Attic Wall

[Mainer]

I occasionally have a problem where one of my attic gable walls isn't completely built. On the attached you are looking through the incomplete wall at the attic floor. I've had this problem before and don't recall how I fixed it. Once fixed, I lock my roof planes but if I auto rebuild the roof, it reappears??? The main wall below is a pony wall with siding on top and brick on the bottom and the attic wall is a 6" siding wall. Should I alter some of the Attic wall specs (attached)?
Thanks.

[daydreamer]

Is there any particular reason you are locking your roof planes?
Did you draw any of them manually or was the area above the garage done like 1-1/2 story?
How about a picture of the plan for that area...

[Mainer]

Hi Rick,
The only reason I lock my roof planes is so I don't accidentally trigger a roof rebuild and make this problem reappear.

All roof planes were automatically drawn, none were done manually. The area above the garage is an attic, not 1-1/2 story.

[daydreamer]

Phil,

The only reason I questioned the 1-1/2 story was what I saw or didn't see through the upper garage window. It appears to look like living space.

Can you post a picture of the attic also?

[Mainer]

Rick,
Here is a Cross section and a dollhouse view of the attic. When I go into the attic and try to take a regular render view, what I get is the floor blow with a sheet of plywood horizontally in the middle of the picture? I hope this helps.

[daydreamer]

Hi Phil,

Does the first thumbnail look familiar?
Go into your Attic and see if your walls look like thumbnail #2.
If they do the wall behind the front door in the attic is either missing or is set to invisible. Change it to look like thumbnail #3.

Thumbnail #4 is the end result.

[Mainer]

Rick,
Oddly, my attic wall doesn't look like either of yours? You can see the whole thing in an above posting or as a close up attached. Previously this garage wall continued through my enclosed porch as an exterior wall so I changed the inside portion of it to an inside 6" wall and that didn't make a difference. I note that the opening in the attic wall lines up with my porch roof and not with the porch wall? I've deleted the entire roof and had it rebuild and same attic walls return with the same problem? I'm not sure what to try next?

[daydreamer]

Phil,

That almost looks as if you have a 2nd floor somehow with a Ceiling height of zero. It might just be the picture but look at the slight offset I have marked in your picture.

[Mainer]

Rick,
Something is definately wrong, check out the attached view from the ground. (I deleted the window.) There is no second floor, as I mentioned before I deleted the entire roof/attic and the problem reappeared when I rebuilt. Something in the main floor walls is causing this, but what?

The walls were previously okay then I shrank the plan and moved 3 of the 4 walls in by 6". I then had to rebuild the roof and that's when the problem showed up. I'm thinking of going back to the prior version, unlocking the roof planes, shrinking it again allowing the roof to rebuild itself with every wall movement, checking the front view with each move.

We may never know what the cause was but this is the only solution I can come up with. Thanks for the help.

[daydreamer]

You're welcome Phil...

Maybe it's just a misalignment. Did you try turning the reference on and going into the attic and double-clicking on each individual wall to see if "Align Below is "active"?

[Mainer]

Hi Rick,
Sorry I was slow to check back with you on this. Yes, I had tried the "Align Below" and it was not active. By going back to an earlier version of my plan, my attic wall over the garage is still intact but if I auto-rebuild my roof planes, I lose it? I just hope I don't have to do so. Construction estimates are trickling in and it looks like my plan is going to cost more than I want to spend so this 18 months of designing, shrinking and redesigning may all be for naught. My first plan was 3500 feet (dream land) and now it is down to 2300 (500 of garage and 1800 of living) and early estimates are I'm looking at $350,000 separate of land.

[daydreamer]

Hi Phil,
Well it was worth the try. Yeah, there is something wacky going on for sure.

That's $152 per square foot. I paid $137 in 2003 but I wasn't the GC.

You are planning on being the GC for the project aren't you?
And these bids are all from sub-contractors?

[Mainer]

Yes, I plan on being the GC. I'm still waiting for my largest quote yet, which is from my carpenter for his labor and the building materials. For the time being I'm using approximate estimates given to me by others that have been fairly close on the electrical, plumbing, foundation, etc. The square footage I mentioned above is for the footprint only and half of the daylight basement is finished so that is driving up the overall per foot cost. The other half of the basement is garage-workshop. As the attachment shows, I'm making full use of both floors.

[daydreamer]

Phil,

Looks like construction costs are pretty high in your area. When I built in 2003 I wasn't the GC. My builder charged me about $137 per sq. ft. of living space which is right at 3,000 sq. ft. I've got a "footprint" of about 4300 sq. ft. so based on that the cost per square foot would have been about $95.

I don't think I'll be looking at building a house in Maine anytime soon.