Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show: Recent Episodes

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Show Notes: This episode provides a comprehensive understanding of the benefits and processes involved in building panelized kit homes. Key topics include the importance of energy-efficient designs, proper sizing of heating and cooling systems, and adherence to diverse building codes. The discussion also covers the precision and efficiency of off-site construction and the adaptability of homes to various climatic conditions. Additionally, it offers insights into personalized interior and entertainment design, addressing practical aspects such as gas lines for outdoor grills and insulation for multi-generational living. The episode emphasizes the importance of thorough pre-planning and robust customer support, equipping anyone with the knowledge to ensure a seamless and efficient home-building experience.

Transcript:

Steve Tuma: If you want to stay to a good budget, if you want to stay to your schedule, we should make these decisions now in the design phase instead of while you’re building and a house is already up and then you decide to move something.

Interviewer: Hello everyone and welcome to episode 56 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. Joining me as always is the president and founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want, nationwide and around the globe since 1993, Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you my friend?

Steve Tuma: It’s another great day. I’m just thinking you say that since 1993, when we start we’re 30 years and a half year old. It’s amazing. We’re going through going strong, 30 years six months. That’s awesome. It’s great.

Interviewer: Yeah, well it’s helping people around the country and telling a friend to buy from us. So it’s kind of cool.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, it’s actually very cool.

Interviewer: Today I thought what we did with the last episode I’d like to continue with, and that was we had started taking questions from people who write in using the Landmark Home and Land Company website and just sending in general interest questions about panelized homes and kit home building. And I just thought today we might go through some more emails. So there’s a lot more to get through than what we got the last episode. So if you’re up for that you want to give it a shot again?

Steve Tuma: Yeah. It’s kind of like put Steve on the hot seat apparently, but I’ve been doing this a while. So I think we can get some good answers.

Interviewer: Yeah, of course. Yeah. So let’s start with one that, well, there’s this one that quite a few people have written in and asked. It’s simple but I think a very important question, I feel. And I think you’ll agree. So first question here from a person writing in, what are the pros and cons of kit homes and kit home building?

Steve Tuma: The pros and cons of kit homes and kit home building. That’s interesting because it’s really, really helpful in the way we put it together. At Landmark, we’ve developed a different process, kind of the one-stop shop where it’s not just the kit home process. It’s the design, architectural design, engineering, green codes, energy codes, site plan work where we put it together. So a big pro to our process at Landmark is that we don’t just help in supplying the materials. We help in the designing, obtaining permits, getting the plans together for permits, you understanding energy codes, making sure the house fits on the land, not just setbacks but also on the grade if you’re on flat land or if you’re on slope land. So there’s a lot of details there in the design.

And like we’ve spoken about in other podcasts, the designing process I think is very important to make sure it’s easy to obtain permits and also for a successful build, successful inspections, and staying on budget and on target. So that to me is an immense pro that people don’t always realize. They think, hey, this is materials, it’s wood, I could buy it anywhere. It’s like, well, it’s not true. It’s how you use it. Is it used effectively? Is the cost contained like we do? And is there knowledge and support to help you through the building phase?

And I think that’s extremely unique to Landmark Home and Land Company and what we’ve developed here, kind of the one-stop shop. I would consider that to be an immense pro that it’s interesting. Customers don’t even realize it when they call us. They call us to find panelized homes, the wood product. But as they go through there, a lot of them, almost all of them, will say, Steve, the planning is more important.

So that’s what we’re trying to get across is like, hey, what’s your project? How are you going to do it? How are we going to make it efficient? What are we going to do to help you stay on budget, help you stay on schedule? That’s an extreme pro to working with us.

Now the con to it is you got to think and make decisions. Ultimately someone’s going to have to do that. Whether someone decides how big their kitchen is while they’re designing or while they’re building, at some point they have to make the decision. It’s just better to do it when we’re doing the design phase on paper and PDFs. It’s easier to make an adjustment there instead of at the building site.

So what I found is some people think it’s normal because they must watch TV shows on doing changes as fun and doing changes as part of it. Well, it’s really only part of it if you didn’t do the thinking and decision making upfront and then stick to those decisions. So the con is that we’re going to work with you and kind of work with you to say, hey, these are things to think through now. If you want to stay to a good budget, if you want to stay to your schedule, we should make these decisions now in the design phase instead of while you’re building and a house is already up and then you decide to move something.

So that’s kind of something there. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t do a change to a panelized home. You can. It’s wood. We can help someone through if they need to. But it’s just more efficient to do it in the design phase. So there’s always little details here and there. Basically, we’re supplying a more efficient design and building system than conventional stick building. But that, I think, is it—the ability to design right, work it through, look at your whole project, look at the detail but also look at the overall project.

How does the house fit on the land? What’s the building department’s involvement? Then looking at it, hey, how big of a window do you want in the kitchen? Do you want a double sink in the kitchen, a triple, or a single? So we’ve got to look at the details and the macro view as well.

So what we find is our customer base, even though they may not understand the processes, they really enjoy it because that’s kind of the way fun part. It’s like, hey, Dreamland, let’s design this house, let’s make it work. And that’s where they get to be involved and really start seeing the home come to life. So those are the big, I would say, the big pro and the big con to it. In a sense the con is just really saying, hey, think it through. We’re here to help you think it through. We’re here to help you understand the project so you know what you need to think through if someone doesn’t already know and go from there. And some of our customers have built a lot of homes, others have never done it before. So we’re here to support it. So I guess I’m trying to make a con into a positive.

Interviewer: I was just going to say that when it comes to what Landmark’s doing in the home building front, the cons are really learning experiences. So that’s not a con at all really.

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s the interesting thing. I ask customers why are you doing this? And some people say, well, it saves me money. Other people say, I’ve just always wanted to. And the biggest thing I hear is this industry is strange. I want to know what’s in my house. I want to see it. I want to know what’s going in. I want to know the quality of my home. And I want to know why it’s done this way instead of someone covering things up. So our customers can get into it and know what their house is, how it’s built, how it’s designed, why it’s built, what the budget is, and then think it through. And it gives them immense control.

But I think the coolest thing is the satisfaction afterwards when they sit back and they’ll send a picture of the family barbecuing in the yard with this new home or the first holiday season or the first kid’s birthday. It’s kind of one of these monumental times in people’s lives where they sit back and go, this is cool. The amazing thing is how many of them come back and say, Steve, I want to do another one. That’s always an incredible pat on the back to us.

Interviewer: There’s no con in that.

Steve Tuma: No, it’s fun. I got off of a phone call today with a man that’s doing two of them, kind of his semi-retirement thing. He’s building two and then he’s going to build six more. And he said, Steve, everyone tells me home building’s hard. And it is. He said it can be stressful. He goes, but it’s cool. My wife and I are having a lot of fun. We’re building this house and we’re learning. He goes, it’s just so much fun.

Interviewer: That’s got to be nice to hear.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, it’s not just that, hey, I got a house and let me put my dog in it and put my truck in the garage. It’s a life-changing experience where the people, they’re satisfied. They enjoy it. So I guess that’s not necessarily something just pertaining to the house but it’s what it does to people. They understand it. One of the coolest things is we’ve had a couple of customers where their young kids are involved, like eight, nine, 10, 11-year-olds, in the budgeting, the design, the kind of management of the process. And you look at how that helps them live their life down the road to understand keeping a schedule, making decisions, being accountable for what you do. So yeah, I guess I got a little sidetracked there from your question.

Interviewer: That’s okay. That’s what we’re here for.

Steve Tuma: I’m trying to get extra credit.

Interviewer: We’re here to sidetrack you because we always get more information than we’re looking for. And that’s not a con at all. But yeah, let’s move on. There’s a question here which is sort of off of the subject of actual building a house but the financing of a house. Is it difficult to get a mortgage for a kit home? Is it any different at all, is the process any different than going and trying to fund a regular stick home sort of build?

Steve Tuma: Actually no, because panelized homes are conventionally built homes. They’re just done in a more efficient manner in a production facility. That question is probably coming up because a lot of the modular homes and HUD homes, the quote trailer homes, are financed different and there’s different disclosures and there’s different financing restrictions on those. They don’t always appreciate, there might be stigmas to them. But our panelized homes are just like a conventionally stick-built home. So the design, budgeting, appraisal, financing processes are pretty much exactly the same.

Interviewer: Yeah, I think I misspoke Steve because I said is it different than a stick home. But really it’s the same home. So my saying that I should watch that because the panelized homes are just like regular stick homes.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, that’s basically it. With our system we can control the quality, give a guaranteed cost, do a lot of changes. A lot of stick builders won’t do changes to homes. We’ll do it so it’s truly a custom home but we’re able to because of the efficiencies of the production line, we’re able to go through and still get people a high-quality custom home for their personal needs but also for fitting on the land properly.

Interviewer: Right. That’s interesting. The whole thing now is building these little add-ons or even separate little houses on a property, but how does that process work? Can you add on to a home in the future?

Steve Tuma: If someone wanted to, they can. And what’s really cool about that is you bring this up, it’s kind of a two-phased answer because some people plan on adding on in the future.

Interviewer: Oh right, yeah.

Steve Tuma: But to answer the question, just get to the point right now, yes, you can. It’s like a conventional stick-built home. You can take the siding off, add on to it, and go from there. I guess if someone wanted to do a ranch home, make it a two-story, they could do that. So yes, someone could add a garage in the future. But what’s interesting is we have had some people that are like, hey, we just got married, we don’t have kids but right now our budget allows for the two-bedroom home. Can we do the three-four bedroom addition when time allows? So we’ve had situations like that. And sometimes these additions are literally attached to the home. Other times people have a plan to say, hey, my parents are going to move in in the future, let’s make sure the land is laid out so we can have a separate kind of apartment, little granny flat, ADU off to the side. So yes, we’re fully capable of doing it.

We even a little while ago worked on some designs where they were kind of little designed units, little rectangular units that could be put together to add on. So someone could say, hey, if in the future I want to add an office, here’s the office module that we could then design just to attach. But here’s something else. Sometimes you think of additions of hey, adding a great room, another bedroom. Sometimes people do things on additions in the future that are kind of smaller. Okay, so let’s just say someone had a two-story home and they want a second-level deck. But right now it’s just not in their plan to put the second-level deck up there. We can do the framing for that wall for a bigger window, a bigger patio door so that when they go in and attach the deck they could just remove the siding, some of the drywall, and the framing’s already there for a bigger window or patio door that’s more useful for the deck. So there’s a lot of stuff that we can do to help people out. Oh, here’s another one. I mean, this is probably even more common is people saying, hey, in the future I’m going to finish a bonus room out, a bonus room above a garage, a bonus room above a main part of the home, or even situations of continuing the build into a basement or a walkout basement. So there’s always different things that we can do to do that. We just helped a family in Nebraska do a house like that. They wanted a basement but right now they weren’t in the position to go and finish the basement the way they wanted. It was going to be a huge home theater, family room.

So typically a basement might have some posts and a beam running through it which would block the use of the room just by having dropped beams and posts and variety of things. So we worked with them to go through and figure out what they were doing. And basically they had a family, 12-15 people that would come over and what they were going to do is put a big game room, home theater down there. So big pit couch, big swing theater.

Interviewer: Yeah. That’s a new thing now, people designing home theaters.

Steve Tuma: Oh yeah. And they’re going to put retro Pac-Man games and stuff like that in it. Right. That’s cool. Since we got in that conversation, what we’re able to do is use clear span floor trusses to eliminate the posts and eliminate the beams. And then we made their staircase to the basement five feet wide instead of a kind of standard three feet. So what that allowed is the structure of their home is there. They don’t have to go down later and go, oh, this post is in the wrong way. Where are we going to put the TV? It gave them like an open framework to put the TV wherever they wanted, the food, the bar, the little kitchenette, the video games, without the restriction of a post or a beam hanging down. And then a wider staircase when you got 15 people running up and down for sandwiches and munchies, it’s better to have a clear staircase. And apparently, they got together a lot. So there’s a lot of pre-thinking that we could do to make that future build, whether it’s finish a basement, finish a bonus room, or do a complete conventional add-on. We can really think it through with the people.

Interviewer: Right. And that goes back to when I had misspoke and said, you know, is getting a mortgage the same as for a regular stick home. Well, a kit home is a regular stick home. And if you want to expand on it in the landmark, then you would if you were just adding on to an older house or something. So it makes sense.

Steve Tuma: Right. And sometimes, you know, man, you got me going here. Here’s the thing. Sometimes adding on isn’t like just adding space. Sometimes people want to add different heating systems in the future that might be more efficient. They might need different stuff for technology. Some people have hobbies. We’ve had a bunch of customers that the family’s into restoring cars. So they’re like, hey, at this point, we only have one car, but, you know, we know we’re going to get another one and we’re going to want to lift so that my son and wife and I, we can change the oil, family time, work on the car, the hot rod, the convertible, whatever they have and go. So in that case, we’re like, OK, so what are we doing here? Right? You’re going to have a car collection and change your oil. You really want a nine-foot ceiling or do we have to lift it so that someone could put a lift in the garage for additional storage or to work on the car? And some people could say, well, that’s no big deal. It’s like, well, it kind of is because we have to have the headroom. But we also at times, depending on the lift that they have, have to do stuff with the reinforcement of the cement so that this lift can work because some of the lifts are, they can just be put on a regular four-inch slab. Others need a slab and a variety of details depending on the complexity of the design. So whatever work we can do up front… Oh, my mind’s going again.

Interviewer: That’s what I’m here for.

Steve Tuma: A variety of people saying I might put an elevator on and in the future.

Interviewer: Mm hmm.

Steve Tuma: So people are like, wow, an elevator, that’s pretty cool. Can’t you just stick a four by four hole in the floor? Well, it’s kind of true. You can just put like a shaft there, but there needs to be certain attachments for some of these elevators to be attached to the floor or to a wall system or to have certain mechanicals or electrical units there. So just all the little work that we can do to pre-design for a future elevator, it’s relatively easy to do now and it’ll save someone huge headaches and a lot of money when it comes time to actually install the elevator.

