at each one of these
categories and see what specific elements may be included in each.
Lot
This is pretty self-evident. It’s the land your home
will sit upon. more
Flat Work
This part includes all the flat concrete work in your home including slab, basement floor, walks, driveway, patio, etc.
Structure
|
Footings |
The following is a brief description of what is included in each of
these parts of the structure of your home.
Footings
The Footings are where the house
meets the ground. Everything
is supported by the footings.
Footings (or footer) may be poured concrete, caisson piers, gravel,
or even a turned-down portion of a slab.
Which one you would use is determined by the area you live in, the soils
conditions, local building code requirements, and by the recommendations
of your architect or structural engineer.
Foundation
The Foundation consists of the foundation
walls (sometimes
called “stem” walls)
and other vertical elements needed to support the floor (piers and steel
columns).
Foundation walls may be formed concrete, treated wood, masonry (brick
or concrete block) or nonexistent - in the case of slab construction,
where the walls go up directly on top of thickened portions of the slab.
Floor
Floor systems are either wood or concrete. In
residential construction, concrete floors are slab-on-grade (concrete
poured on the ground).
You will usually use this type of floor system for the garage and basement,
or for the main floor in southern areas where slab-on-grade is feasible
for the first floor.
For the rest of us, the wood floor is the standard. The wood floor consists
of the supporting members - beams and joists - and the flooring material,
usually a plywood product.
Typically, there is a beam supporting the floor joists. The beam is
supported by the foundation walls and intermittent piers or posts (the
latter must have their own footing). Beams are made of a variety of
materials including wood and steel.
Walls
The Walls divide the interior space into rooms. They
may support a load from above (load-bearing) or simply their own weight
(partition wall).
Ceiling
Ceilings are supported by the walls below or by a ceiling beam.
The ceiling does not actually support a vertical load. It is included
in the load bearing elements of the home because it does support the
rather significant weight of the drywall attached to it.
Roof
The Roof Structure will either be “stick built”,
trussed, or a combination of the two.
The weight of the roof, with the wood members, the plywood decking, and the roofing shingles, is significant.
All of this weight must be carried down through the walls, floor, foundation walls, and footings to the ground.
Systems
The Plumbing, Electrical, and Mechanical - heating, ventilating, air conditioning (HVAC) - are the three major systems of the home. Included within the electrical system would be the security, communication, and entertainment systems for your home.
The Enclosure is a category we have included to hold those elements which form the surfaces or as we sometimes say, the “skin” of the home. These would include the drywall; windows and doors; exterior sheathing, siding, and veneer; and roofing shingles.
You could even include the flooring in this category. There is a gray area here, because some of these items also impart structural integrity to their underlying structural system, i.e. the OSB (oriented strand board) sheathing applied to the exterior walls stiffens them.
Trim and Finishes
This part contains all of the interior
trim (base mould, casing, crown mould, chair rail, etc.), exterior trim (shingle mould, skirt board, corner stiles, shutters, etc.), ceiling treatment, carpet and tile, paint and wallpaper, and so forth.
Fixtures and Equipment
Here are your appliances, cabinets, hardware (door, window, and bath), mirrors, fireplace, garage door opener, etc.
Outdoor Elements
This category includes all the
outdoor elements not included elsewhere. This may include the sprinkler system, landscaping, decks, and so forth.
Please note that the placement of some items is somewhat arbitrary.
For example, “patios” could
be placed in “Flat Work” or "Outdoor Elements!"
The
idea is not to legalistically categorize very item in your home, but to understand
the broad categories of elements and how they all work together to form the
whole!
Summary
As you can imagine, each of the "Parts of Your Home" listed above
is but a "box" into which we will put dozens of related "parts" as
we get deeper and deeper into this wonderful journey - the
journey of Building Your Own Home!
Ready to move on? Excellent! Click here to take a look at Funding your home building project.
For more insight on the various Parts of Your Home,
see Lesson Two of our online course
Successful Home Contracting.
home plans by The COOL house plans company
