Announcing a NEW Online Drafting School

PCIM has just opened a drafting school which can be taken online at http://101info.org. Courses include Residential Architecture, Mechanical and Machine Drawing, and Remodeling. These courses were built by a fully trained drafter with over 30 years experience.

Courses Under Construction
* Sectional Drawings for Residential Architecture (Will be online by the end of February, 2009)
* Remodeling Drawings (Will be online by the end of February, 2009)
* Manual Drafting Tools and Their Uses (Will be online by the end of February, 2009)
* Patent Drawings 101 (Will be online by the end of February, 2009)
* Survey Drafting 101 (Will be online by the end of March, 2009)
* Drawing a Straw Bale House (Will be online by the end of April, 2009)

Future Courses by 2010
* Basic CAD Drafting
* Drafting History
* Architectural Design
* Historical and Archeological Reconstruction Drawings
* Automotive Drafting
* Electronic Drawings
* Plumbing and HVAC Drafting
* CSI ~ Crime Scene Reconstruction Drawings

Tuition is paid by donation. In other words, pay what you can. Proceeds will go to The Parsons Corner Internet Ministries which includes:
Food pantry, clothing locker, & furniture storage for those in need at their local office in Athens, Tennessee. Payment for Web Space and Advertisement for the Ministry and its support functions. Computer equipment for the continuing of the ministry over the internet. Love Offerings to various evangelists contributing to and supporting the cause of PCIM in the name of Christ Jesus. Make donations, tithes, and offerings to local charities, food drives, relief efforts, & our supporting Church body. Missionary support to various missionaries around the globe. This includes monetary as well as tech support for their web communication and site needs.

Letter from a "How to turn a barn into a home" reader

Tim,

I really like your book. (How to turn a barn into a home) It's well written and easy to understand. I feel it will be VERY helpful to me when I begin to develop my barn building. Yours was much more primitive so I feel like mine will be a bit easier.

It was only 1 yr old when I bought it and it's a large barn-shaped tin building which, I am told will be practically maintenance free....only needing a wash now and again. The downstairs area already has a full bathroom in working condition and wiring is in place. I am a weaver and have 3 floor looms so the downstairs area will be an open floor plan with no walls, maybe a fireplace and an area for tv and maybe a small section for a spare bedroom.

The back of the barn will remain as a workshop and storage. You know how much room there is down there from your own experience. Currently, I live in the loft which was finished off and enclosed as an apartment type living space of 800 sq ft. which suits me and my collie, Cool Hand Luke, just fine for now. This will be a big project for me but I look forward to it with enthusiasm. I was fortunate enough to find a contractor living down the road from me and he offers to do all, a piece at the time or just give me free advise if need be.

A lot of the worst part is done for me but I already see many answers to my questions in your ebook so thank you very much for writing it!

All the best,

Joy

Received Text Ebooks Directory Question

Q. I'm on the page http://receivedtext.org/sub.htm where you allow free ebook submissions to be listed on your site. I'm wondering, I have several ebooks to submit. Most are free and some are for a minimal charge. Can I just email a list to you instead of submitting each one on your form?

A. Sure I have no problem with that. Just make sure that each one is list like as follows:

Ebook Name
Your Name
Short Ebook Description
Optional Long Ebook Description, max 300 Words
Ebook URL (Sales Page)
URL To Your Book Cover
Price Or Note If It's Free
Category Or Category Suggestion
Comments

Tim
http://receivedtext.org

Drafting Lessons Conversation from 101 Info Dot Org Student Message Board

Student 1031
I took the drafting board lesson called Drawing a Simple Floor Plan on a Drafting Board and it was wonderful and made something difficult simple. I see that you have other lessons online for architecture. Do you have any other drafting courses?

Tim
Sure do. Matter of fact I have a mechanical drafting, a machine drafting course, a course on turning a barn into a home, and a course on industrial layout. These are all being combined into an online drafting school at http://101info.org.

Student 1031
Are you planning to make other drafting / drawing courses?

Tim
Yep! I have several classes in the works right now at that URL. The courses I have under construction are Patent Drawings 101 where I teach you to prepare illustrations necessary to apply for a patent, Survey Drafting 101 where I teach students how to draw plats and site plans, Drawing a Straw Bale House where I describe the elements of designing a home built with straw bales.

There are plans for classes where you can learn Drafting History, Architectural Design, Historical and Archeological Reconstruction Drawings, Automotive Drafting, Electronic Drawings, and Plumbing and HVAC Drafting. I'm also a police chaplain and just finished a course through the FBI on Crimes Scene Investigation where I learned to do Crime Scene Reconstruction Drawings. I'll be building a course on that.

Student 1031
Are you charging for each class individually?

Tim
No, all these classes will be under one tuition. I have it set at whatever the student can donate for all classes available in one package on the 101info.org site, but students will be able to continue to register for the individual courses.

Straw Bale Homes - Advantages of Alternate Construction Methods

Let's face it. This planet is in a crisis. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. To create the energy we needed to sustain our modern comforts, we've polluted our atmosphere with countless gasses that will eventually warm the planet. A major part of this is the energy we squander heating and cooling our homes which is produced using fuels that emit greenhouse gasses. The solution is simple. Build homes that use less energy.

Earthen homes are at the top of the list. These are also known by the name of earth ships. Problem is that a majority of the living area on an earth ship is subterranean and doesn't meet many fire codes for egress as I understand.