Interviewer: Because otherwise it’s not an elevator. It’s a fire pole.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, exactly. Or a real quick way down if you just take the floor out of the closet. There you go. I got to tell you a funny story now that we’re on this one. You know, most elevators, there’s like a driveline along the wall for residential that’ll go up one or two floors. We had one customer, kind of a good old boy. Great guy. Incredible, incredible person. He was just using an old forklift. I asked him what this garage was in the back of the house. He goes, that’s where I drive my forklift at night. I have a platform and it lifts from the first floor to the second floor. And I’m like, well, I don’t know what the building department will think about that. But yeah, we could put a little garage in the back of your house that just happens to be sized for a forklift. So sometimes people have pretty interesting ways of doing it.

The point I’m getting at even thought it’s humorous, kind of subject there, is we’ll work with you to get the house you want. That person of putting a forklift in a garage to make an elevator is the only person ever I’ve never heard of it before, but we worked it out. Other people, if they’re doing elevators, more conventional systems. But more and more people are getting into family time, not necessarily dining rooms but family rooms, TVs, video games, little card playing games, ping pong, home recreation type things. And then they’re also getting into designing the kitchens a little bit more precise for their exact use. And then I’m seeing a lot more with decks and people that they’re spending time. It’s like, man, I’m working at home. I got to get out, sit in the yard, and where are they doing this?

So even though it’s not technically part of the panelized home, it’s part of the lifestyle that our product and service helps where if you’re sitting there and you bought your beautiful lakefront property, you probably want to know where your fire pit is, where this goes, where your driveway is, different things like that.

Interviewer: You had mentioned something about the guy wanting to take his forklift from one floor to the other. You said you’re not sure how the building department would react to that, but that gets us to a good point. Another question that comes in a lot is about permitting and what permits are required to build a kit home. What are the differences between building the permits for building a kit home and building a standard house?

Steve Tuma: It’s pretty much the exact same system because it is a conventional stick-built home just more efficient in our design processes make it easier and cleaner for our customer and the building department. So there are actually areas in the United States and even internationally that don’t require permits. And then there’s places that are extremely picky in the permit requirements. But either way, we’re betting a thousand percent every customer has gotten permits. So we’ve helped people whether they’re in a little town with a really picky stickler of a plan checker or if you’re in one of these bigger places where they’ve got engineers and people that go over every single house design with a fine-tooth comb.

So the process is the same and we’re fully set up to work with it. I work with the building departments to find out what they need. If they do have odd requests, which more and more of them are getting with some odd requests, we’re fully capable of getting through those details. So if it’s a smaller town where you have some Barney Fife type guy who’s going to take control and make your life a little different, we’ve worked with situations like that. And then there’s also situations where you just have these big building departments that just never seem to finish the plan check process. We’ve gotten through every single one that we’ve approved that we’ve been customers asked us to develop plans for. They’ve all been approved and it’s actually kind of fun because sometimes you do see something that makes no sense initially but after talking to the building department you’re like, okay, I kind of understand this now why you’re asking for it. Don’t know why they’re the only one in the country asking for it but that’s what they need, we’ll figure it out.

Interviewer: Hmm. So let’s get into some geography. There’s some people writing in and asking if there are any restrictions on where I can build a kit home. And I’m not—I’m not sure if they mean are there states that frown upon kit homes? I doubt that very much, but are there any restrictions to where you could build a kit home on a slope, on flat land? And you know, what’s your answer to that?

Steve Tuma: We haven’t run into it anywhere, whether it’s some guideline or law or where it’s a, you know, a problem with the land. Now, occasionally and rarely, like if we’re doing something in the Rockies or in the Sierras or remote areas, sometimes people will have a piece of land that’s been in the family forever. And great grandpa had a Model T that was, you know, five feet wide. So the road is six feet wide to to access it. Now over time they’ve probably made it wider just for modern cars and whatever deliveries. Occasionally you end up in a situation where someone just has an extremely unique building site that is harder to navigate, but we know about those. And what we do is we work with the customer still to take advantage of our system so that they can work with it. And then generally in a case like that, we’ll deliver our materials to where the safest point is. And then there’ll be a little truck that takes it from that, you know, down the windy curvy road. Because some of these sites where our customers have built on are just spectacular. You could be going through groves of trees that are 150 plus years old on a windy road. They weren’t thinking of 80-foot trucks at that time. They were thinking of, you know, 20-foot car at most. So you don’t want to cut the trees down. You don’t—you don’t want to hurt it.

But what we’ve done is worked in a way so that our delivery and the panels are put in an advantageous method so that the person can still take advantage of our system and build. Now, I’m bringing it up—that’s rare. That’s like, you know, two-tenths of a percent of our customers that are in a spot like that. We’ve had customers on islands, whether they’re private islands or some of the islands off the Southeast or in the Northwest where we’ve delivered to it. But as far as building, you know, if you look geographically on the side of a mountain, a steep mountain, or over a swamp or whatever, as long as the building department allows it, there’s a way to do it. Now the caveat to it is sometimes these cost more. We had a customer where there was a wetland situation, just the nature of the way the ground was in that area. It was on the East Coast where we had to work with the local environmental departments to figure out the proper type of low-impact, low-environmental-impact foundation. So basically a house was built on a pier, and for every square foot of pier footprint, they had to have a plan to mitigate two square feet elsewhere on the property or pay into a fund that would do it somewhere else in the area.

So we’ve been in some pretty incredible situations. One of the coolest ones was a man in full of boulders, big ones, not like 20 feet tall but two feet, five feet, 10-foot boulders. And he didn’t want to drill into the boulders. So what he did is he had a surveyor—we suggested get a surveyor out there—to find out where there were openings in these boulders where a piling could be placed on raw ground. We then used those areas to develop the piling foundation to support the house he wanted. It was kind of amazing. So if someone wants to do it, we’ll figure it out. Now what I brought up to you is very extreme. Most people, they’re building maybe on the side of a mountain that might be a little steeper but offers an incredible view. Let me tell you where people get caught and they don’t always understand it. It happens in the Midwest a lot. I’ve heard stories that 90% of America’s wetlands have been filled in compared to 200 years ago just for farming or cities or whatever. So what people don’t realize is that when you fill in a pond, you’re putting something semi-solid on top of something soft. Because if you go to the edge of a pond and stand there, you’ll sink. I’m a 200-pound guy. You could go sink. I mean, imagine putting a house on there. So people don’t always think of it. So if you’re by lakes, rivers, areas where there’s likely to be filled-in ponds, it’s always good to get a geotechnical report to find out what’s going on there.

We had a customer in Southern Illinois who said this problem’s not there. This land’s been in the family 120 years. No one’s filled anything. And I said, you should check this out. It’s just one of these gut feelings. And I tell that to a lot of people. And that exact situation happened. He was planning on a three-foot or four-foot crawl space. Well, when they started excavating, he hit a filled-in pond. His basement wall ended up being 14 feet tall to overcome this. Kind of quite the budget killer. We could have checked it out up front, but he wanted to be in that specific spot to take advantage of the view. Now again, that’s an extreme situation, but it shows the help that we can point things out to people and then also work with them if for some reason an odd situation comes up. So I would say we’ve seen a lot of different situations. Hurricanes, high snow loads, landslide situations, soft soils, hard-to-reach locations. So it’s kind of fun. But if we know the details up front, I think we can overcome anything. We haven’t tried the moon yet, maybe in the next few years.

Interviewer: You know, there’s—pardon me for this because I’m bouncing around with these questions as I’m looking at them. They’re not in any specific order. But I’d like to go back to our mortgage question. And this one kind of hits on that as well. How involved is Landmark and what are the available financing options for panelized homes?

Steve Tuma: Well, we understand financing. But generally what customers do is work with a local bank or credit union. And I’ll tell you the reason why, especially if it’s a smaller bank or a smaller credit union, they have a better pulse on what’s going on in the community. Some of the big nationwide banks, you know, they send it to underwriting and who knows where. And someone that’s not even tied to the community may be making a decision, whereas sometimes these smaller credit unions or local or regional banks, they’re people in the community. So they know the nuances of a town. They know the nuances of what’s going on. They know the nuances of the customer. So a lot of people will work that way to get a loan. And a lot of those banks and credit unions have very flexible programs.

There’s also the people can work with farm credit services in more rural areas where I believe that’s through USDA where they help people in rural areas get loans. You know, sometimes rural areas there aren’t as many appraisals. You know, if you had a town of 300 people, you know, how many comparables are there in that area of a similar home? Or a lot of those towns, the houses don’t turn over. So sometimes these loans are there to help those communities get through it. A lot of people have cash. They borrow from their own savings or retirement accounts. Occasionally there’s a lottery winner. And then sometimes people use, you know, hard money investments which are more based off of the asset that is being built more than credit or income. So we have, you know, sometimes self-employed people or people leveraging their retails themselves.

But I think the point of what you’re asking is they’re financed just like any other new home construction. I think banks actually like working with us because there’s a definite control and process to helping an owner-builder build their home. Now some banks will, you know, double check someone if they’re being an owner-builder, make sure their budget’s right, make sure that it makes sense, make sure the appraisal’s right. And they don’t want people to get too aggressive. A bank’s not likely to work with someone if you say, hey, all my friends are going to help me. I have zero labor costs. You know, they’re going to be like, yeah, I don’t think anyone’s got friends that are going to build a whole house for free. Someone might help you here and there. But, you know, the chances of everyone showing up and doing everything for free is kind of limited. So most people, unless it’s direct family, you know…

Interviewer: Or the Amish community.

Steve Tuma: Yeah. Yeah. They just do everything on their own. But it’s kind of smart. But that concept that you bring up there of helping each other is where like the owner-builder thing kind of comes out. So we do have a lot of customers where they’ll either be the general contractor and hire people. And there are a lot of families where the trades are in their friends and family and they can do it. We have had customers that literally have been involved with everything from, you know, excavating for the foundation to cleaning the house, you know, the last day before they move in. So it’s kind of incredible. But, you know, the financing sometimes you’ve got to if you’re going to be doing a lot more work on your own, your bank is going to have to understand that and have a, you know, they’ll probably just want to double check to make sure that you’re really capable of doing things and that your budgeting’s right. You don’t want to fool yourself and say, hey, I’m going to buy everything on sale for 90% off. The chances of that happening are very limited. You might get a deal here and there. So it’s still good to have a realistic budget. And then if you save something, you’re steps ahead.

Interviewer: Yeah. You’d mentioned something about wetlands and the, you know, the there are fewer and fewer wetlands every year it seems like. But how do the Landmark Home and Land Company kit homes, how can you prepare those for environmentally friendly living? Is that something built into your system?

Steve Tuma: Oh yeah. Some states have green codes to make sure that you’re like water usage is right. You’re not using exotic materials. You know, where are you dumping things so that people aren’t taking toxic materials and just throwing it on the side of the road. So, you know, places that have green codes, we can supply that for the building permit. Other people that aren’t in areas where there are green codes, which is most of the country, we can still give them guidelines if they choose to, you know, want to pay attention to follow that. It’s also in the energy efficiency. A lot of people say, hey, I’m just going to insulate this house like crazy and I’m going to save, you know, all this money. Well, it’s not just the insulation, it’s your windows, it’s the lighting, it’s the heating and cooling system and sometimes even personal activity.

Interviewer: Sure.

Steve Tuma: You know, on a hundred-degree day, do you want to sit there with your front door open, you know, while the air conditioning is going. We can get a little deeper into organic design as well. So, you know, the types of overhangs to keep sun out in summer, orientation of the house, where are you putting windows, where are you getting things that are heat sinks to keep you know, gather heat during the day and release it at night in the summer—I’m sorry, in the winter. So there’s a lot of stuff that we can do, you know, in green, kind of organic design. More and more people are asking about it. Ten years ago, people would ask but very few would do. But I think now people are kind of understanding the benefits of it and they’re wanting to get this taken care of. And what’s amazing is some of these systems are getting to be more and more efficient every year. So the technology, say in split heating and cooling systems, is far advanced compared to where it was just years ago. So people can build very energy-efficient homes.

We can even get into the designing of the heating and cooling systems so that people’s heating and cooling systems are sized properly because you don’t want too big of a system. You don’t want too small of a system. You want it so it’s designed right for the climactic conditions of where you’re building and also the specific design of your exact home. A lot of people are still out there saying, well, you know, I’ve always put a hundred thousand BTU furnace in this type of home. Well, that might have been cool 30 years ago when insulation wasn’t as good. But now that people are insulating their homes and homes are, quote, tighter for heat and cool transfer, you don’t need as big of a system. So if you put too big of a system in there, it’s going to actually burn more fuel.

People don’t understand that. It’s not something that you see. You don’t necessarily see that dollar going out your heat duct. You know, people just think it is what it is. But there are ways for us to help them go through and design situations like that and then specify certain lighting so that it’s more energy-efficient.

Interviewer: Right. It’s pretty cool stuff. And we had just—you just mentioned green codes and earlier we were talking about building codes in general, but I don’t want to put too fine a point on it. But I’d like to—I’d like to go back to another person who wrote in asking are there any specific building codes for panelized homes? Can we hit on that again just for a moment?

Steve Tuma: Those codes are the same as if doing a stick-built home. The code is actually the same. It’s a national code that might have adaptations, you know, for certain states or certain areas. But then there’s also that—that code will also adjust for different conditions. So it’s the same code. But if you’re building a house, say in Iowa, on a flat piece of land where Iowa doesn’t really have earthquakes and that building site. But then, you know, so maybe that’s an area where it’s a 20 or 30-pound roof load and a 90 mile an hour wind speed. Well, if you took that exact same house and stuck it on Key West facing south, you might have one hundred seventy-five mile an hour wind speed. So we got to make sure that, you know, the home can’t get blown over. But then so—and it’s not just getting blown over, it’s how is it attached to the ground so that the foundation doesn’t get pulled out. So then again, if you took that exact same house and stuck it in Leadville, Colorado, or say Lake Tahoe California or Nevada, suddenly you’re on a hundred seventy-five pound snow load. So even though the floor plan looks the same and the exterior of the house looks the same, now the biggest force is a hundred seventy-five pound snow load pushing down on the house. It’s not necessarily the one hundred seventy-five mile an hour wind speed from Key West. So to answer your question, the code is the same. The application for the house and the specific building site is where we help a customer to make sure it’s put together right, designed right, but also the plan set is proper for the building department.

