Got a client whose design will include a hidden room. He wants a sanitized floor plan that will not show that room, along with the complete floor plan. Anyone ever deal with this?
Unsure how to do that exactly. “Hiding” that room means changing door schedules, electrical plan, walls and dimensions, sections. How do you show the electrician a plan that doesn’t include one of the rooms needing electrical?
Always something new…
Performance improvements for the prized homes of an influential developer who wanted us all to be able to own one.
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Replies
Ask him who the censored plan is for. If he really wants the builders to work with bogus blueprints, fire him. My guess is he wants the as-built drawing to not show the hidden room.
Any trades people could easily wire in, plumb etc, the 'hidden room' but who is this guy and what is the room to be used for? Is his name Hannibal, does he collect moths, these are all things you should check out Years down the road you might be fingered as an accomplice!
I'm just speculating. How about using plans without the hidden room for quoting. Then, after the contractor is hired, give him the real plans and pay any difference. If the contract is fixed price, your client will pay for a change order. If it's T&M, it won't matter.
I had an engineer friend whose dad was a commercial electrical contractor. He said they did hidden rooms all the time. Apparently, for high end clients its something that's seen from time to time. So, contractors are used to it, and they'll all know once they are on the job anyway.
Watch out, read the pharoahs buried their GCs under the floor. <G>
could be for anything, guy could work for the government... its cool, I would want one. They sell bookshelf doors right it JLC, or Fine Homebuilding, saw one just the other day.
Also, if I was in a high robbery house, or area, Id want my computer equiptment and such hidden.
Probably wants a fake copy of the plans for future, when job is complete.
Actually, they had a small city with its own cemetary for the pyramid builders. The architect/engineer/GC was a guy named Imhotep. The project was done by a permanent staff of skilled workers and supervisors plus large numbers of volunteers who did the heavy lifting. Sort of a "Habitat for Eternity" kind of job. The kitchens and dining areas have been excavated, it looks like they ate really well, especially by ancient standards. Lots of meat and fish. Some of the skeletons show that they did a good job of setting broken bones, and that some of them survived a long time after amputations.
-- J.S.
I thought the egyptians cut out the tounges of the workers! Let me know if Jody Foster is going to hide in there cuz I want to be in there with her.I built a fake room to hide a computer center by building a bookcase and hinging one section with the wheels covered by the skirt board.
Like this,
This is a hidden room but its kind of a novelty, its the kids play room, but its fairly hidden. The toe kick was not installed at this time but with it you have to look to see that it does not touch the floor. There are no wheels, just the soss hinges.
Doug
>I thought the egyptians cut out the tounges of the workers!
Absolutely no way. The permanent full time builders were sort of an upper middle class or upper class in the society. The volunteers were doing a good deed, just like people today who volunteer for religious or charitable organizations. That's why "Habitat for Eternity" sums up the project.
-- J.S.
It is amazing that all you geniuses have missed the blatently obvious...
In drafting there is a convention know as hidden lines. They look like this: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
You should know that. Just draw in the hidden room with hidden lines.
~Peter
Mrs. Stewart cuts the hems off her panties to create hidden lines.
LOL! With any luck, the plan checker won't even notice.
I love that answer!!!On this one, there is no permit required, so no plan review. Just happens to fall in an area of the country where they don't do permits. 'Course, maybe the clients chose it for that reason. And less a room and more of a closet. I don't know for sure what'll be in there, but my guess is papers, valuables...stuff you'd want to not be found in a home invasion sort of scenario.The idea I most go for here is to just regard it as a normal closet with a normal door, and after all workers are gone, make the changes. Don't know if they'll be satisfied by that or not.
what plans are submitted to the building inspector? he might not appreciate having bogus plans submitted real ones to the town are open to public scrutiny call it an open space or conservation area on the plans
could do like the pirates after the treasure was buried, off the guys with the shovels hey, no one's going to miss a few electricians
HEY!Who Dares Wins.
oopsh! found an electrician sorry about that, dude!
"I was walking down the street in my new leather jacket and a woman comes up to me and says, 'Don't you know an innocent animal died to make your coat?!' I told her that I didn't realize there were any witnesses and now I'd have to kill her, too."
George Carlin
Everyones going to know about it as soon as they start working on the house anyway. He's trying to be to secretive.
