Best Way to Work with Different Floor Heights


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Go to solution Solved by DavidJPotter,

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What's the best way to work with different floor heights?  I don't currently have a plan to demonstrate as ever time I've tried to accomplish it the whole plan seems to get buggered up. 

 

Short story. I have a walkout basement that has several different floor heights. 

 

Long story.  I'm planning an addition onto an existing house.  The existing house has several different foundation types and heights.  There are two separate crawl spaces on different ends of the house.  A third section with 5' ceilings.  Then the mechanical section which has 7' ceilings.  The addition will have the walk out (actually a garage).  The ground level at the walkout wall is 10' below the floor line of the first floor. 

 

At present I have the basement drawn as floor 1, which I believe is the preferred method for a walk out.  The front section of the walk out will then need to have frost walls but will convert to just footing as it moves back into the hillside. 

 

Is it best to modify default settings as I draw or to just draw out all of the walls then change the height of each room?   Maybe I just need to play with it more but it always seems that I screw up the floor above.

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"At present I have the basement drawn as floor 1, which I believe is the preferred method for a walk out."

 

If this is what you believe, then you must not have viewed the user guide, reference guide, or any of the knowledge base articles.

You are setting yourself up for headaches.

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Well that starts to explain it.  I just moved up about 8 or 10 years from an older version of Chief Lite (or whatever they called it back then) and, as one would expect, they've made some improvements. 

 

I need to have a frost wall that extends 4' below the basement floor at the walkout end.  It seems like that's possible now.  I'll have to mess around a bit.

 

Thanks for the link David!  Try to be more positive Jo_Ann.

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It is actually a fairly common technique in Chief Jo_Ann , for some and there have been some recent discussion on CT about it , some like it , some don't but both are viable methods ,just remember that most of these guys are very familiar with Chief and know how it works, some consider this a "workaround" and have request CA allows levels below the basement level (0) 

 

A thread on CT with a "Play Plan" I did with this idea

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/5028-can-anyone-tell-me-where-my-ceiling-has-gone/page-2#entry43600

 

and some others including vids.........

 

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/5053-starting-a-project-with-the-foundation-on-level-1good-or-bad-idea/?hl=%2B1st+%2Bfloor+%2Bbasement

 

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/5059-basement-on-level-1-or-level-0-videos-by-dsh/?hl=%2B1st+%2Bfloor+%2Bbasement#entry43736

 

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/1066-walkout-basement-stuff/?hl=%2Bfrost+%2Bwall

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