That—that’s—that’s the key from this. And it’s, you know, we say we sell panelized homes. The reality is we’re helping people with the design to make sure they get the right house, make it easy for permitting, and then build the right house. And if they’re sitting there, you know, in a big snow, they’re not sitting here worried about their roof. If they’re sitting here in a high wind speed area, they’re not worried about the wind.

Interviewer: Yeah, makes sense. A lot of these questions are really what you would think of as real basic questions, but I think they’re really important. And, you know, there are no stupid questions if you’re actually just in the process of learning about something. So one of these is a lot of people asking about the assembly process of a Landmark Home and Land Company kit home. Can you kind of just answer this question sort of in a—I don’t know, concise way that’s not too long and tell us what the—we’ll see if that’s possible.

Steve Tuma: But yeah, yeah, I can’t. Basically, we’re doing a more efficient system than stick building. We’re building it offsite. It’s computer-controlled drawings, computer-controlled saws and assembly systems so that we have a precisely built home. So the floor systems, we design dimensional wood like two by 10s or two by 12s. We can go to I-joists—they’re an engineered product—or we can go to open web floor trusses so we can design the whole floor system. We deliver the materials for assembly on site. The walls are panelized. So what that means is we pre-build them so they come in a panel. So a conventional stick builder might go get a variety of two by fours, cut them, make a wall and put it up where we deliver for an exterior wall a two by six wall 16 inches on center with OSB sheathing, headers installed, and the rough openings installed as well. So you’re not sitting there having to cut and measure, cut angles, you know, build something, build a flat wall in a, you know, out in a field. You’re just taking the panels and putting it up, kind of wall one next to wall two next to wall three. And then we deliver a roof truss system where the roof trusses are then placed on top, and then they’re sheeted with OSB or plywood sheeting, you know, per customer specification. So what you’ll find the quality of labor and availability of labor in the United States is harder to find. So it’s easier for a crew to come in and put it together. You basically need one that understands framing or lady and then a couple helpers, kind of the muscle to move the walls in place, hold them in place, nail them down, plumb them, and go on from there. So the actual process is faster, more efficient, less waste. It’s just cleaner. It allows a crew to get in and out and less of a chance of errors because everything’s been pre-designed. It’s a matter of just assembling components instead of hoping you have the right materials, cutting it right, hoping you cut it right, hoping you assemble a wall right and hoping it goes in place. And the cool thing about it is we’ve got very clear and accurate assembly plans that show what each wall panel or truss looks like and then specifically where it’s placed.

Interviewer: I mean, there’s something in the house—what you’re talking about is something I’ve wondered about too. So what you’re saying is it’s pretty much a contractor—any good contractor can put together a kit home and it’s just that much more efficient. But are people who are buying Landmark kit homes, Landmark Home and Land Company homes, are they looking for a specific contractor or is it just pretty much find a good one?

Steve Tuma: Basically, any framing contractor can do it. We’ve had customers do it themselves. Now I only suggest that if you have a knowledge of it. But yeah, pretty much any contractor can put it together. Now some of them will be like, I’ve heard of panelized, I’ve never done it. So there’s a little bit of a mind bend where they got to go through and say, hey, this company’s doing over half the work, it’s quicker and easier. So some guys that run a tighter business are going to be like, hey, wait a second, I could charge less, I could get in and out quicker and get to my next project and build more houses during the building season. Other people that don’t understand their business as much are going to be like, I don’t know, how do I figure this out. Because I’m not always convinced these guys know how to price. They know what they did the last house and this house is closer, for they’ll charge the same. But we’re always available to help a customer and their contractors understand it and work out how we work together—the delivery process, how it gets delivered, the equipment they’ll need to unload it, the equipment they can use to assemble it, the type of crew. And then really we just want them to know we’re here, we’re here to help. If they call, we’re going to answer the phone, talk to them, answer whatever questions they have. But amazingly, we ship the homes all over the country and sometimes internationally. And I think our plans are so well done and our assembly plans are there that it’s pretty rare to get a call from a framer. It’s more like, hey, this got done quickly. Let me know if you have any other customers where I can help.

Interviewer: Yeah, that just goes back to that world famous Landmark Home and Land Company customer service, man. You’ve got to be proud of that.

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s the bottom line. Sometimes people will ask, well, hey, what’s the difference of your panelized home versus stick building or modular? And I could tell them about the product. The reality is it’s the customer support, the knowledge, and it sounds weird, but caring. I had a customer—I was relaxing last night watching the news and 9:30 at night a customer called me to ask a question. We talked about it, had a good laugh, and two minutes later he was off. He was there with his wife trying to figure out a dimension and what might work for their kitchen dining room area. And they happen to be together so we were helping. They’re putting a budget together to go to the bank this week and get their project going. So it’s not just help as far as, hey, can you set me in the right direction? But it’s also customer support, which is sad to say, as all of us have experienced, customer support does not exist in the world. There’s too many AIs or computers or send an email in, we’ll get back to you in 48 hours.

In our world, I’ll answer the phone, we talk to the people, get things taken care of and walk through it. And we’re proactive and very active on that. So we’re able to do that because we care about the customer, we care about the product. It’s the customer’s house, but we still kind of think it’s ours. But it also leads us to having a better set of plans and a better upfront process to make sure everything’s clear so that less questions are brought up because the answers are right there in the assembly plans or the plans. But we understand odd things happen. Every once in a while something will happen. There’ll be an inspector that comes out of nowhere with one of the weirdest questions anyone’s heard of, but we’re here to answer the question and work them through it if one of those situations arises. So it’s the customer support that really matters. And the knowledge and the availability of knowledge. Now, we’re not a committee-run company. We’re lean and trim on taking care of people. So chances are if someone calls me, I could give them the answer right away. If not, if they do stump me on something, I’ll get the person right away to get an answer so that they can move on with either their design project or building or budgeting or whatever they’re doing. So it’s the customer service that really, really sets it apart. And I think people will realize it’s not something that people always ask about up front, but when they’re in the design and building phases, they realize the benefit of it. And that, I think, is we just care. It’s fun. It’s cool.

Interviewer: It’s just so important. Customers are friends. The passion of it. As you know, Steve, I was talking to you about here in the studio, I had a new piece of equipment and a lot of questions in the company we bought the equipment from. That guy was right on it, man. He was there for us. And I think Landmark is the same way. It’s just so much about customer service and building those relationships.

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s exactly what it’s about. And that’s pretty much what separates the good from the bad. And we choose to do this. We enjoy it. I founded this. It’s like, this is a great time helping people. Like we spoke about earlier, it’s not just sell wood and build a house. We’re affecting people’s lives. People’s lives are different. They’re able to help their parents live. They’re able to get their kids into a better school district. They’re able to have space for a hobby or family get-togethers or save money or do whatever it is or get a more comfortable home. So that’s what it’s about. And you don’t do that just by saying, here’s a great piece of wood. No, you see, we’re saying we’re helping them build a home and environment so that it works well. And I don’t really know how to put it across other than to say we care. And we’re there to help people. It’s in our blood. It’s also a great time, like I say. It’s really cool.

Interviewer: I think that was the best answer you could give. You got time for another question? I’d like to bring one that’s kind of off the wall. But a lot of people write in asking, we’re always talking about the exteriors of houses and building walls and roofs and everything like that. But what about prefab home interior design ideas within your plan system? And if you go on the Landmark Home and Land Company website, there are so many plans, it’s mind-boggling. But as far as designing interiors and the design ideas that you guys come up with and how adaptable are there and how easy is that process?

Steve Tuma: It’s actually part of our process. Now, there’s two parts of it. There’s the interior designer, which sometimes customers, the wife or daughter will do that or they’ll hire a professional interior designer to do that. But it kind of ties together along with our work. So let’s just say someone had a room with a couple doors, say a big living room with a couple doors going into it and windows over the balcony. Someone could say, be like, oh, I’ll just paint it white. Well, someone might come in and say, no, I want to put a skylight in there. I want a patio door. I want to have the wood trimmed inside with walnut. I want to have a certain finish. I want a tray ceiling. I want arch door openings instead of squared off door openings. I want barn doors instead of regular doors or I want pocket doors. So we’re not necessarily driving the actual design of what color, but we’re helping the customer achieve that when they say, hey, I want a patio door. I want a huge accordion door. I want to have a sunken living room for certain things. Or hey, I want to have this type of fireplace, southwest like a Kiva fireplace, different things where we can work with them to make the structure and the design is important.

Now, we’re having more and more people that are getting more involved with the interior design and our design processes, whether themselves or with professional people, but sometimes this can affect the permitting. And what a lot of people are doing with these outside entertainment areas is having fireplaces that are in the house and outside of the house—one unit with dual exposure. That can affect energy codes and a lot more building departments want to know what you’re putting in there. What’s it fueled by? Is the venting right? So it’s kind of weird, you know, sometimes someone might say, oh, interior design, it’s just colors and wallpaper and curtains. Well, not necessarily. It could be your fireplace, and suddenly it’s like, is there enough space? Is this fireplace at floor level? Is it raised on a hearth 12 inches? Is it higher up? Is there a TV on top of it? Is there a bar to the side or a buffet for serving food? So a lot of these little things we’re getting more and more involved with so that people can understand what’s going on. And sometimes it’s as simple as, maybe it’s not really interior design and stuff, I’ll call it like entertainment design—I just made that up. But you know, like in the back, say you had a back deck and you’re going to have a gas grill and maybe a little outdoor refrigerator. A lot of building departments want to know, how’s your gas line coming in? You know, if you have an outside electric socket, is it covered to be weatherproof.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: So there’s a lot more of those details we’re getting into. And I think I’m probably sounding repetitive, but we’re helping someone here build a home and an environment, not just saying, hey, here’s a stack of wood, have fun moving into it. We’re helping them do that. So not everyone’s going to realize the situation of, hey, I want to put an outside grill, that a building department might say, well, what’s the fuel for it? Is the piping going to be the right size? Different things like that. So that’s pretty cool.

And then let’s just go back to this thing. Suddenly you have a patio, say a regular deck, and then someone’s like, oh, you know, we’re in a sunny area. We want to make it a three-season room. Suddenly you put a roof over it. Is that insulated? Is that a cathedral ceiling? Is there a ceiling fan in that cathedral ceiling of the porch roof? Are there outside heaters, outside coolers? It’s pretty amazing how, hey, let’s just make a barbecue area in the back and suddenly it becomes a little bit of an atmosphere where they like the idea of us being able to design it in. And that’s kind of fun. And that’s just part of our service is kind of making sure that everything goes through well. And that’s because we choose to help people with one of the harder parts, which is designing the house right so that it’s easy for a building department to understand and approve the process.

Interviewer: I think that, uh, I think you hit on some important parts of this whole process in that last, uh, that last little exchange we just had because, uh, you’re building a place where people are going to build memories. So you’re, you know, that’s the thing. And it’s, that’s what I like about Landmark Home and Land Company. You’re not just as you said throwing sticks together. You understand what’s going to happen in this home once it’s built and what it is.

Steve Tuma: Ya, what’s interesting is, you know, 15-20 years ago, people were building homes for their family, moving up, moving to a new area, wanting a more efficient home, whatever. I would say ever since the economic crash in ’08 and even now with, with, uh, you know, the COVID, you know, a couple of years ago, uh, there, there’s more and more people involved in what I call heirloom houses where the land has been in the family for a long time. So the family—and the family could be two, three, and sometimes four generations—are working on a design or, oddly enough, unfortunately, we’ve had two where chalets were burned in the mountains up in the Western States and the family’s rebuilding the home that grandpa built way back. But it’s got to be to, you know, modern things. The family might be bigger. The family might not be in a formal dining room now; that might be in a big great room. Right. So we’re working with a variety of projects where it’s different generations of the family that are involved. So it’s a little bit of, hey, let’s make sure grandma and grandpa can get in early, but hey, let’s also make sure that there’s a spot to the side where the little kids can get a little loud. And so the—sometimes that’s floor planning. Sometimes that’s going through and saying, hey, let’s put some insulation in the grandparents’ walls between the grandparents’ room and, you know, other parts of the home. So it’s kind of interesting. And sometimes, like say in the case of like a fire rebuild, sometimes there’s very strict guidelines. Like you can rebuild the exact same footprint or the exact same square footage, you know, that we have to work with. Other times it’s, you know, it’s an open platform to design whatever you want.

Interviewer: Yeah. So well, that’s going to wrap it up for this edition of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But before I let you go, Steve, as we usually do here on the podcast, tell our listeners how we can contact Landmark Home and Land Company and how we can find out a little more about the company and about how, you know, people can become a home owner builder.

Steve Tuma: Well, these podcasts I think are great. You get a flavor of how we can help. I think you said this was episode 56. There are more of these podcasts, but there’s also our website at LHLC.com. It’s kind of the initials—Landmark Home Land Company. So LHLC.com. There’s a variety of plans, just different conversations on things. You can email us there. And there’s a phone number—1-800-830-9788. 800-830-9788. And Mike will work with you from there. I kind of take over when someone’s coming along and wanting to do the plan details, but that’s the best thing. Look at the website, get ideas but we are always available. You can call Michael, work with you in the initial stages, talk to you about your land, your project, what your kind of vision is. And there’s nothing wrong with calling, you know, some people call because they want to start today. Other people are planning two, three, four years out. So, you know, there’s nothing wrong with taking time to understand the process and we’ll work with people, you know, if they’re going to do it a few years out also because the big pre-planning is also important. Sometimes it takes people, you know, to find the right land or there’s something going on with zoning or whatever in the process. So that’s the best thing. Look at the website, give us a call, and we’ll do everything we can to walk you through the process.

Interviewer: Fantastic.

Steve Tuma: And yeah, remember the planning up front will make it easier for people.

Interviewer: That’s right.

Steve Tuma: The building process. And that’s why we’re here to help you.

