A five-question screen for the things that normally bring a licensed structural engineer onto a residential project, so the cost and the extra week land in your budget at design stage instead of in a correction letter.
Nothing here is a quote, a bid, an engineering determination or a boundary determination. We are a drafting and design firm: we coordinate with a licensed structural engineer and a Licensed Land Surveyor when your project needs one, rather than performing or stamping that work ourselves.
Reviewers do not decide this from your project type. They decide it from whether every load in the building has a traceable route down to the dirt, and whether a licensed person has put their name on that route.
Load path. Take a bearing wall out and whatever it was holding still has to land somewhere — a beam, a post under the beam, a footing under the post. The prescriptive framing tables in the residential code handle plenty of ordinary cases, but stretch the opening or stack something unusual above it and a reviewer will ask for numbers.
Lateral. We build on top of an active fault system here. Anything that changes how much the building weighs or how stiff it is — a whole new house, a storey added on top of an existing one — changes how it behaves in a quake, so shear walls and hold-downs get designed rather than looked up. That is why those two scopes bring an engineer in even when the floor plan is unremarkable.
Span. Ridge beams, vaults and the long uninterrupted openings a great room needs tend to run past what the tables will cover. Once you are sizing engineered lumber, calculations usually come with it.
Soil and slope. Expansive clay, a slope, a creek setback or a mapped fault corridor all push foundation design outside the prescriptive world. Some jurisdictions in our area will not take the drawings in at all without a soils report first, and the footings then have to follow whatever that report says.
Our half of the job is the set and the energy documentation — floor plans, elevations, sections, details, the site plan, the Title 24 package. Anything structural belongs to somebody who holds a license for it. Where your scope calls for that, we pick an engineer sized to the job, give them accurate as-builts and a framing intent they can price, and route what comes back into the architectural sheets. They seal their own work. We do not seal it, and we will not tell you a project is safe or compliant, because that is not ours to say.
The part that saves real time is the sequencing. An engineer who is brought in late, or handed vague dimensions, prices the work slowly and then produces structural sheets that disagree with the architectural ones — which plan check will spot. Deciding at design stage instead lets them size members while the drawings are still moving, so one coordinated package goes over the counter. Discovering the requirement at plan check instead usually means a resubmittal and a few weeks.
Our engineering and specialist coordination page explains how we manage that handoff, including surveyors and geotechnical engineers. If your project needs structural work and Title 24 together, the structural and Title 24 combination covers both under one coordinated submittal.
No, and we are not permitted to. Drafting, design and Title 24 documentation is what this business does; it is not a licensed engineering firm. Drawings and compliance paperwork are our output. Where calculations or a sealed structural sheet are needed, we engage a separately licensed structural engineer, who carries out that work and puts their own seal on it.
No — that is deliberate. It flags the conditions that usually bring one in so you can budget and schedule around them. The actual call sits with a licensed engineer and with the building department reviewing your submittal.
Only if you want to. Most clients let us handle it, because we already know which engineers suit which project sizes and we can keep their output matched to the drawings as the design moves. If you have someone you would rather use, we will coordinate with them instead.
Not necessarily. A modest single-storey detached unit on a level lot can sometimes go through on conventional light-frame construction with no separate structural seal. Slopes, clay soils, wide spans and bigger units change that fast, so it is better settled early than assumed.
The common rule of thumb is around four feet of retained earth, and any wall with something loading it from above — a driveway, a slope, a structure — regardless of height. Low garden walls with nothing bearing on them are often built from standard details. Each city enforces its own threshold, so confirm it locally.
Residential or commercial, drafting or Title 24 — send a few details and we'll follow up with next steps and a free quote.
(408) 676-8747
Sunny Drafting