One other is the chord wood house. This is also an excellent choice and I don't believe there are many downsides to this method except it's walls are nothing but firewood logs cut to length and put together with mortar like a brick house. I say it's a downside because we really need to save as many trees as possible. No, I'm not a tree hugger sorta guy, I just know that trees are the one element of nature that, if left alive, will scrub many of the bad gasses out of our atmosphere.

So then we come to building homes out of bales of rice or wheat straw. The straw is something we have been actually throwing away as waste in this country for years. Yet when put together as wall units, produce a very high restivity factor of R-39 to R-52 with a wall thickness of 14 to 16 inches. Wow, the common house built in America today using standard building methods is generally R-13 to R-19. R or resistivity is a number measuring a material's resistance to heat flow. R stands for resistance. Anyway, there is over double the difference in how much heating and cooling these walls can contain. Less energy used, less greenhouse gasses spilled into the atmosphere.

Once the walls are up, then the home is wrapped with a fabric that allows moisture to exit but not enter the walls and then is covered in about one inch of cement. These structures are as beautiful as they are functional. Even better is that only 20% or so of the structure is lumber so trees are saved. The cost is probably 50% less than standard construction methods and they last for ages. There are straw bale buildings in my area of Tennessee that have withstood the elements for well over a century.

Tim Davis is an Architectural Designer who has been in drafting and design since the late 1980's. He teaches Architectural Drafting over the internet at http://homedesign.8m.com, draws House Plans professionally at http://customhouseplans.8m.com and offers Free Strawbale House Plans at http://customhouseplans.8m.com/strawbale

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tim_J._Davis

My Ebook Titles and Websites

How to turn a barn into a home.
http://draftingservice.us/barnhomes/
Gives a breakdown of what would be needed to convert a Barn into a Home.
Ebook

House Plan Drafting 101
http://homedesign.8m.com
Architectural Drafting Class over the Internet. Covers Single and Two Story home plans.
Online Course

Learning to Draw House Plans in a No-Nonsense Way http://homedesign.8m.com/101ebook/
Architectectural Drafting Class taken from House Plan Drafting 101 in Ebook format.
Ebook

Received Text Ebook Directory
http://receivedtext.org
Directory with various ebooks and various topics
Website

Mechanical Drafting 101
http://draftingservice.us/m101/index.htm
Complete Mechanical Drafting Class. Offers free mechanical drawings for download.
Ebook

Architectural Details
http://homedesign.8m.com/details/
Architectural CAD symbols for use in Residential Drafting.
Downloadable DXF files

The Parsons Corner Ministries
http://parsonscorner.org
Biblical question and answer site. Includes message board.
Christian Website

Drawing a Simple House Plan on a Drafting Board
http://draftingservice.us/101boardlessons/
Free Architectial drafting board lessons
Ebook

Finding a Suitable Barn to Convert Into a Home

There is a trend lately to find unique and affordable housing and many have turned to converting a barn into a home. In my area of East Tennessee, there are some fine examples of this including the one I converted.

It's needless to say that there are many barns in various shapes and sizes all around. A vast majority are in bad shape. Please don't make the mistake of buying one that is labeled a unique fixer upper opportunity. Don't fool yourself. If a barn has gotten into the shape where the siding boards are starting to fall off, unless you're buying it for parts, my suggestion is to leave it alone. By the time the boards start falling off the sides, there's major flaws. The main trouble would probably be that the horizontal beams are rotting and the fasteners are turning loose.

The best candidate for remodeling would be one that was painted on the exterior walls and roof. This means that it was at least maintained to a certain degree by it's owners over the years. If your barn has some age on it, it would probably be best to first find all the areas that have been effected by weather or urine from the livestock that was kept in that barn. Animal urine sometimes has a high acid content and anything that has been contaminated with it really needs to be removed from the structure.

Look especially in the loft areas where hay may have been stored close to the outside walls. Chances are there may have been some rain water that had soaked in through the hay bales. This is where you will find most of any rotting of the floor boards. Take a look at the underside of the roof. If you see pinholes and sunlight coming through, water can also seep in. You'll either have to replace the tin roofing where you find these holes or dab the holes with a tar patch and then coat the roof with a fibered aluminum paint.

Inspect the interior walls and see what types of columns are used in your barn. 99% of all barns in the US are post and beam construction. If your posts are buried in the ground, check and see if there is any type of rotting. Older barns will probably not have pressure treated wood in their construction. If your barn is built with a wide open floor area, you are most certainly going to have to build masonry piers inside to support your floors and walls and also find a way to tie the existing walls into the new support system.

Check to see that the horizontal beams are not loose or if there is rotting between them and the columns. Look at the top plates for rot from water damage. If your columns are mounted on a rock or cinder block, check the bottoms of the columns for rotting.

Consult your local building inspector to make sure you can get the proper permits if needed. In my part of the country, building permits for remodeling are not required if you are in the county but your local codes may be different. It would be a shame to buy the barn only to find the powers that be will not grant the necessary permissions.

When I first began my project, all I had to work with was the old, empty barn. Being an old structure it was necessary to examine the entire building to make sure there wasn't any type of structural flaws. Thank goodness there was only one place that had to be bolstered. The inside front left corner was starting to slide off it's foundation stone. I solved that problem by hooking the column to my tractor and winching it back into place with a come-along. Then I built a buttress beside the column to keep it from moving again.

Tim Davis is a veteran Architectural Designer who also teaches architecture and drafting over the internet http://houseplandrafting101.com . He has just released an Ebook entitled "How to Turn a Barn into a Home". The info page for updates on this ebook can be found at http://draftingservice.us/barnhomes

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tim_J._Davis