Interviewer: And there it is. I want to thank all of you who’ve been faithfully downloading and listening to the recently become listeners of the program. Welcome aboard. And well, that’s going to do it for us today. So for Steve Tuma and myself, here’s wishing you a positive and productive day and week ahead and we will see you next time. Thanks again, Steve.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, thanks. This was a lot of fun. Thank you.

View Details

Show Notes: Discussing the numerous benefits and flexibility of panelized homes. We dive into topics such as energy efficiency, customization options, building permits, and the overall construction process. Highlighting how Landmark Home and Land Company supports customers through every step, from initial design to final construction, ensuring a seamless and efficient building experience. The episode underscores the company’s commitment to exceptional customer service, extensive knowledge, and the ability to handle diverse and complex building projects, making it clear why panelized homes are a valuable choice for prospective homeowners.

Transcript:

Steve Tuma: It’s a cool person-to-person type thing. It’s not, you know, computer to person. It’s people working with people to help them build a cool house. That’s what I say. We want to work with good people and build cool houses.

Interviewer: Hello everybody. Thanks for joining us for Episode 55 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. Calling in from, well, he’s on the road, a busy guy in our first ever phone-in version of the podcast, is the president and founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want, exactly as they want, nationwide and around the globe since 1993. And that busy guy is Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how’s it going, buddy?

Steve Tuma: It’s a good day. We’re just checking some projects out, looking at a few things and figured, hey, we’ve got to get a podcast in. I think we’re doing kind of an interesting and different format today, aren’t we?
Interviewer: Well, it’s just you’re so busy I have to catch you when I can. And since you can’t be in the studio this time around, I said, well, what the heck, I’m just going to see if he can take a few minutes and call in. And so I think it’s going to work fine. You actually sound pretty good on your end.

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s good. Amazing technology these days. So let’s get into it. Today, I thought we’d start something that maybe will end up becoming some sort of tradition or something, or just at least a semi-regular feature of the podcast. I wanted to field some questions that have come in via the Landmark Home and Land Company website and through emails and people who are thinking of building custom homes and are curious about panelized home building and curious about Landmark Home and Land Company in general. So if you’re up for it, let’s go through some of these emails and questions. You ready for that?

Interviewer: Yeah, these are just general questions that people ask for what I understand, right? It’s kind of down and dirty, you know, basic questions that they ask. So this should be fun.

Steve Tuma: I don’t know if there’s dirty. They’re all pretty clean. It’s a family show.

Interviewer: OK, so let’s see what you have. OK, so let’s start with an email that’s fairly recent. This person asks, and it’s a pretty logical question, can you please explain what a panelized home kit is and what is the purpose of kit houses?

Steve Tuma: Well, it’s kind of interesting. The purpose of the kit house is to make it easy for people to understand their project, control their project, control the budget, control the schedule, just to have an overall control of doing it the way we do it. It’s kind of a one-stop shop. So our kit isn’t just the wood structure of the home. It’s also the plans, the changes people want, the preliminary plan stage, the final set of plans which are then used for final application, which can include the architectural plans, structural design, energy code, site plan, mechanical details and details a building department would request. And then once the permits are obtained, we supply a panelized wood structure that matches those plans. So it makes it easier for permitting, installation, inspection, and then occupancy. And our kit home is a very solid wood structure basically consisting of floor systems, panelized walls, roof systems, trusses, different methods of making a roof, and then the loose materials to put it together such as bracing, fascia, soffits. So we basically supply the complete wood structure. A customer would get the, you know, they’d have their land, they would install their foundation, and then they would supply windows, doors, cabinets, you know, roofing, siding, and details. So we’re kind of doing the plans, the plans for permits, and then the wood structure, the skeleton as it is. So that’s our kit. And we found it to be extremely helpful to people because one of the hardest things is designing it properly and then getting the right set of plans to get through permits and then making sure that the wood structure matches those approved plans. So a lot of people think, oh, it’s just wood. It’s just a kit. I’m like, no, it’s a lot of knowledge and details to put it together, and especially for more complex building sites, you know, on oceanfront or hurricane areas or snow loads or flat lands with big winds, earthquake situations, California, Florida, Colorado, you know, all over the country, there’s a lot of different details. We’re able to help people make sure that the house fits on the land, works with the local building department, is easy to assemble. Kind of a kit. It makes it easier for people. It’s our one-stop shop and helps them control the cost and keep to schedule. It’s pretty cool.

Interviewer: This is a question from me, not a write-in question, but we’ve never talked about this. But what’s the typical – I don’t want to say typical, nobody’s typical – but what is the sort of the typical panelized kit home builder? Who are the people who buy these?

Steve Tuma: It ranges from all different types of people. It could be a first-time home buyer. It could be someone – we’ve had some people build over a dozen houses with us. Sometimes people do it as a little business. Sometimes people just build a house. I mean, we’ve actually had some people – you know, we’ve been around 30 years. They built a house with us, then their retirement house. Then if their kids get married, we’re helping their kids build houses. And sometimes we work with developers, people that want to have a piece of land and develop it, whether it’s a few building sites for very custom homes or more homes. So there’s an advantage to everyone. And we’ve had customers – some customers have built four or five homes with us, some a dozen. So it’s a variety of people. But what they enjoy is basically leveraging their time and knowledge so that we can take care of the plans, engineering details for the permit set, so that then they can keep on coordinating the project and taking care of other items. So we’re kind of an extension of the people. So whether it’s one person wanting to build one home in their life or someone that may want to do a few of them, it’s kind of interesting. It’s someone that understands the value of the knowledge of designing it properly, making sure it fits on the land, making sure it’s energy efficient, making sure it’s cost contained, making sure it fits the schedule. Those are the people that want to do it. And a lot of our customers, a huge portion are owner-builders, many of which have never built a home before and they do a great job. So it really, really varies. And we’ve done some homes that are more modest beginner homes or retirement homes, and we’ve done some exceptionally intricate homes in the higher-end zip codes of America that are in the multimillion dollars. It’s pretty cool. But either way, we help people. It’s a lot of fun.

Interviewer: Right. I would imagine that people who come to you sometimes have just discovered what kit homes are, what a panelized home is, and building a home in a separate area and then putting it on trucks, flatbeds, and bringing it out. That’s got to be a new concept to people, even though I know you’ve told me in the past that there’s a rich and long history of panelized homes.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, the kit homes have been like that. But yeah, what a lot of people are finding is there’s some parts of the country and high up in the mountains where there’s a limited building site because winter leaves late and winter comes back quickly or summer building season’s three, four months.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: So a lot of people work in those areas. Others know that the permitting process can be very intricate, whether it’s a simple home or a complex home. Some of the jurisdictions just have extremely detailed requirements, so we can help them through. So the way it makes sense is it allows a person to leverage their time and their money instead of hiring an architect, a structural engineer, an energy code person, a site planner, all these people and hoping that they communicate and get a unified set of plans.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: And I do emphasize the word hoping. It’s not always like you just get people and magically they just all coordinate and get it taken care of. We do it at Landmark. That’s what we do.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: But it also helps them make sure that the wood is there and then we give a guaranteed price, a set price that the customer knows upfront so it’s easier for them to understand and manage their project. That’s why a lot of people do it. Otherwise, someone could go to someone, have a set of plans drawn up, and the person draws a set of plans and who knows if the budget’s even in consideration.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: Yeah. So we’ve had people do that where they have someone locally build plans and then we get a set of plans for a $2 million home and they want to spend $400,000.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: So with our system, we’re able to kind of guide things and get it taken care of so that our customer has an understanding of the project and there’s a control on the cost and what they want to get built. Also, the other thing is customer service. We answer the phone, we talk to people, we take the time that they need to make sure that we can help them be as successful as possible with their project. And a good set of plans, a solid, well-built panelized home package allows it. And then our team here that ties it together. So what’s interesting is a lot of people say, what is a panelized home? What is a home kit? They’re just thinking of the wood, but they don’t realize that you can buy a 2×6 in a lot of places. It’s how you use it. Is it designed right? Is it energy efficient? So that’s where we come together. And our kit is more than just the framing materials. It’s the help and knowledge and plans and engineering to make permitting easy.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: Kind of cool. Pretty wild.

Interviewer: That kind of leads back to our next question. A potential customer here who wants to know if they can customize the layout and design of a panelized home. How easy is that to do?

Steve Tuma: Yes, customizing the layout and design of our panelized homes is very easy. A lot of people think that, hey, you can only do a standard plan. They’re stuck in some old concepts of, well, you’ve got to work with the builder and the builder will have plans and you build it. Well no, we’re in the business of giving customers houses that they want. So it’s not just something where there’s five plans, pick one. We have got thousands of plans on our website. A customer could sketch something up that they want and then we can go formalize it in it. So we can completely customize or develop a complete custom set of plans for a person so that the home is the way they want it and their family wants it, so it fits on the land right, so it works within codes and it works properly and is energy efficient. So yes, we can customize the layout and design of a panelized home and we can give a customer exactly what they want. That’s the cool thing about it. A lot of people, they might say, well, isn’t panelized like modular? It’s like, no, it isn’t. Modular you can’t really customize. I mean, maybe there’s something where there’s options in the kitchen or bathroom layout but 90% of it is what it is. You take it or leave it. We believe if you work hard for a living and you want a cool house, we want you to come home at the end of the day and go, yeah, this is cool. I’m glad I did it instead of go to the house and go, I wish I did. So we’re in the business of helping people get the house that they want.

Interviewer: So you’re pretty much at their shoulder when the customization of the layout and design is actually taking place.

Steve Tuma: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it’s kind of a partnership type of thing. They might come to us and when they’re customizing their panelized home they might go through and say hey, I need this size bedroom, I want this size garage, we want a kitchen like this. And then we’ll draw it up and then we’ve got our drafts people where we can fine tune things, just fine tune it because sometimes people they have an idea but when they see it on paper they’re like hey, wait a second, I need something a little different or something happens. When they see a great room they might say, hey, on the holidays 15 people come over, I want to be able to put a table in there for 15 people. So that’s the neat thing about it. But it’s not just the customizing for the family’s personal desires. It’s the customizing to make sure it fits on the land. You know, if you took a house and just built it on a flat piece of land and then took a similar design and said hey, I need to step it down the side of a mountain, there’s a lot of work for the foundations, you know, how you enter the house, how you leave the house, can you access the driveway, different things like that and the foundation design for a sloped hill. So that’s one of the key things to it is we can work to make the house fit on your land so that things flow well and it works well. A lot of people don’t think about that. We’ve all seen a house on the side of a mountain but people don’t always understand the relationship of how do you make that house fit there and make sure it’s structurally sound at the same time.

Interviewer: Yeah. You know, it’s funny because we have this next question here and there I’ve been hearing myself a lot about smart homes and this person writes in and said what exactly is a smart home and can a panelized kit like Landmark Home and Land Company creates, can that be created as a smart home?

Steve Tuma: Yes, it can. Smart homes are kind of a trend. Well, it’s actually emerging technology, I should say. I think it’s here to stay. So yes, our kit homes can all be made into smart homes. Smart homes are generally a technology that can be added to a home and sometimes it goes to the simple systems that you can buy, you know, the Google systems, the Amazon systems, the Alexas where you can say hey so and so turn a light on or hey adjust the temperature. There’s a lot of details like that but some customers get extremely detailed in smart homes where you walk in a room and it knows who you are and it adjusts the music and light and temperature to it. So there are a variety of, I guess, different levels of smart home. But yes, our panelized home packages can be worked together with a smart home system so someone can get exactly what they want. And amazingly not everyone wants a smart home. Some people just want a home with regular light switches and you know, walk across the room turn the light on, close the curtains manually. So there’s different things that can be done. And sometimes a smart home isn’t just like for techies. Sometimes it’s safety things. You know, little alarms, is an elderly relative walking down a staircase? If you go down a staircase do lights turn on automatically? You know, little things like that. So it can also be kind of a safety issue.

Interviewer: Sure, yeah.

Steve Tuma: And a medical issue. And you know, once people get into technology they can have a lot of fun with it. So somebody who’s a little bit afraid of technology and then all of a sudden they enter their first smart home and see how cool that is and they might want one.

Interviewer: Yeah, technology can be a big learning thing for people. Everybody talks about, you know, elderly people. They’re not really computer savvy. And I’m thinking most of the people I know in their 70s and 80s can work a computer just fine, you know.

Steve Tuma: Right. And a lot of people are using it whether or not they do it. If you go to one of your assistants on whatever system you use, you say, hey, whatever the name is of the assistant, turn a light on. You know, whatever it is. That’s kind of entry-level smart home.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Tuma: You know, smart switches. So yeah, it can be done. Our system is very flexible. And it’s not just smart homes. Some people want elevators in their house.

Interviewer: Right, wow.

Steve Tuma: Some people want custom kitchens with two different stoves. We’ve had some people put little slides for their kids. So we can customize to specific needs. We have a customer, he’s working on an airplane hanger underneath his house.

Interviewer: Wow. Underneath his house?

Steve Tuma: So we’ve had people with boathouses. Yeah, so it’s kind of one of these things. It’s a great question but it leads to someone else going, but hey, okay, I may want part of a smart home but what about my boat? What about my car? What about my motor home? What about a craft room? What about, we had one person, they put a tech room for their horses.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: And kind of a cleanup room. So we’re very flexible in what people can do. But yeah, our panelized homes and our home packages can work with smart home systems. It’s pretty amazing.

Interviewer: It is the home of the future if you want it to be one. We’ve come a long way since from clap on clap off, right?

Steve Tuma: Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I mean someone could say that was the beginning of smart homes.

Interviewer: That’s right. That’s right. You know, these questions, I’m sorry I didn’t put them in any sort of conceptual order or anything. I’m just taking them as they’re here on the page. So if I’m jumping around a little, forgive me. But one customer writes in…

Steve Tuma: Yeah, but these are actual questions that people did. They’re just as they came in I think is how you put this together. So it’s pretty cool.

Interviewer: Yeah, I’m just, like I said, I didn’t put them in any kind of category or anything. It’s just kind of what came in. I’m just giving them to you as they came. So one of these is talking about resale value. What exactly is the resale value of a panelized home? Is it like selling a regular home or is there a difference or how does that work?

