Closing in stairs with partial height walls

[FlightDeck]

Hi all 

 

I have a stair situation I'm working on in one of my models.  I've made a test plan to demonstrate it:

 

 

StairGap1.zip

 

There is a "storage" room (teal) under the stairs, and a "bathroom" (brown) also neighbouring the stairs (the room names are just arbitrary to help refer to areas easier).  As you can see there is a large triangular gap in the wall above the stairs.  It lets us see from the main room into the storage room and vice versa. 

 

I know how to make walls stop at the *underside* of stairs, and there is one of those used here.  What I need is the opposite, to make an upper wall stop at the *topside* of stairs, to close in that gap.  Is there a built-in feature to do this?  Or am I stuck with band-aiding an inverted wedge on the wall to close in the gap?

 

Alternatively, if I extend the bathroom wall more along the stairs it would close in the gap, however it cuts up the space in the storage room since the wall goes right down to the floor.  I would then need a method to remove the triangular section of the wall that is between the stair stringer and the floor. 

 

Thanks and regards 

 

 

[Elovia]

Use an inverted wedge from the shapes library to close the triangular opening besides the stairs. While the software is good at what it does, it cannot model every design choice automatically.  Sometimes you need to manually adjust for your given solution, such as in the case identified.

 

Hope this helps.

[FlightDeck]

Thanks, Elovia.  Yes that's what I've done as a workaround.  Was hoping there was a built-in stair or wall configuration option that would do it automatically, and so that it updates the geometry automatically if I need to make change.  Also I can't change the colours on the different sides of the wedge/soffit independently for the two rooms (without actually using multiple soffit/wedges to represent each layer of drywall).

[solver]

Draw in a full height wall to cover the gap.

 

Take an elevation looking at the wall from the storage room.

 

Select the wall, drag the bottom up as needed. 

 

You will still need to do some patching as you see in the image.

 

[FlightDeck]

WE CAN DRAG THE TOPS / BOTTOMS OF WALLS??!!???!!!     Excuse me while I go outside to scream for a while!!...  When the - ??!! 

 

This would have been useful so many times!  Is this in HDA as well??  If it was I could have used exactly this feature for some vaulted ceiling situations, but was always told I had to buy the Pro version!  Also thinking maybe I can use this for the top of a tapered privacy screen on a deck I've been working on.

 

Okay thanks Eric!!    I'm playing with this option now.  Yes unfortunately it leaves holes in the drywall (but thankfully not the floor or mouldings). 

[LawB10]

 Instead of building another wall, just extend it until it covers the gap.

[FlightDeck]

 Instead of building another wall, just extend it until it covers the gap.

 

Thanks but as I mentioned in original post that doesn't work as it cuts up the space in the room if it drops all the way down to the floor.

[LawB10]

Like Elovia said you will have to manually adjust...mainly the stairs if you want the room(s) to stay the same size.

 

You don't have to extend the vertical wall, just the horizonal one

 

If you build a wall it's gonna be the same as extending it.

 

If you use a shape, you will also need a soffit to cover the bottom.

 

 

wall gap.plan

 

 

 

 

[FlightDeck]

Thanks but as I said, I can't extend any of the walls.  It's not how the real building was actually constructed.  It's all open under the stairs.  It's a small utility room/closet space maybe only 6 ft by 5 ft total, containing a hot water tank and a stacked washer/dryer and some storage space under the stairs.  I appreciate the effort though! 

 

Eric's method of lifting up the bottom of a wall section to align with the underside of the stairs was very promising at first, however I was unable to patch the missing drywall shown in his pic.  I could get the portion under the stair stringer covered with a sloped soffit, but I was unable to cover the portion missing from the corner of the wall. The hole there seemed to "eat" a chunk out any soffit I put there so it was impossible to cover it.

 

I've currently used the soffit method to close it the wall gap instead of the wall raise method.  Soffits were easier to make the underside clean up properly.  Here's the result in the actual model:

 

Note the shading effects on the soffits don't match the stairs even though the colour / material is the same (drywall). Weird. 

(The stuff over the water tank and dryer is unrelated and is just a ceiling bulkhead for a duct and a built-in shelf.)

 

Unfortunately a piece of the stair stringer trim is missing where the soffit is. Haven't figured that part out yet:

 

 

 

I was however able to put Eric's wall shaping tip to great use on a sloped wall top for a privacy screen on the deck. Thanks again, Eric! 

 

 

 

[solver]

I left out the secret setting.

 

After adjusting the wall to cover the gap, set it to be an Attic wall.

 

You will still need to patch the underside. I usually use a soffit the full width of the stairs so it's seamless.

 

To get the soffit at the correct slope, (don't know why you cannot just enter the pitch in degrees) I'll sometimes draw a roof plane at the same angle as the stairs and place a soffit under it, letting the program set the angle for me.

 

[FlightDeck]

I left out the secret setting.

 

After adjusting the wall to cover the gap, set it to be an Attic wall.

 

Secret setting!!  lol     Okay got it, thanks!  Here is the actual model redone with this attic wall technique and patched with one "soffit sheet of drywall":

 

 

Pretty much seamless underneath, and no more problem with the stair stringer trim on top.

 

 

I tried the ceiling (roof?) plane idea but had zero luck with it.  No idea how it works.  Found it easier to just fiddle with the sloped soffit.  Using a cross-section view through the stairs to see the alignment from the side was very helpful.

[solver]

On the soffit under roof method.

 

Once the stairs are correct, the DBX shows the slope in degrees.

 

Draw a roof plane anywhere on the plan and set it to the same slope. Set the fascia height to 8" or so to get one end low.

 

Place a soffit under it and set the soffit to Sloped and Place Under Roof.

 

See https://hometalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/1927-angles-soffits-for-under-gable-trim/#entry10901 

 

for details.

 

Drag the soffit into shape. Use Point to Point move to place at the stairs. Adjust as needed.

 

Faster to do than describe, and the slope is exact.

 

 

[FlightDeck]

Thanks, Eric.  When I tried that before the roof plane made a real mess of the model with the roof sticking down through the middle of it, lol.  Similar when I tried a ceiling plane.  I wasn't sure how to clean it up afterward.  Do you mean I should create the plane way off in space somewhere separate from the model, so that it doesn't show up where it matters?  If so, I understand.  So far though the manual placement method is working so I think I can live with that 

[solver]

Yes -- away from the model. The only purpose is to set the exact angle of the soffit and get the soffit roughly sized.

 

Then move the soffit under the stair.

 

Much easier for me than the cumbersome (at least to me) way sloped soffits are done via their DBX.