J.T. Pennington - DAY 23 | 10.11.2017

Hours worked: 4

Tasks completed: Today I made progress on drafting an existing plan of a historic home into Vectorworks from field measurements that my coworkers took yesterday. I helped to measure the building on September 28th but was only there for about an hour, so I am familiar with the building. There are also lots of photographs of the existing conditions which help in looking at sketches, which helps in this task.

I was thinking that one of the first things you need to know when drafting an existing building's plan is the exterior and interior wall thicknesses, which is a piece of information that is easy to forget to measure - or to check that various walls are the same thickness; it's common for a plumbing wall with a water closet to be framed of 2x6 construction because you need a 4" diameter (inside clear) sanitary line, but historic homes are often not framed with the same assemblies that we use today for residential construction.

I think there is something powerful about entering a plan from field measurements that someone else takes because it teaches you about the information that you need to record - if I'm missing the width of the double hung window in the kitchen and am taking a guess at how wide it is from the photographs, it makes me more careful the next time I measure a building that I am including all of the information that I need to take down.

Facade photographed from across the street

Sketch from coworker yesterday

AXP credits: Complete

Name of Project: Private Residence

Location: Charleston, SC

Type of Project: Renovation

Phase of Design or Construction: Schematic design / entering existing information