Steve Tuma: A panelized home, our system is basically a more efficient method of stick building. And stick building is conventional building. And that’s generally, as far as I know, every time how is it appraised and financed. What people have to realize sometimes they’ll be like, oh, that’s prefab. My friend’s trailer or modular was devalued because of the stigma of those or the way banks choose to treat them. So this does not have the stigma of a modular or trailer home. This is, I should say, a true custom stick-built home. We just make some sections off site to bring them in so that it’s easier to get it built quickly, control cost, and minimize waste. So the resale value should be done just like any custom home, which is the best you can do. I don’t know of any higher for financing or for appraisals or anything. It’s the best system, which is nice. Other systems are sometimes limited but ours is not.

Interviewer: Yeah, it sounds like you’re hitting all the checklists for both building and for resale. Yeah, everything I hear just tells me panelized homes are a great way to go no matter what. I know we’ve hit on this question before but just because it did come in recently, I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind answering it. But this person writes in and wants to know what’s the energy efficiency, what are the features of energy efficiency of the prefabbed homes from Landmark Home & Land Company?

Steve Tuma: The energy efficiency of our panelized homes is pretty interesting because we can get pretty deep into it if people choose to. Most states have just a regular kind of energy efficiency calculation to make sure that a house meets a minimum standard for the state. And then other states such as California have a very stringent energy efficient process. We have done work in Europe and they are even tighter. So we can go through and work with a customer if they have certain desires to go beyond the code requirements. And some customers just say, hey, I just really want to insulate a door. Hey, I want to check my windows or make sure the doors are right or make sure the HVAC system is there. So we can develop a list of typical things for a customer to review to make sure that when they install the insulation it’s installed right to make sure that the HVAC system is installed right. There’s also services that people can go with that allow them to double check the work. But one thing which is interesting on energy efficiency is it’s not just buying insulation that has a high rating. It’s making sure it’s installed right. And that’s part of the situation. Anyone could go buy a furnace but who puts it in right so it operates right so the ductwork is right. Who puts the insulation in right so it can perform as it’s intended to. So that’s where we can help. So it’s not just a matter of putting specs, hey, put R21 in the walls, put R38 on the ceiling or 50 or whatever it is. It’s going through the actual process so that a customer understands how to install it properly. And it’s also just in sealing doors. It’s in the HVAC systems. The efficiency of the HVAC systems or the new mini-split systems, getting the right ratings for their use of the energy. We can also help people with solar systems if they like. And if someone wants to get real deep, we can get into organic design. The orientation of the house to the sun, overhangs that keep the sun out in summer when the sun is higher and then allow sun to come in when the sun is lower in winter. So that’s actually a pretty interesting question that can get pretty deep. Because a lot of people just think when you say energy efficiency, the first thing they think about is a lot of insulation. But it actually gets into the design, the position on the land, the orientation to the sun, and then other things like the furnace and how that generates its power and what types of fuels it uses. So we’re fully capable of getting extremely deep into it, doing net zero houses if a customer wants. And we’ve done passive house, the German version and then the American version if someone were to want to get that deep. It’s pretty cool. Most customers just want to make sure that they’ve got a good solid home that meets or exceeds the codes of the state. Some customers will say hey, I want to be 10% better. So we can work with them. Others say hey, I want to go net zero. But either way, we can help them. But our panelized system, that’s the nice thing. We can go through to adjust the structure to make sure that insulation and different features can be put into the home so it’s as energy efficient as a customer wants it to be.

Interviewer: Right. Speaking of energy efficiency, the bigger the home usually the harder it is to just be energy efficient. I mean, that’s just common sense. But speaking of size, are there any limitations on the size and style of a kit home?

Steve Tuma: Well, the size, I mean a bigger home it might need more stuff. If it’s bigger, it’s going to take more fuel or electric to heat or cool it. But the efficient systems for that bigger home are just, they’ll work the same. It’ll just be for a bigger home. Now sometimes the nature of those bigger homes is they’re a little more luxury, taller ceilings and things like that or big glass walls. So it gets a little more complicated. But we can make that work. But you ask about the limitations of the size and style. We haven’t run into that yet. We’ve done houses 10,000, 15,000 square feet. We’ve been involved with some commercial projects, you know, kind of hotels which we panelize as well. So there really isn’t a limitation on the size and the style. Now if someone said hey, I want to make a house that looks like a golf ball, you know, it’s probably not going to happen. That would be extremely custom. We’re not going to, you know, do a house that looks like a golf ball. But as far as, you know, regular designs, if someone wants a craftsman, an organic Frank Lloyd Wright type design, if they want something boxy, modernistic, you know, prairie school, you know, saltbox colonial, Georgian, Mediterranean, you know, we could do all of those designs and work with them. So there really isn’t a limitation other than the customer’s budget and land.

Interviewer: Well, I would imagine that might be a limitation. Pocketbook could be a bit of a limitation.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, I should have said that. It’s the pocketbook and the dream.

Interviewer: Yeah. So there’s a couple of questions here. I’m going to bounce around a little because some of them kind of tie into the question before. But let’s talk about the design options. You guys on your website, you have a plethora of available design options for prefabbed homes. How many available designs are there at Landmark Home and Land Company?

Steve Tuma: I think our website says sixteen hundred or two thousand but I think there’s more like six. I think that we actually have about six thousand on there.

Interviewer: Wow.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, but you know, it’s interesting. People could look at that and say I want to do this design with a couple of changes or take the roof of this one, the floor plan of that one. Or people just have, you know, we’ve had people sketch it on a piece of paper, take a picture and text it to me. So yeah, the design options, it’s something that we can take care of.

Interviewer: That reminds me of tax time. We have the full design team.

Steve Tuma: Tax time walking into your account with all of your receipts written on pieces of paper.

Interviewer: That’s got to make your job a little tougher when they, depending on how good an artist they are, I guess.

Steve Tuma: Well, actually it works out pretty well because people have an understanding. Now, yeah, their sketches might not be exactly to scale but it’s actually amazing of how people have a pretty strong idea.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: Of what they want. So, you know, for them to sketch up an idea or say hey, I kind of want this. Or they might have a picture saying hey, I like this roof I saw it, you know, as they were traveling someplace. So we’re able to put it together. I mean, no one’s stumped us yet. You know, sometimes it takes a couple little fine tuning because sometimes the customer may ask for, you know, a roof that doesn’t fit on the floor plan.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: Or a design that doesn’t work or whatever. But then we work with them to figure out what it is so they understand the situation. And then we get it together. And I would say they’re happy at the end because they like the idea of designing it and understanding what’s being into it.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: What’s being built.

Interviewer: Right. Yeah, a couple of, there’s two people who’ve written in here but I’m going to read it as one because it all kind of falls together. But one person asked what permits and approvals are needed for building a panelized home. And another person writes in are there any specific building codes for panelized homes? Can you tackle both of those?

Steve Tuma: Well what’s interesting, they’re kind of one and the same answer is the building permits and the building codes, it’s the same as a conventional built home.

Interviewer: Sure.

Steve Tuma: So it’s not like there’s something special or you have to do it. Now what people someone asking that might be confusing panelized homes with like modulars or the more trailer, you know, the ones with the steel frame. Those are built to different codes and the permitting process may be different. But for ours it’s just the regular IRC or IBC depending upon what the building department requests. Sometimes there’ll be the code with the, you know, modifications for a certain area. So this goes through the exact same process as if you were doing a custom stick-built home, which this essentially is. And what’s interesting is we’ve if I could pat ourselves on the back, we’ve worked all over the country, you know, in areas below sea level, above sea level, oceanfront, mountaintop, you know, in the plains, hurricane areas, high snow load. So we’ve been able to get through every single one to make sure. So even if a person says, oh, my building department’s extra picky or extra mean or whatever, we’ve probably been through it before. We’ve got a great set of plans and we have a great understanding of what building departments want. And if they do get a little stingy or a little interesting in their request, we’ll figure it out. We figured every other one out over 30 years. So we don’t see building codes as the issue. It’s kind of funny. A lot of people say but can you get the building department to approve it? I’m like yeah, I don’t see that as the issue. The building department approving it is fine. Getting it built right, getting it inspected right and occupied right is the thing that’s more important. People don’t believe it but you can get sets of plans approved by a building department that are not buildable. Our plans are dual purpose. They’re for permits and building. There’s a big distinction. People don’t realize that. They’ll go get a set of plans and say but the guy’s the best guy in town and he won three awards and how can this not work? And they don’t realize that a good set of plans has a lot of details on the connections, a lot of sections, just a whole bunch of details so that it’s clear on site that when the customer, the bank, the building department, the contractors that are involved they each understand exactly what needs to be done. Now if they have a question we’re always available by phone to review it with them but we try to have a set of plans so all the details are there so that when a house is getting built your team can keep on building and make sure it gets done properly. It’s not just hey, will you meet the codes. It’s not just hey, will the building department do it. It’s are the plans good so the contractors understand it and make it easy. That’s where we shine. It’s plans for permits, customer review, financing permits, any homeowners association, historical societies if they’re involved but also for the ease of construction. That’s what it’s about. So this person asks a pretty basic question but I think it’s a good question because people look at the Landmark Home and Land Company website and what exactly is the process for building a kit home? How is it really different from building a standard stick home?

Steve Tuma: Well, the value that we add to it is we make it easier for people to design the home the way they want. We have our full design team so if someone gives us an idea of what they want we can draw it up and then we can fine tune it, move a window here, make the dining room bigger. Whatever it is we can make those changes. Then after we go through getting the preliminary plans put together, we work with the building department to find out what details they need for permit application as well as us adding details for easy build. So we’ll go through do the site plans, the energy codes, all the other details we’ve spoken about so that our customer can then submit for permits. Then once the building department approves, they may approve the permits first time through. They may have a checklist of items that need to be clarified. Either way we’ll answer their questions until permits are issued. Generally it’s the first time through, but in some places it’s second. Then once they get permits, the customer will coordinate their contractors to prepare the site and install the foundation. We schedule with them when they want the panelized home package delivered. So the idea is your foundation crew is done, they leave, then our truck shows up and your framing crew unloads the materials and frames the house. Then you finish it just like a conventional stick-built home. Put the roof on, put the windows in, put the siding on, do the HVAC, plumbing, electric, insulation, drywall, interior trim, and just kind of move on to finish it out. So the process is essentially the same as stick building a custom home, but our level of help is what makes it easier for customers to manage their project on their own or we work with their general contractor if they choose to have one. So what we’re doing is making it easier through the whole planning, engineering, energy code, site plan, mechanical design process, and then the delivery of the home package. What people don’t realize is the concept that, hey, I can just get individual people that aren’t connected, a separate architect, a separate structural engineer, a separate energy code people and it comes together. It doesn’t always work that way. We wrap it all together and then make sure and guarantee that our panelized home package matches the approved plans. So you minimize or actually in our case eliminate the cost overruns because we give you a set price. They have a panelized package which is pre-cut, pre-engineered to go together smoothly so the framing time is quicker, the framing labor is less, the waste is less and then you move your project along much faster.

Interviewer: Got it.

Steve Tuma: And that’s the key. So that’s kind of a big overview. Obviously, there’s a lot more little details and nuances in there, but that’s the overview.

Interviewer: And I know you’re busy today but if you don’t mind fielding one more question then I’ll let you go.

Steve Tuma: One more? Yes.

Interviewer: Okay. The person writes in and says, and it’s pretty basic, what are the benefits of a panelized home? And if anybody is able to answer that, it’s Steve Tuma, president of Landmark Home and Land Company. So what are the benefits of a panelized home?

Steve Tuma: Basically with our system at Landmark is that we can do all the planning, engineering, plans for permits, all the details that are required for permits, the details that are required for building in a complete and accurate and unified set of plans. That means everything matches, it makes sense and it works. So it’s easier for someone to manage the design and permit approval of their home. And then when we deliver the panelized home package, it’s all pre-engineered, pre-designed. It goes together very quickly and easily so that it’s just assembling pieces instead of cutting, calculating, hoping it’s right, fixing mistakes and kind of moving forward. So it’s actually working with us. It’s our customer has control of their project and the design. We don’t tell them how to design. We might give ideas if they’re asking for something. We’re like, hey, this might be a little bit better. They can control the budget because we give them a guaranteed cost up front before they start. And then they can also control the schedule by them managing it and they can also control the quality. If they want to do a very high-end home, they could do it. If they want to do a medium more typical everyday design, they can do that as well. So it’s the control of their project and the understanding of their project where they know what they’re building, they control it and it’s their house. We’re kind of a system that supports them and really helps them through the process. We’ve been doing it for over 30 years so we’ve got a lot of knowledge that our customers really appreciate. That’s one of the things they don’t realize until they’re deep into the design process.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: That’s the benefit is our support of their building project. Up front they think it’s purchasing the panelized home. When they’re in the project it’s the support and the knowledge to make sure all the little details are put together.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: It makes sense. It’s fun. Every project’s different and it’s a lot of fun and we do everything we can to help a customer.

Interviewer: Well this has been interesting and enlightening. Thanks for taking the time, Steve. I mean this is a lot of questions and you don’t ever seem to have any problem. Just whatever I bring your way you have the answers which is I guess what Landmark is all about customer service, knowledge and experience. It means a lot.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, but what you just brought up there is interesting. These are questions that have come in and we’ve been doing it. We have the answers because we’ve been doing it. You’re not the first. It’s not the first customer that’s doing it. We have the process. We have the experience. We know the ins and outs.

Steve Tuma: We know different details to lead to great success and beautiful homes and that’s why people. Like your last question you said hey, what are the benefits of a panelized home? Well, it’s more than just the wood that we supply. It’s the plans, the customer support, the availability, the knowledge, a knowledge like right now type of thing. I know me as a consumer, when I call somewhere, I don’t want to get a message that says hey, call back in three days if no one returns your call. We answer the phone and we can take care of you right away, which I think is very key, especially in today’s world. People, they need help and we’re here to help them and we enjoy it. It’s a lot of fun.

Interviewer: People talk about customer service being a lost art and I think there are still companies like yours that keep it going and I think it’s a good example.

