Understanding wall assemblies is key to executing successful construction projects. This article breaks down how to tackle complex wall assemblies, with specific focus on the evaluation of a typical 2x6 exterior stud wall, thus providing a roadmap to understanding different wall assemblies.
Key Insights
- The article focuses on understanding wall assemblies, where a typical 2x6 exterior stud wall in a construction project is evaluated in-depth, examining aspects such as height and cut-through details.
- The process includes checking notes, understanding specific details, and making use of color-coding to categorize different areas. This process is essential for successful project execution, with an emphasis on accurate takeoffs.
- The article underscores the importance of verifying assumptions during the evaluation process, such as checking heights before finalizing takeoffs, to ensure accuracy in the construction process.
This lesson is a preview from our Blueprint Reading & Construction Estimating Course Online (includes software) and Construction Estimating Certification Online (includes software & exam). Enroll in a course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.
Now that we have looked at counting, we've looked at some areas, and some very basic linears, let's move on to some slightly more complex linears, and start to take off some of the walls on projects. So let's go into our thumbnails here, and let's go up to page 6, and let's start to get an understanding of what our different wall assemblies are like. So it would be helpful to check out the notes here.
You see this note number 12 at the top is calling out a typical 2x6 exterior stud wall. All right, so we know what our exterior walls are going to be built from. Maybe let's go ahead and just check out some of these cut-throughs or details, so we can go on 1 on A4.2. We've got section 1 on A4.2 here, and we see this note 7 talking about the insulation at the exterior walls.
That's great, that gives us an understanding of the wall assembly a little bit, and let's even just go ahead down to our detail pages, so pages 15 and 16, and we can take a quick look through and just see if there's anything specific to exterior walls that we need to keep in mind as we're going through to do these takeoffs. So not a ton on this page, some window details, head details. Let's go over to the next one here.
We've got a few stair details, some exterior railings. Okay, 17 is going to be some waterproofing related details, and then 18 looks like we've got some roof edge details. Okay, great, so nothing in particular to really call out there.
I guess one other area to go back to is going to be for the height of these walls, so we can see that from the top of finished floor down here up to the top of plate for the roof, it's going to be about 11 feet, so let's assume an 11 foot height when we're taking off these exterior walls. That's going to be for the guest bedroom, the music room. The walls will be slightly higher, it looks like, so we can assume maybe 14 feet or something like that.
Learn Construction Estimating
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
So right now we are talking about a typical 2 × 6 exterior stud wall, and we'll just assume sheathing on both sides, obviously, since there isn't a particular detail. So let's go ahead and make our takeoff for this poly length that we're going to do here. We'll grab the poly length, and let's go ahead and give this thing a color.
Let's do a red for the exterior, and let's go ahead and say typical 2 × 6 exterior stud wall, typical 2 × 6 exterior stud wall, and then for the specification section, we'll give this a 0611 or 0611.00 wood framing. Let's go ahead and set that as our default for the time being here. So let's start in this corner, and let's just go around and do all of our exterior framing.
So just writing the outside of this home here. We can always do cutouts and things for the windows later, but right now let's just get a whole count of the framing. Framing is going to turn inside here.
We will run through the door since we'll have to frame the studs around it and above it, so we'll just count some of that. Same here. This door will be built into the wall.
More of the exterior framing around the outside here. So let's hit ENTER. So that's really going to be the exterior framing for our guest room, and let's actually note that.
We'll say at guest room, assume 11 feet high. So that's going to be at our guest room, and now for the framing at the music room, I don't see any different details. So let's just assume that it's the same makeup, that 2x6 exterior stud wall, but I do want to go see if we have a better height to assume.
So let's go to this detail A4.3 or detail 1 on A4.3. All right, here we go. We've got one on A4.3, and this detail 1, it says standard exterior 2x6 wood framing. All right, that's great.
That confirms our assumption, but there isn't necessarily a height here, so let's just click around through some elevations to see. So it's given us top of plates, top of parapet. If there's a four foot difference between these two lines, and this goes up about halfway, let's just say that the music room walls, let's say that it's an extra two feet.
Let's assume 13 feet high for the music room walls. So let's go ahead and start to do some of this take off here. And we'll just run this all the way over, and we'll hit ENTER, and then we will run it down here all the way through these doors, and we'll hit ENTER as well.
And since our scope is just the music room, we will just die these walls into the wall of the structure next to it. We don't need to start taking all of that off, but let's make sure that we select this take off, and then also select the take off that we've just done. So let's hit shift and select both of those, and make sure that we go into the properties, and we say we're going to call this the stud wall at the music room, and we're going to say assume 13 feet high, because it does appear to be a different height than what we have the guest room.
We've just done our exterior framing there, and to come up with that wall area take off, it's really just as simple as inputting a dimension into the depth field that you see here. And once you do that, you'll be able to see the measurement in either linear foot or wall area, which now will include that height or depth component, and will give you something like a square footage instead of just the linear. So with that, that completes our wall framing exercise.
I'll see you all in the next video.
