Dear Tim,
Please Help! When planning our new house with our contractor and architect we specified and were told that three skylights would be aligned with three corresponding windows below. The blueprint confirms the alignment. When the trusses were set one window was roughly aligned, one truss fell directly in the
center of another window. The third truss was also drastically off center. When asked, our contractor told us this was acceptable because that was just the
way the trusses happened to fall. We asked to have the skylights aligned according to the blueprint and were told that would incur additional cost. Are we correct in expecting these windows and skylights to be aligned according to the blueprint WITHOUT ADDITIONAL COST!
Your advice would be dearly appreciated! Thank You!
Chris L.
- - -
Chris,
You should not have to pay one penny for this correction. Get the person out to the jobsite who drew the plans. See what they have to say to the contractor. It is possible to make everything align, but it depends upon several things. First, I would want to know if the center line of each window has the exact same spacing as the truss interval spacing. The usual truss spacing is 24 inches on center. So, are your windows 24 inches on center or a multiple of this? Next, see if the trusses are 24 inches on center. The plans, if they are indeed good ones, should show the spacing. The plans should also show the spacing of the windows. Without this notation, rough carpenters would be on their own to place things where ever they felt like it.
The only bugaboo might be a specialized truss layout created by a hip roof. In these cases, there are often girder trusses that have to be placed a precise distance from one side of the house. The regular trusses begin to step inwards towards the center of the roof at 24 inches from these girder trusses. But even with this situation, a talented architect working with the truss fabricator, would have known exactly where the trusses would be above, so that the windows below could line up.
If you are still in the framing stages, why not relocate the windows? It might take a talented carpenter perhaps 4 hours to do the job.
Tim Carter
www.askthebuilder.com
W3ATB