Steve Tuma: Right. We really get to know our customers and enjoy it and get to know them. It’s just kind of cool. Even though it’s their house, we kind of still think it’s ours.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: It’s the pride of our part of the project that we want to keep on going.

Interviewer: Well, you said it earlier in this podcast. It’s kind of a collaboration. It’s a partnership. Who could you be partnered with better than Landmark is my opinion. Anyway, that’s going to wrap it up for this edition of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. Before I let you go, Steve, tell us how we can contact Landmark and how we can find out more about the company and how people can find out about becoming a homeowner builder.

Steve Tuma: Well, we’ve got a great website with videos, these podcasts and a lot of general information and a lot of plans. You can see that at our website at LHLC.com. That’s kind of like initials, Landmark Home Land Company. LHLC.com is the website. People can peruse the website, send us an email through there, look at plans and ask questions about them. We are real people that have knowledge that answer phones. If someone’s got a question, they can always call in at 800-830-9788. Again, that’s 800-830-9788. Michael answers the phone. He answers the phone but he’s on the phone a lot. But if for some reason someone gets a voicemail, leave a message and he’ll call back. We are there to talk person to person about your specific project and your land for the exact design that you want. Michael will help people through and then at a certain point they come over to me where I’ll work with them on the bigger details and actually getting the project going. We’re also on Facebook and Instagram and details like that. But I think the best thing is if customers look at the website, take a look at it, and then if they want to learn more, we can talk person to person and get them taken care of. That’s the fun part is really seeing how we can work, help people and just get the project rolling. It’s a cool person to person type thing. It’s not computer to person. It’s people working with people to help them build a cool house.

Interviewer: That’s what I say. We want to work with good people and build cool houses.

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s important stuff. Got to get some T-shirts made. Build Cool Houses with the Landmark logo on it.

Interviewer: Exactly. That would be great. Well, there you have it. Thanks again to all of you who have been faithfully listening to the podcast and to those who just recently found the show. Thanks for tuning in. All you new people, welcome to the podcast. That’s going to do it for us today. For Steve Tuma and myself, here’s wishing you all a great week ahead. We will see you next time. Thanks, Steve.

Steve Tuma: Thank you. Remember, we’re helping good people build cool houses. We’ll see you next time. Thank you. Bye.

View Details

Show Notes: In-depth conversation about the intricate process of designing and building custom homes that meet the unique visions and needs of clients. From architectural and structural design to energy codes and customer support, highlighting the importance of seamless coordination and attention to detail in creating panelized homes that exceed expectations. Landmark Home and Land Company’s role as a conductor in orchestrating a team of experts to deliver top-notch customer service and satisfaction shines through, emphasizing our commitment to quality, communication, and personalized solutions in the home building process.

Transcript:

Steve Tuma: Because our plan sets that we do at Landmark Home and Land Company are meant to be communication devices so that your contractor knows what’s going on, your financing source, your family, your building department, yourself and anyone else involved knows exactly what’s going on.

Interviewer: Welcome everyone to episode 54 of the Panel Eyes Prefab Kit Home Building Show with me as he usually is in the studio for the podcast is the president and founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want nationwide and around the globe since 1993. Mr. Steve Tuma, Steve, how are you, my friend?

Steve Tuma: It’s another day, another podcast. Some excitement talking about making plans match up and uniform plans. Is that what we’re going to talk about?

Interviewer: Today we’re going to talk about uniformity among plan sets. Some people might go, what? What are you talking about? So that’s why you’re here. That’s why we have you here.

Steve Tuma: This is an interesting topic because it’s kind of, today’s a consumer today. You figure, hey, if you buy a pair of running shoes, the shoe’s designed for running. Or hey, if you buy a truck with big wheels, it’s designed to go off road or whatever it may be. If you buy a boat, it’s good for the water. So sometimes it’s kind of interesting with the plans of if people attempt to work with an architect individually, a structural engineer, a green code person, an energy code person, a civil engineer for grading and drainage plans, it’s kind of assumed that they’d talk and make sure the plans match up. But we just find that it doesn’t happen. Everyone takes care of their discipline and kind of has that, well, it’s not my job. Hey, I did what you asked me, but how do you know it matches up? That’s kind of the whole situation. I kind of equate it to saying, hey, go to a shirt store and ask a guy for a shirt. Go to the pants store, ask the salesperson for a pair of pants. Go to the shoe store and ask a guy for a pair of shoes and then put it together and hope it all works. You know, are you going to a formal dinner or are you going jogging or are you sitting at the beach? Obviously, you need something. So you want to make sure that what you’re doing works well. So that’s what we call making sure the plans are uniform so that they match up for the intended purpose and make sure that the information across the plans matches. So that’s the main reason a lot of people assume, well, I had my local designer, my local engineer do it. It doesn’t happen that way. That’s why we’re in business to do the plan set for what people want and make sure it’s unified so that it makes sense. It’s consistent. The details are equal across the plans and it’s easier to build, creating less problems on site, creating less problems with your budget and your schedule.

Interviewer: So did you say that’s the main benefit of matching plan sets just for consistency and design?

Steve Tuma: Well, consistency and design for permitting, for your understanding. Because our plan sets that we do at Landmark Home and Land Company are meant to be communication devices so that your contractor knows what’s going on, your financing source, your family, your building department, yourself and anyone else involved knows exactly what’s going on. Because we all know what happens if I were to say, hey, Steve, remember this, unless it’s written down, people don’t remember it. So that’s why you want to have the plans with all consistent details to make sure that the home goes together right and the building department understands it so that you can avoid issues on site, issues with inspections or previously, issues with permit application.

Interviewer: So what are the biggest issues that as new home builders that people run into? I mean, let’s just run down a list of things that people should be prepared for. Let’s start with, let’s say, truss design.

Steve Tuma: Well, the truss design, that’s an interesting thing. So a truss is a structural component that used generally to build a roof system or a floor system. So let’s just take it for a roof. So let’s just say that there’s a house, a relatively complex Victorian house, you know, from the early 1900s. There’s a lot of roof alleys, roof ridges, overhang situations, different situations where they might need girders, they might need different beams to support it. You need to make sure that that truss design matches the architectural design, also matches the structural design. So are the loads transferred properly from the roof down through a beam down to the ground or down through the wall down to the ground? And then also, is it the architectural look that someone wants? So a simple thing that people will understand are the overhangs. Are the overhangs a foot, 18 inches, two feet, three feet? Whatever it is, are they at the right pitch? What’s the tail done? How all these details are put together? So sometimes what’ll happen is people will get truss designs done, but someone has to verify that they match the structural issues, the snow loads, the ground snow loads, the code year that the building department’s asking for, make sure it matches the structural design. There’s just a lot of little details. It’s tying it together to make sure that everything works. So that goes into architectural design and structural design as well. So it’s kind of everything’s got to work together, otherwise you could end up with trusses that don’t give the look you want or don’t have the consistent structural features.

Interviewer: Yeah. It seems to me we’ve talked in the past a little bit about energy calculations and I’m sure there’s a lot of issues going into a house build with energy calculations and getting them correct.

Steve Tuma: Right. It’s not just the actual calculation, it’s making sure that what is calculated fits in your house. So someone could, say you’re in an area where it just gets really cold and you need an R-48 insulation, does it fit in your roof system? If you have an R-21 wall, does it fit in your wall? If you need a certain insulation in your foundation under the slab, around the footers, is it designed in there and do people understand that it’s there? And that again is tying it all in. So sometimes people say, hey, I got these energy calculations, it’s like there’s not enough space to put it in the house or in order to do so, you’ve got one of the more expensive types of insulation, do you realize that?

Interviewer: Right. That’s why it’s good to tie all that together and have us do our plan set with those details so we can understand, so we can review it with a customer so that they understand what’s going on with their project.

Steve Tuma: Right. Because the energy calculations can also affect and will also affect the design of their HVAC system. So all of these are kind of tied together and it’s important to make sure that the people designing the HVAC understand the architectural and structural design as well as the energy calculations. The energy calculation people should also understand the structure to make sure that it’s there. So sometimes people will come to us and say, hey, I got this and this, and I’m like, well, it’s kind of a little bit of a mess, we got to clean it up and put it together, which is why we always say, hey, just come to us for the plans, we’ll work on it. And then if you have questions, we can substantiate why something’s done. Or if someone needs a change, we can kind of domino effect the change through the whole house.

Interviewer: Right. You know, if you break it up, when I hear you talk, you break it up into things like architectural design is the sexy part of building, energy calculations, like you were just saying, that’s not really sexy.

Steve Tuma: People don’t think of it.

Interviewer: Yeah, but it’s very important. I think grading and drainage plans are the same thing. They may not be the most exciting, glamorous part of building your house, but it’s just as important as anything else.

Steve Tuma: Well, you’re right, because, you know, you go to a cocktail party or get together for the holidays, who’s sitting there talking about their drainage pipe?

Steve Tuma: That’s right. Like no one. They’re all talking about the cabinets or the cool fireplace or the family room or the pool table they’re getting and how they were able to do it. But it’s those things that avoid the hassles. Proper insulation, your energy bills are less and the house is more comfortable.

Interviewer: Right.

Steve Tuma: And making sure that your house doesn’t flood is probably important, which is why it’s good to understand the drainage, you know, make sure that water drains away from your house. So people don’t always think of it. They’re always like, well, you know, we’ll just figure it out on site. I’m like, do you really want to do that? You know, because if, you know, let’s just say your neighbor did that and they raised their house and suddenly the water went into your house. That’s not the way to do it.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Steve Tuma: You know, people have to be responsible for what’s going on. So I agree. People don’t think about it. You brought up a great point because everyone’s excited to say, I want my kitchen this way. I want my garage this way. I want the family room to have this. I need a view of the tree or the sunset or the sunrise. But it’s like, how do we do that? And make sure that you can enjoy the home and get the design. So that’s the reason for the uniform design. This is an extreme situation, but we did a house on the West Coast. It was 10 or 15 years ago, but the people had a very expensive lot in a very exclusive neighborhood and they wanted to take advantage of every inch of the view. And there was a situation there where they wanted to have a window about six inches wider. Well, just going that six inches wider changed the structural design and the energy calculations. Right. Now, someone would say it’s a huge window. What’s six inches got to do? You took so much of a structural member out and that bigger window allows more cooler heat transfer into the home. So we’re able to work with them to architecturally, structurally and energy and green code wise, make sure everything’s tied together so that they get what it is, or at least understand what the situation is to see if they still want to move forward with it.

Interviewer: Right. Well, it seems like you guys at Landmark Home and Land Company have to walk kind of a tightrope because you have to make sure people are realistic about what they need to make the, basically just to make the house pass inspection to start with. But at the same time, you have to be aware of the personal vision of your customers and clients, what they want their homes to look like. And that’s important.

Steve Tuma: Right. And it’s kind of interesting because different people have different concepts of what’s important to them. Some people are just energy efficiency. Other people are, give me the garage, I need my man cave. Other people are, hey, when our family gets together, there’s 23 people on the holidays. So I want to have a great room area where we could set tables up and everyone can mix. But then again, people can split up. Other people, it’s the view. Other people, it’s the inside, not as much the outside. Other people, it’s the outside, less the inside. We’re working on a project now that people want a glass entry door that you can see through the house, out the glass wall in the back. So as you approach the front of the house, you see through it and see the beautiful view in the back of the house. It’s their thing. It’s pretty cool. So we’re working with them. Other people, they just want to have a house there that’s set. And then the backyard, a fire pit, barbecue area, whatever it is, to go work with it. Other people, it’s a view of the lake. One customer, we helped Bill in Michigan. He wanted to know that he could be in the master suite and watch the sun rise and the sun set. That’s nice. From his master. So we worked on stuff. And someone says, well, just stick a window facing east and a stick a window facing west.

Well, there’s a lot more to it. There’s roof lines below it. There’s overhangs. There’s just the seasonality of the sun. There’s just the position changes. So there’s a lot of things that we had to work with. So that’s the thing, is to be able to take the vision of the priorities of what they want. Now, we’ll wrap other things in there, make sure structurally it’s right. Make sure the energy codes work. Make sure things flow. Make sure the codes work in general, you know, hallways are the right width, enough space around toilets, enough space around cabinets. You know, doors are the right size, different details like that. So it’s not just the vision, it’s understanding what they’re getting to. Because sometimes people will say, hey, I want a wide hallway. Well, we might ask, what’s the purpose of the wide hallway? And they might say, well, I have a big dog. I want to walk down the hallway with my 200 pound St. Bernard or whatever it is. They want to be able to do it. Or their kids are constantly running back and forth. Or they envision a wheelchair or something in the future, and they want to be able to get stuff taken care of. So sometimes it’s asking what they want, but then also asking why or what’s the purpose of something. Because sometimes people just don’t know, or they need to develop the idea, or we need to draw it up.

They look at it and say, hey, that’s what I asked you to draw up, but can we change it again and make the adjustments? So there’s some time spent up front making sure the house is right. Because we have found that even though if someone says, hey, this is the house I want, that’s from their preliminary review. As you get into it, hey, think about the kitchen, hey, think about the garage, hey, think about the bathrooms. And as they start getting deeper into the thoughts of different portions of the home, invariably something will change. Some houses have a tub and a shower, and some people are like, I haven’t used a tub in 10 years. Let’s just make a big shower, or let’s put a double vanity in there, or have a separate toilet room, or put a closet off the bathroom so we can work a lot of those details.

Interviewer: Yeah. I know you’ve probably never thought of it this way, but whenever I hear you talk on these podcasts, it seems to me like you act as sort of a conductor. You’re like leading this orchestra of architects and engineers and other department heads to make sure that the plans match what they’re doing and what the customer is looking for. That is quite the feat, I guess, sometimes to get through.

