I don't want to clutter up Bot's thread

Originally Posted by SteveFehr
Originally Posted by gfretwell
From my experience (in Florida), the "guidance" will be "bring us engineered plans". The strange thing is when you get to the engineer he will be working off some handout outs from the state, (not doing any real calculations).
I don't know why the building department won't just give you the handout.
They probably could, but there are always caveots and exceptions. So, they require it be engineered, trusting the engineer will know where the standard details can and can't apply, and will engineer the proper solution for each job. Most of the time, if it's simple, it'll be the standard drawing or a very close derivative.


I was totally underwhelmed by the "engineering" process. This guy just rooted around on his desk for handouts from the state, laid them down on his big copier, burned me some pages and stamped them.
The weakness in this system was pointed out by my mason and the inspector since there were lots of irrelevant details and some were conflicting. In the end the inspector and the mason both agreed my original hand drawn plans were better than the sealed and signed set but they weren't "legal".


Greg Fretwell