Technical information – House plans & construction

Essential answers to help you prepare your construction project, understand our plans, and estimate your costs.

How to prepare before building your home

Learn about technical information you need to know before purchasing your house plan. Several crucial questions arise during preparation for construction. What is my budget? What are the municipal regulations with respect to my new house or cottage? Below, we offer a collection of answers to your questions about our home and cottage plans, but also answers to general questions such as building permits.

What's included in our house plans Types of foundations available How dimensions are calculated Construction standards Building permits More about engineering BCIN certification (Ontario residents)

What is included in house plans and blueprints?

Drummond House Plans are ready to build upon delivery and contain all the information required to successfully complete your construction or renovation project.

4 elevations
Foundation plan
Ground floor plan
Upper floor plan (if applicable)
Roof plan
Truss diagrams and building sections (manufactured trusses required – no structural details included)
Construction details
Typical wall section

All Drummond House Plans are unique and really complete in their detailing. The cross-sectional or longitudinal views facilitate the understanding of your construction plan. The planning of the floor systems and roof include information such as the weight load of the columns, the beam dimensions, the right direction of the small beams, the location of the reinforced structures and the complete details of the roof. All of this relevant information will assure you a better and a more economical construction. Furthermore, all of our plans comply with the National Building Code norms in place at the time of their creation and include our Best Plan Commitment promise.

Engineering
HVAC (Heating, ventilation and air conditioning)
Electrical and plumbing plans

Our plans do not include any engineering. Should this be required, it would have to be done locally and at the customer's cost.

Due to the differences in geography and climate, each state, province, county and municipality may have its own building regulations and codes. Additional modifications to the plan may be required in order to comply with the local requirements and is the customer's expense.

HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) is not included in our plans seeing as this can be widely vary depending on local regulations. For instance, if a furnace is required, the customer is responsible for choosing its location. The plan may need to be modified to accommodate this.

Electrical and Plumbing plans or diagrams are not included in our plans. A local electrical and plumber will need to implicated in your project for this part.

Types of foundations available

The majority of our plans are designed with a basement to be developed (unfinished basement). We also have some models with finished basement or planned as a walkout basement, monolithic slab, floating slab, screw piles or crawl space.

You can see the default type of foundation provided with the base plan on the detail page of each of our plans in the "Foundation Type" section. Most of our house plans are available with several types of foundations (a fee may apply) and those are specified under the "Other available foundations".

Note that for the monolithic slab option, some cities or municipalities may require an engineer's seal according to the building code. The cost of obtaining the engineer's seal would therefore be the customer’s responsibility.

Search plans by foundation types

How room and home dimensions are calculated?

Here are various explanations of how we calculate the dimensions of interior rooms, width and depth of the house and the living areas as mentioned on our plan descriptions.

Square feet (square meters) associated with the total inhabitable space equals ground floor plus second floor plus basement (if finished) and corresponds to the total floor area including the exterior walls.

The total habitable surface excludes:

mezzanine openings
garages
bonus rooms and storage
unfinished basements

Construction standards

All Drummond House Plans collections follow the same construction standards listed below. This also applies to the plans designed in our 30 regional offices whether they be custom plans or renovation plans (depending on the renovation).

Poured concrete foundations w/3" rigid insulation
Standard joists or engineered floor framing
2" x 6" insulated exterior walls
Prefabricated engineered trusses w/insulation
Structural elements included (beams, lintels, posts)

Foundation: 3" rigid insulation installed on the interior
Exterior Walls: 6" batt insulation + 1" rigid insulation (total R = 25)
Roof (house): 12" batt insulation (R40) or blown insulation (+/-10")
Roof (garage): 12" batt insulation (R40) or blown insulation (+/-10")

New home building permits – what to do before ordering your house plan

We strongly advise that you speak with your local building department before choosing your plan to ensure that it meets local building regulations (ridge height, allowable footprint, setbacks, foundation, materials, format, garage dimension, other buildings, etc.).

Drummond House Plans are designed to meet or exceed the highest National Building Code standards in effect at the time of their creation. However, because of municipal bylaws, your planning department may require the use of special materials and regulations which require changes to the plan would be at your expense. It is also possible that your municipality requires (always at your expense) that a qualified engineer review the calculation of certain data on your plan before issuing your building permit.

We therefore strongly recommend that you contact your City Planning Department to find out about local requirements before purchasing and submitting your plans for a building permit. If your planning department requires more technical verifications, they will be able to provide you with a written list of the specific information needed, and we will validate this list with you, to include in your plan as much information as within the scope of practice of architectural technicians and designers. Note that your local planning department may require the plans to bear the professional seal of a licenced engineer for your area. This is at the customer's expense and is not included in our prices.

If, for your city or municipality, the seal of an engineer is necessary, you must buy a plan in PDF or the AutoCAD file of the Drummond House Plans model chosen, in order to have it legally stamped by professional engineer. An engineer cannot affix his seal on a hard copy of the plan. Please contact us for more information.

More about residential engineering

Some areas also require soils and/or foundation engineering and energy (often called heat-loss) calculations based on factors such as the amount of window glass -vs.- exterior wall surface areas, etc. Engineering for concrete foundations, local soils and geotechnical conditions, or for special energy or heat-loss calculations, is not provided by us.

IMPORTANT: In order to have the plans stamped at your local level, or reviewed and adjusted to your special engineering needs, you need to buy a reproducible set of plan, a PDF file or a CAD file of the chosen Drummond house plan. Please contact us for more information.

Our plans do not include any engineering. Should this be required, it would have to be done locally and at the customer's cost.