Mike Tuma: Yeah. And a lot of people don’t understand that because they’ll say, well, doesn’t an architect do that? It’s like, not always. Doesn’t an engineer do it? Not always. And I finally boiled it down as to why. We actually design homes that get built. We’re not here just selling plans saying, you paid me, now it’s your problem. Right. It’s your problem. You can come back and add another bill. We make it part of our process and our predetermined set cost up front so customers know the cost of the house to make sure that it’s put together because we have to deliver a panelized package that goes together well, anywhere in the country or in the world, goes together well, per plan, passes inspections, and people can continue on with the process. It’s a lot different when you say, hey, here’s a plan, go get someone else to figure it out. We’re the ones figuring it out and making it easy, which is kind of the one-stop shop idea where it makes it easier for people to say, hey, I got to get from point A to point Z. We’re there bridging all those gaps instead of handing different people being involved that don’t communicate, don’t get things taken care of. So that’s a situation where I think it’s important, excuse me. That’s a situation where our end product, the panelized home, has to be well thought. All the details have to be put together so we can assemble a home package that someone assembles on site with minimal to no issues. So it’s just assemble the home, then they go to the next processes. Where if those details aren’t tied together, you’re going to spend a lot of time on site going what if, what about this, where’s this, how’s this supposed to go, I thought. And that’s what Landmark’s process avoids is the situation where there’s loose ends.

We work in our process to make sure everything’s put together. And it’s kind of an interesting situation. I say in like medical situations, the doctor always doesn’t talk to the pharmacist or the physical therapist. They’re each different people doing their job, but no one’s really there tying it together. You have to have a master chef or conductor, as you’re saying, and that’s the role actually that I play is getting the idea of what people want and then knowing that the end result will be done right. And the coolest thing is when they call back in five years and say, hey, we’re retired, we want to build a new home, or hey, my kid got married, can you help him build a house? So it’s really the orchestration of the product.

One of my customers, Mike in Phoenix, he actually said, Steve, you’re like the engine driving the project. Yeah, there you go. And that’s the point. You don’t go to a grocery store and someone tell you, hey, here’s a recipe, here’s how you put it together, here how it is. You need a chef. Yeah. Or to have the knowledge yourself, but in that case, we’re the conductor kind of tying it all together.

Interviewer: Yeah. That’s a great word for it. Yeah, I think that’s the way I’ve always thought about it. A chef is more doing all the work themselves, mixing everything in a bowl, and a conductor is more like what you guys at Landmark. You’re working with the musicians who are the architect and the contractors and the customer and leading everybody into a great home build. So what would you say, I mean, is that what you’d say one of your biggest strengths is at Landmark Home and Land Company is to match up plans to make sure that the design is consistent among all the plan details, the architectural and structural design, the site plans, energy codes, all the way down to just putting in foundations, and it seems like you’ve got to be on top of everything.

Steve Tuma: And matching it to the panelized home that we deliver. So we have to draw plans, engineer plans, energy code plans, and manufacture a panelized home package that goes together exactly to the customer’s specs and the approved thing. So that’s the key thing. And what’s interesting about that, that’s kind of the crux of it, the big golden goose type thing, but people don’t always realize it up front. They think, hey, I’ve searched panelized homes or architectural design, but they don’t really realize what they really need is someone to put the whole project together to help them go. And we do this for professional builders, people that have side businesses, developers, and different things like that. That’s the value. Make sure everything comes together. That’s the onestop shop because, Steve, you’ve probably had this situation. You go buy something somewhere, say a big company, and you call up and you say, hey, I have a problem here. And the person’s like, well, that’s not me. You got to go to that person. And then you get to re-explain yourself to that person. And then they say, you know what? No, this is really that other person. And then you get bounced around, and after a while, you’re just aggravated. We’re with us. It’s us. It’s me. You call up. We get the plans taken care of. If there are any questions or concerns or changes or situations that come up, it’s like the buck stops here. I can work with the customer to get through whatever situation they have. That support is the key to it. And that is why Landmark has been around for over 30 years, helping people because you don’t get a bunch of voicemails or push two, push three, all these different things. You have someone that’s actually deeply involved with the day-to-day design and construction of your panelized home package, answering your question.

That’s what we do. And that’s what’s cool about it, and I’d say that’s a big advantage that people don’t think about when they’re first thinking of building a home. They don’t even know to think about it, but I think after they talk to us, that’s the reason they work with us, to make sure that things are taken care of. I kind of like that. You’re making it sound like some huge sophistication of some conductor. It’s a lot of brainpower. It’s a lot of quality people behind me. A lot of knowledgeable people and a full team to make sure that it’s done right. Customer support is extremely important.

Interviewer: There’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing worse than getting on a phone and being bounced around. And not just from department to department, there’s like country to country. All of a sudden you’re speaking with somebody who’s in a completely different country and you have to explain again, over and over again, to each department that you’re passed off to. It seems to me like Landmark has kind of solved that issue when it comes to home building.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, that’s basically it. It’s customer service. I’m a consumer. I want to know if I purchased something that there’s a company that truly stands behind it. It’s happening less and less. They all say they do, but the actual standing behind it, answer a phone, take care of issues, answer questions, that’s what we’re about. Let me give you an example. This was about a month and a half ago. There was a family building a home and they found out that there was something that happened with their foundation. She happened to call me 10:30 on a Friday night. By chance I answered the phone. She asked me what I’m answering for. I said, well, you called. That’s what we’re here for. So we were able to work through the weekend, get a few details put together for her so that they could continue on Monday when the process was going. We made a few adjustments to our panelized package and shipped it out. Now that’s turning on a dime. It was extreme situations, but we are set up here to get it taken care of. And that’s, you know, it’s beyond the call of duty.

Interviewer: Isn’t that funny how we’ve grown accustomed to being surprised when somebody actually answers the phone and it’s a real human.

Steve Tuma: Oh, I’ve told a couple of customers, they’re like, well, you sound customer service oriented. How do I know you are? I’m like, you know what, randomly this weekend, give me a call. Yeah. But don’t be surprised if I answer and say, hey, what do you need? How can we help you through it? Now what’s amazing about it is, you know, people generally call during the regular business day or hours or they’re like, hey, Steve, will you be around? We need to catch up. But that’s the nice thing about it is that we are here to help because people don’t just build during their business day, during their work week. It might be with a family member, husband, wife, kids, whoever they’re helping build the house for. And there might be a question that comes up, hey, we just found something out. It happened last week. The family was out there on a project trying to figure out the best location for a house on a sloped piece of land in Colorado. And they wanted to be like, hey, the family’s out here. We want it to face this way to take advantage of the view. But what happens if we do here? What goes on with the foundation? What goes on with the energy codes? And since I’ve done so much of this, I was able to give them an answer. So that five minute phone call was able to help the family make better determinations so that then they could get us to plan changes and we could get a design that they were happy with that works with the land, the energy calculations and structural design. So it’s communication. It’s time to have real conversations with real information, with knowledgeable people. Every once in a while, someone will stump me, but I’ve got the people behind me where we can get all answers. But that’s the situation. It’s a real situation with real support and real customer service. It’s not, hey, email this person and they might get back with you in five days. You give me a call and email, we’re on it right now.

It’s fun. It’s really cool. It’s kind of satisfying to help a family put a house together and then at the end when they take a picture with them in front of it and their dog and the grandkids or their new kids saying, this is it, Steve. I mean, there’s no better feeling. I actually got it. Cheryl, if you’re out there, she sent me a text saying, your mom must really be proud of you for all the people you’re helping and how you changed their lives. It’s just amazing. You sit back and it just feels great. It’s like, bingo, this is why we do it.

Interviewer: And again, that goes back to, it’s not just customer service. It’s- Pride. Yeah, customer pride. Enjoyment. And it’s pride of the company. Passion. Well, that’s about it for today’s episode. And before we let you go, Steve, like we usually do, let our listeners know how to find out more about Landmark Home & Land Company.

Steve Tuma: The best thing to do is check our website out, LHLC.com. One of the initials of Landmark Home & Land Company, LHLC.com. There’s plans on there. There’s videos. There’s podcasts. There’s different discussions of what we include, different ways we can help. You can send an inquiry on plans there. You can email us direct, or you can give a call to 800-830-9788. Again, that’s 800-830-9788. Mike will answer the phone or get back with you very quickly on reviewing your project. We can get into details, specifics on your project to help you, and let you understand how we’re on your team to help you get the house that you want. We just want to work with good people, build cool houses, and have a little fun along the way. And there you go.

Interviewer: Thanks again, Steve. And thanks to all of you for putting up with our stuffy noses and our occasional coughs. Hopefully this cold season will be gone pretty soon, but in the meantime, thanks for listening to the panelized prefab kit home building show. So for Steve Tuma and myself, have a great day, and we will see you next time.

Steve Tuma: Thank you. This was fun. Thanks.

View Details

Show Notes: Exploring the intricate world of predrawn plans, this post delves into the crucial aspects of accuracy, completeness, and uniformity to navigate the complexities of building department approval and ensure buildability.

Transcript:

Steve Tuma: And what happens is sometimes people will go through and they’ll say, hey, my builder can adjust it on site and I’m like, well, you probably can, but you’re just opening your wallet up in your schedule.

Interviewer: Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for episode 53 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me as always is the president and founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want, exactly as they want nationwide and around the globe since 1993. Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how’s it going, buddy?

Steve Tuma: It’s a great day. Another great day for people to start building a house. Always a good day.

Interviewer: Always a good day. And if I sound a little stuffy or even if Steve sounds a little stuffy, I think we both went through a cold thing and everybody’s been getting this, whatever this seasonal cold thing is. So hopefully we sound pretty clear. I think we’ll survive. Yeah. So you had brought up a subject you wanted to talk about today and that is standard plans, store and online bought plans and are they any good? And I’m sure a lot of people have questions about this. So is that something you’d be up for getting into right now?

Steve Tuma: Yeah, that’s kind of an interesting topic. It’s actually the whole plan situation is interesting because a lot of people will say, hey, I bought these plans. The local guy did them and he wins the awards in town or hey, I found them online or whatever. There’s a plan service in town or a plan book or whatever and they buy the plans and that was for your, hey, everything’s taken care of. Well, it kind of depends on what your situation is of the land because most of those plans are set for a house to be built on a flat piece of land. They don’t have considerations for slopes in the land, different situations, showing mechanical drawings, plumbing and electric that are relevant to your actual building site. So they might be a decent starting point for the concept, but the chances are you’ll need more details to really go through and build. So if you were just to go buy a set of plans and these people say, hey, they’re good for building permits. Well, you got to wonder where they’re good for because most of them have a lot of disclaimers on them. You must go through a structural engineer. You must verify all the codes. You must verify the mechanical design. You must verify the dimensions. There’s so many things that you have to verify that you’ve really got to take the concept but start from zero to make sure that it’s put together. So if you were building a simple home in an area where there aren’t as many regulations on a flat piece of land as well, they might work if it’s a simple home. But if you’ve got a home that’s more complex, a Victorian, a modern design, a home with a lot of corners, a home with a lot of ridgelines, you might see that the plans have to be adjusted, especially if you get into higher snow loads, earthquake zones, high wind speeds, because those plans in general have been designed for areas where the building code enforcement is relatively simple. Say a 20-pound snow load, which is a lot of the United States, but then you go take this into Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Northeast, anywhere in the plains states, anywhere in the West Coast, anywhere in the Sierras or the Rockies or Florida earthquake zones, the wind speeds, snow loads, seismic conditions are way beyond the lowest standard. And what people will find is sheer walls need to be designed. Sometimes that will restrict part of the design. The roof trusses need to be stronger to support it, and sometimes a stronger system takes more space in the structure and it needs to alter the design. So in general, what we have found is the plan services have great concepts, and we work with them on our website. They have great concepts that you may have to adapt to your particular building site. And that’s the interesting thing about it. So it’s not necessarily like if you were to buy a gallon of milk, you say, hey, it’s ready to be served at lunch. It’s kind of like, wait, it’s got to be adjusted. So that’s where I think we really come into play, because a lot of our customers do build on flat land, but also a lot of them are on the sides of hills, sloping areas. Maybe they have a walkout, so the front of the house is on a flat piece of land, but the rear is in a lower part for a walkout basement. So a lot of those plans have to be adjusted. There’s a little bit different business model there. The plan services are in the business of selling a plan and reselling it. We’re in the business of having plan sets that are buildable for your exact building site, the wants and needs you want in the house, also specifically applied to your building department’s requirements. There’s a big difference there. And I think that’s where I think people really appreciate our help, is helping go through to work to make sure that plans are suited for the building department. Just this week, I had a customer, they bought a set of plans, they said, should I turn it into the building department? I said, well, if you look at the disclaimers on the plans, it says they need to be checked for codes, they need to be checked for proper engineering loads, for foundation design, for shear wall calculations. So I tell them, it’s one of those things, you either have to take care of it before you apply for permits, or the building department will likely ask for it. If for some reason they don’t, you’ll be adjusting it on site. In our opinion, it’s better to do the design work upfront on a piece of paper or PDF than it is to be doing it real time during construction. Our system, I think people will be able to control their budget and their schedule and their stress level, which is very important as well. So you’ve really got to look at it, but most building departments are getting more sophisticated on wanting to check snow loads, wanting to check seismic conditions, wanting to check shear, just wanting to check to make sure truss design is right. And pretty much every set of plans that I’ve seen that are like that, they need to be verified. So it needs to be done. It’s a great thing.

Interviewer: I don’t think people even have any concept. They go out and, let’s say I wanted to build a house, I go out and get some plans. They have no concept, I don’t think. The majority of people about what goes into just looking at the plans and then evaluating where this house is going to be built. There’s a lot to think about just before you even get, before just with the plans in your hand before you’ve even thought about building.

Steve Tuma: Right. And what happens is sometimes people will go through and they’ll say, hey, my builder can adjust it on site and I’m like, well, you probably can, but you’re just opening your wallet up in your schedule. It’s like, what adjustments has to be done? Why does it have to be done? What if there’s miscalculations and you’re doing it twice? It’s a change in budget, it’s stress, and your schedule is going to be altered considerably. So it’s better to work through all those details up front. You don’t want to design a house real time. You want to design it up front and then just execute the building. It’ll keep people’s sanity a lot better. It’ll keep the budget in better check and it’ll keep the schedule going. It’s just easier.

Interviewer: How much difference is it for somebody who buys a pre-drawn set of plans as opposed to talking to you first and maybe going on the landmark home and land company website and looking at plans?