If it was me I'd hide it in plain site. Draw up the plans with the open space in it and have everyone do their thing. Treat it like another case of wasted space. Drywallers can drywall right over it. After it's all said and done go back and put it in. It's never going to be a secret if everyone works on it.
Of course now that everyone knows my plan I have to hunt them down and silence them. Sounds like an Imerc road trip coming up.
Who Dares Wins.
Gunner's got an excellent point here. I've finished off a few entries to secret rooms through bookcases and hinged panels. One was entered through the back of a closet. Another was a flip-up headboard on a bed for those night time home invasions.
Before we got there, no one on the job was aware the room would be secret. It was just another framed doorway. Sometimes I would be asked to go in after all other work was completed and build the bookcase, etc. Gord
St.Margaret's Bay NS
Think about uses for the room including:
1) A safe room for people in the case of home invasion
2) a room for a safe in case of burglars
3) a data storage space for sensitive financial information
4) Or just a place to keep or do something this guys doesn't want anyone else to know about (weird habits involving his pets; stolen artwork; his dungeon)Suggest to him the best way to get it done secretly is to use the walled in, wasted space idea, wait till the original GC walks off the job, then have his attorney hire a work crew (if he's this secretive, this is the least sneaky thing his attorney already knows about) brought in at night, in a truck with no windows, walked in by blindfold and sent out before dawn the same way, paid in cash.....He can paint it himself!
I do work like that!
My ex-BIL once had the task of drawing up a fake set of drawings for some government building. These were the set to be filed at the BI's office.
Maybe I'm looking at this too simplistically, but as long as you don't write "HIDDEN ROOM" on the plan, whose to know? Let them think its a closet or something. Then near the end of the job someone comes along and walls it off (or whatever they're doing to seal it off). I'm sure there is a famous saying along the lines of: if you want hide something well, you hide it in plain sight.
Who is gonna remember a closet? And what are the chances that the intruders you want to defend from are your sub contractors? :)
just tell him to pay the subs in the first place so they don't have to come back looking for their money?
Jeff
Buck Construction
Artistry in Carpentry
Pgh, PA
Why not show it as a normal, innocuous room. Depending on size and location it can be a closet, den, etc. If he wants it to have concrete walls, then it is an audio room. If it were me, I would leave it open to the access room (not even wall off the space) and call it an alcove. Then, when the trades are all done building the 'reading nook' and the CO is granted, the trusted craftsman comes in and hides it in whatever way that guy wants it hidden.
The people who worked on it aren't going to think twice about a room that seems like it belongs there. Filing false plans with the building inspector seems like a risky proposition. It seems like an 8x8 'wasted space' on the plans with the city would be a lot more obvious than a large closet.
Unsure how to do that exactly
Call it "Unfinished Bonus Room." That puts it quarely on the plans for all to see--but with no defined purpose.
Any finish-out of the space is handled as a CO or as a Remodel.
It will not be as cheap as the other spaces & finish out; but custom or discrete costs. Secret is downright expensive.
Didn't Capone do something like this.
I thought he brought in a boat load of Italians to dig his tunnels, when they were done he shipped them home.
Then that damn Gerrado(sp?) uncovered it!
You simply have to kill all the subs after they've done their jobs.
A few years ago hidden rooms were the "thing" at a Seattle area home showcase,ya know where you pay a few bucks and get to tour these mcmansions. So they had a million people go through these houses and see these secret rooms but before they could gain occupancy they had to be revised to egress standards, door width, fire access, etc.
I'm stumbling upon more and more "Hidden Rooms" these days in my remodeling adventures. Usually hastily wired for 220 and often there is a mysterious green leafy residue. I wondered how that guy was paying the rent.
A few years ago we built a " hidden room "for a very good customer.
We finished it on time,went to show him the room,but then...ah,..er, we couldn't find the *&**^#* thing
Hidden in plain sight--I like that. Try http://www.spacexdoors.com for the entrance. My building department has no reason or space to save plans. Everyday the trash is littered with rolled up blueprints. Maybe they scan them and recreate them with a computer and plotter--but I doubt it. I did one for a guy really paranoid about the world. The space already existed. I "repaired" it. No permit required. Tyr
> My building department has no reason or space to save plans.
LADBS does save plans. Alas, they don't have anything on older buildings.
-- J.S.