The dream of having a single person model an entire structure was admirable, but developing the software to do that turned into a decade-long struggle. Five years ago, I chronicled the development saga in my series on Fifty Years of Truss Design, Parts XI – XV. As the story told, the...

The creation of wall panel software is like the creation of all software – experienced insiders do it best. That was true with Gang-Nail’s AutoPan in the 1970s, which Joe Cotton developed while building wall panels for his homebuilding business. It was also the case with Ted...

After years in which dealers struggled from crisis to crisis, a slew of public reports and economic indicators suggest we can expect many more months of muddling along. Our surfing metaphor of two years ago has given way to the paddleboard, where the only way to speed up is to paddle...

The demand for wall panel equipment after World War II was unprecedented, even to this day. Industrialization was in the air, and factory-built wall panels became the gateway, even before roof trusses. Most of the action was in the affordable housing sector, driven by the mobile home, modular,...

Over the last couple of articles, I’ve spent some time discussing improvements that would improve both the energy efficiency and the ability of the truss system to withstand extreme weather conditions. If you’ve read those articles, you will know that I think it is ridiculous that we...

An attic truss with 7 feet room height – should it be designed for 20 psf (pounds per square foot), 30 psf, or 40 psf room live load? Per International Residential Code (IRC) Table R301.5, the minimum uniformly distributed live load for uninhabitable attics with limited storage is 20...

Driven by the dire shortage of housing entering the 1950s, Levittown sparked a fervor for homes to be built like cars on assembly lines. Fortunately, there was a crop of returning veterans ready to oblige, whether by building whole houses or just parts of houses. William Levett delved into...

Prefabricated wall panels made their first big impact under a government program in World War II. In 1942, the federal government began contracting with 50 existing prefab housing plants to deliver dwellings for 42,000 wartime workers. Since this work was highly repetitive and required rapid...

As I write this, I am sitting inside a warm office in Northern Ontario, looking out the window at near blizzard conditions, with heavy snow falling and –35° wind chill. Although it is very unpleasant outside, this isn’t necessarily unusual weather for this location, but what is...

In this final article about building our home, let’s talk about money and scheduling. We wanted our dream home to have the highest quality we could afford, built on time, without overspending. Here’s how we did it. Budgeting, tracking expenses, and cost accounting are in my DNA....