Stepped floor in garage not working

[Daniel2]

I have a 5" high by 36" wide raised section in a garage between the garage man door and the laundry door. I created a room divider but when I change the floor height of one side the other changes as well. I'm using home designer suite 2017, attached is the plan I'm working on. Is there any way to do this? I tried using stair landing but as soon as I do that, it grabs my current stairs and floats both up 4 feet high with no discernible way to adjust stair height at all.

house4.plan

[DavidJPotter]

DJP

House 4.zip

[solver]

A different way using a landing and a soffit for the raised part.

 

 

Watch on YouTube: http://youtu.be/0x5OxKpjZ3k?hd=1

 

 

 

 

 

 

[LawB10]

Another way is to go to the foundation, draw a wall and raise floor D for that section.

[Daniel2]

Thank you for the suggestions. In my version, I cannot build foundation walls, which is very disappointing. All I can do is play with what the program generates and copy other foundation walls. As soon as a foundation wall is attached to a room (and I cannot find a way to disassociate it) on modifying it, the program automatically alters all foundation walls connected to it, similar to what the divided room is doing, so I can't add that wall there.

 

Sidewalks disappear inside the house as well, first thing I tried was that.

 

I tried putting in a landing after deleting the divider, but the stairs just ignore it like it's not there. I erased the stairs and regenerated but same effect. the landing is larger than the stairs and completely filling that side of the room and the stairs are placed on top in the corner.

 

As a work around, I have added a 5th step and set the stair treads where they should be, then raised the landing an inch to hide the first step and that is fairly close to the actual house.

 

The purpose of this house build is to get as close as possible to the existing house, for purposes of building a substantial renovation in the future. These stairs will remain and there will be a flight in the same direction, in that garage directly above them going to a second floor, so clearances are critical. The suite above main entrance will be the stairs above and must meet minimum codes, from my hand drafted drawings, it looks like I have clearance but this program will allow me to visualize and measure more accurately. I somehow managed to get that side of the house and garage dimensions accurate but the foundation and stem wall got messed up at the front of the garage and the exterior 4' section on the left of the garage, so I had to erase all walls around the garage and set foundation back to auto, build the garage expansion and put the original walls back, then take auto foundation off and copy foundation walls to set in the interior ones that have perimeter foundation under them. I will have to sort out the garage floor again later.

[DavidJPotter]

3 hours ago, Daniel2 said:

I cannot build foundation walls, which is very disappointing.

 

Not true! In Suite you set up the "Automatic Foundation" by what you do on the main floor, so what you do on the main floor is followed by the auto foundation routine, take a look please. So you "Draw foundation walls" by way of properly setting up the main floor, each room dialog box then directly affects the generated foundation below. The ability to manually draw foundation walls, roof planes etc you only get in Home Designer Pro or Chief Premier.

 

DJP

[Jo_Ann]

I see that Suite does not have a foundation wall listed in the wall toolbar.
So, draw ANY type of wall on the foundation level, then open it and change it to a stem wall.

 

To fix the garage stairs:
1. delete the stairs
2. On the foundation level, I see that you already have a foundation "divider" wall  (creating a "raised area" room).  Open that wall and change it to a "room divider" wall  (because the foundation type wall is causing problems in the garage level 1).
3. Open the "raised area" room, and change floor (C) to -30"  (this raises that area 5").
4. On the garage level, make sure that the existing " room divider" wall  (that you placed?) is aligned with the wall below.
5. Redraw the stairs.

You may notice that you now have a gap between the raised area and the garage floor.  That is because the "raised area" has been raised 5", but the floor structure slab is only 4" thick.   Place a soffit outside the garage on the foundation level, and set it's "floor to bottom" to -28", then move it into position against the foundation "room divider", resize it, and change it's material to concrete.  The gap on floor 1 should be gone (covered by the soffit).

 

[solver]

All good solutions above, but in reality, raised areas like that are normally poured along with, or on top of the garage floor and don't have additional stemwalls or footings below.

 

 

[Jo_Ann]

That is true. 

But with Suite, this is probably the only way to make it look correct, and also be a floor that the stairs will respond to.

The stair landing method also works, but doesn't look right because the tread overhang can not be removed.

[solver]

Another video showing how to use a soffit and landing.

 

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/cJ7oAEG15UA

 

 

 

 

 

[Daniel2]

Problems solved! By having stair issues, I uncovered major issues with the foundation footing. My actual lot obviously isn't perfectly level, but for this reno I only care about the depth of the footer on the right side of the house as that is the side the garage extension is being tied into..the back side of the house is roughly 4-6" higher, code is 18" depth below grade to the bottom of the footer.

Eric noticed my stairs were crooked, I think that is what caused them to ignore the landing I built. I have no idea how those stairs went in crooked in the first place, I have angle snaps on at all times.