Steve Tuma: We don’t charge anymore. We want people to get their own house. Right. So if someone has a pre-drawn set of plans, something they drew up, something a local person drew up, something that they bought, or they go to our website and do it, it’s all the same cost. I mean, now the features may be different. If their pre-drawn plans are an extremely complex home and they choose a plan off of our website, that’s simpler. The cost of the features will be less, so the cost is there. But if you had a like for like, it’s the same. So in the end run, there really isn’t any savings because we have to go through and make sure it’s done right. Where it might help is the customer can go through and have an idea of what they’re looking for. They could be like, hey, I want a modern. I want a chalet. I want a Victorian. Or hey, I just want a simple boxy home to control costs so they can work through it. But I think some people are of the assumption that they have to have a plan to come with us. It’s like everyone does custom plans. I think in over 30 years we’ve been doing this, we only have had one customer build the plan exactly as on our website. Even if they say, hey, this is it. No changes. This is it. There’s always a change. The reason why is they start thinking deeper. It’s like, hey, this is the house and they’re like, hey, what about the kitchen? What about the garage? What about the living room? Then they’re like, hey, as they get to those different levels of thought, the adjustments come through. And what we’re able to do is work with them to get their adjustment done. But sometimes customers don’t realize that, hey, if you change one thing, it may affect something else. Sure. Domino effect all the time. Right. So we could see the downstream issues. We had a situation, a beautiful garage area below with a living space above. The customer had a plan and it worked well. But then he said, hey, wait. We have a ski boat with a tower. It’s got to be a certain width. We got to put it in there. Well, just changing the width of the garage doors a couple of feet in the height changed the engineering requirements because we were just taking some wood structure away to make bigger garage doors where we had to reinforce it. Now we know that what was interesting is their building department didn’t necessarily think that it was something that had to be done. But we do because we know how to do it right. We’re going to have a properly engineered structure. So that’s a situation. And then sometimes people say, hey, well, can’t you just raise the header of my garage door? It’s like, yeah, but then you have to have a taller wall. So there’s all these little things. And then the taller wall means the staircase to go upstairs needs more rise and run. So there’s all these little things. But that’s not something someone’s got to necessarily get caught into. That’s our job. Right. It’s our job to listen to what they want and determine how to make it happen properly and affordably.

Interviewer: Now what about building departments and pre-drawn plans? I mean, is it any more difficult to get a pre-drawn plan through a building department than say, you know, something that they pull off of a website?

Steve Tuma: Well, a lot of building departments actually have now that if you have online bought plans or quote standard plans, they don’t accept them because the details aren’t there. Now some may do it, you know, less sophisticated, smaller towns. They might be like, yeah, sure. Those are your plans. There are some parts of America where you can still draw something on a piece of paper, not even a scale, just draw it at your dining room table and get a permit. But so we don’t look at it as getting the permit is the issue. That’s part of it. It’s making sure the house is built right at a controlled cost at the right schedule. That’s the important part. And when you, the less clear your plans are, the more questions you’re going to have during the building phases. The more questions you have built during the building phases are delays and higher costs. So that’s why we say you should have this all taken care of upfront. The idea is not to sneak it by the building department, make it hard to build on site. The idea is to have a proper set of plans that the building department accepts and is also clear and easy for your contractors or subcontractors to build on site. So you don’t have what-ifs or oh-oh moments or I didn’t know that’s what you want. That’s the situation. There’s a lot of detail work that’s required in a plan to make sure that everyone understands what’s to be built. People don’t always know what they don’t know. So I’ve got a project now, a beautiful Victorian in upper Michigan, 1890s Victorian, it burned. We’re rebuilding it. Kind of a 1890s Victorian to modern design and the customer’s a knowledgeable person. He said, hey, no changes. And he’s always saying, well, do I have to do this? Do I have to do this? And now that we’re through the process, he’s like, I’m glad I’m working with you guys because I didn’t know that there were these issues. He didn’t understand the value of a grading plan, knowing the elevation of the street to where your driveway is to get into the garage. Also to make sure the relationship of your basement floor to your house floor to your garage floor to the exterior deck floor to the second level to the attic to make sure that everything works. So that’s one of the situations is there’s a lot of complexities. And that’s why I think it’s important to really look at your plans to do it. It’s not just for the building department to get a permit, it’s to know what you’re building so you can control the cost, get proper estimates from subcontractors and keep to a schedule.

Interviewer: Yeah. And it sounds to me what you’re saying is even if a building department accepts a pre-drawn plan, that doesn’t mean they’re exactly buildable and it doesn’t mean they’re meeting any codes either.

Steve Tuma: Yeah. A lot of people think that building departments are there, you know, crossing every T, dotting every I, checking everything, making sure the house is stylish, buildable, easy to put together, affordable. Building departments vary in what they choose to inspect. Some of them look at it and say, hey, that’s a good set of plans. The builders will figure it out on site. Well, you do that. You just open your wallet up to what are they going to build? If you want a 10 foot ceiling and they do a nine because the plans aren’t clear, it becomes a change order. So what we have found is building departments typically, first of all, if they check, they’re typically checking for safety and then some structural issues. They’re not necessarily checking to make sure the house is the way you want it. We have an example. There’s a project in a beautiful home in a mountain range. Beautiful home. The customer decided to have a set of plans drawn up before approaching us and I said, hey, these aren’t necessarily detailed enough to understand what’s being built. And he said, well, the building department approved them. I’m like, well, the building department’s not checking the ceiling height of your entry level in your living room, in your dining room, in your master bedroom. They’re making sure the beams are right. They’re making sure the roof loading is right, seismic conditions, snow loads, and things like that. They’re not in there saying, hey, it’s unclear how tall your ceiling is. And the customer said, but I spent all this money, I did this. How does this happen? And I said, well, people think the building department is there to check everything to make sure your building life is perfect. It’s not. They’re there to take care of different issues and they’re not all the same. One building department will really just look at something, charge you a fee, give you a permit. Others will detail it to the very finite degrees, but they’re generally checking for code issues. Do you have egress windows? Do you have the right snow load? Do you have the right seismic conditions? Do you have the right wind loads? They’re not necessarily checking to make sure that your grade is right for your car to drive in the driveway. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, and that’s why sometimes people say, hey, building, you go over budget. Well, there’s a difference of a change that you choose to say, hey, I don’t want a regular tub. I want a soaker tub that may cost more compared to not planning it right. And then later saying, uh-oh, I didn’t plan it right, therefore there’s a change. So what we’re saying is do the right set of plans. So you understand the project, understand your budget, understand your subcontractors, see how we can help you and then make sure it’s the house that you want. So it’s kind of an interesting process. I think people really, after they go through, they’re like, wow, there’s a lot involved. But that’s what we do. You know, it’s kind of like watching TV. You don’t necessarily have to know how a TV works, you just need to know what you want out of it. Hey, I want a comedy. I want a football game. You know, so in our cases, we can help someone through it. And if they choose to want to learn the process, we’re more than happy to work through it with them.

Interviewer: Now, do pre-drawn plans, that’s really hard to say, pre-drawn plans, do they have structural details or does everything need to be verified? And how accurate are the details in a pre-drawn plan?

Steve Tuma: Well, that can vary, but most of the ones that I see, it says right on there, you should have an engineer or someone verify for codes and dimensions. And there’s a variety of releases within the purchase of the plans. Sometimes people have a local Draftsman drive and they’ll put beam in there. Well, what does that mean? What’s the beam? Is it a single two by eight? Is it a glue lamp? Is it a triple 11 7 8 LVL? So those are the things we have to go through. So what I’ve really found on those is they’re kind of architectural plans with the structural details having to be detailed out. And a lot of times it’s just because there’s a lot of calculations, there’s a lot of knowledge, there’s a lot of things. And there’s a difference of an architectural Draftsman compared to a structural engineer and then tying those together. So it makes sense. We get a lot of plans that I say are just not unified. An engineer does this, an architectural designer does that, but they don’t communicate. So the plans don’t match up and people will say, well, why I paid them? They’re professionals. Well, everyone’s doing their own job, but no one’s looking at the overall project. That’s where we come in and play. That’s why our system works, because you don’t have to try to land up the architectural guy, the structural guy, the grading plans, the energy codes, the green codes, whatever details are there. It’s a lot of stuff. And if you don’t understand it, it’s easy to forget things. Right.

Interviewer: So what’s the average plan that comes through you that doesn’t, let’s say that doesn’t come off of the landmark website. Are they complete? Are pre-drawing plans ever complete?

Steve Tuma: I’ve never seen a set. I mean, the reason why is they’re generally architectural plans and they all have disclaimers say, hey, do this, check the dimensions, do this, check this, or they’ll just have simple details assuming that people will figure it out on site. And I think a lot of that is because they’re doing the simplified version of an architectural design. They’re not doing an architectural design that’s intended to fit at your specific building site on your exact lot. Right. So that’s different. So Steve, let’s just take a sloping piece of land and at the bottom there’s a flat spot and at the top there’s a flat spot. Well, are you building at the bottom flat spot, the top flat spot on the side of the hill? Do you have a walkout? You know, where’s your driveway coming in? There’s a lot of considerations and it takes a lot of time to figure out, hey, what the grade is, how does the house get accessed? Sometimes you need a grading plan, sometimes you need topographical details. So on these standardized plans, of course, they’re kind of just taking plans, copying them and sending them to you. There’s no one there saying, hey, what’s your grade? What’s your slope? What are your seismic conditions? What’s the strength of your soil? Where’s your septic at? Where’s your water supply at? You know, different things like that. How do your energy calculations come into this? So that’s why it just isn’t really possible to have a standard plan that works in a variety of conditions.

Interviewer: But people, when they buy a plan, let’s say online, it seems that they can have a real false sense of accomplishment after they’ve purchased it. It’s like, oh, now I’ve got pretty much the house is ready to go.

Steve Tuma: Right. It’s kind of like buying that one size fits all hat. Not everyone’s head’s the same size or shape or the pair of gloves. It’s like, yeah, you can make it work, but it doesn’t. You’re not going to use it. You know, so it’s kind of an interesting concept and people don’t always realize it. And we understand that. But that’s why we’re here to help, to say, hey, that’s a great starting point. Right. Let’s get you to the rest so that you control the budget and know what’s going on.

Interviewer: So it’s usually you should think of any pre-bought or pre-drawn plan as a guide more than anything.

Steve Tuma: That’s the way we look at it. It’s a starting point to say, hey, I want this. But we have them on our website. I think we have our website says 1800. I think we have like 6000 plans. So chances are we have the plan that people want or an extreme close thing that we can adjust to it. And we work with a very good plan service that then allows us to have these options and work through with people to do it. So I think we’ve developed a system where people can can get ideas. You know, it’s kind of like going to, you know, if you went and say you needed a shirt for a special family event, you know, you might say, hey, I want one that fits right. That’s red. That’s, you know, this or that big collar or whatever ruffles or whatever it may be that you want. You know, you’re probably not going to find it. You might have to adjust it, tailor it, get something, get a sweater that matches it, something so it fits for your exact need. So that’s what we’re able to do is customize it and then give people an idea, because whether you’re paying with cash or financing, you want to know that your budget’s right. Sure. You don’t want to go through and say, well, I’m right within two or three hundred thousand. Because if you’re working with a bank, they’re going to look at your budget, ask you to verify it, and you want to be able to stick to it. You don’t want to create issues where you knowingly have bad plans that then lead to a budget issue. And you have to go back to a bank or to your own bank account to say, hey, I need some more money. It’s just it’s a great headache to avoid. And we can do it up front with paper to give people a plan so they can verify the budget and then start building.

Interviewer: Well, this all leads to one big question. There’s a lot of work even after you bought a pre-drawn plan. If there’s so much work, why are there so many companies selling them?

Steve Tuma: Because people buy them. That’s the situation. It’s a great idea. It’s a great place to peruse and have the idea that, hey, I got a set of plans. I’ve started the project. Well, you have in a way, but you need to get deeper into it to really refine the project to it. So they’re easy. Some customers are into the instant gratification. Hey, I could buy it. I could download it now. I’ve taken a step forward and to a degree they have, but has it been a good solid step? But if they do have those plans, we can work with them. If they don’t, if they haven’t purchased the plans, we can talk to them about the situation of where it makes sense, because it’s probably in our plan set. And just with licensing and a whole bunch of stuff, we’ve got a pretty slick process where in the long run they’ll save money. Right.

Interviewer: Well, very informative. I know you answered a lot of my questions about going online and buying house plans. It sounds like it’s a good way to go, but it’s still going to be a lot of due diligence and vigilance to get them done right.

Steve Tuma: Right. But we have a process that makes it easy. We know the questions to ask. If a customer’s not clear exactly what something means, like if we say, hey, your building department’s asking for a grading and drainage plan. They’re like, what is that? It rains and the water drains off of there. What do they need? Well, they want to know that when you put your driveway and the house sets there, it’ll still drain away and it won’t flood your neighbor out or your own house. So we can help them through the process to get it taken care of. If someone says, hey, I want a window in the basement and that basement’s below ground, we can say, hey, this is how we can work light in their windows or do something to take care of their concerns. So it’s actually pretty cool because the customers that do this, they get a set of plans. They say, hey, I’m not doing changes and they get into it. A couple of weeks into it, they’re like, this is pretty cool. I never thought of it. It feels good to understand and do it right. So it’s actually something that I think at first the customers might be a little awkward. They’re like, but I have these plans that they should be good. But after they see how we help them and they work through these issues, they see the benefit. And then when they’re building, they get to see the triple benefit of not having to do changes, not having to run into those uh-oh moments. And it’s pretty cool. It’s a good feeling. And I think the customers really, really appreciate it.

Interviewer: Well, excellent once again. And that’s going to wrap it up for today’s episode. But before we go and skedaddle out of here, Steve, let the listeners know how to find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company and what you guys do over there.

Steve Tuma: The best thing to do is take a look at our website, which is LHLC.com, which is basically the initials of Landmark Home and Land Company. So LHLC.com. They can look at the website, they can look at plans, they can look at just different videos, listen to some of these podcasts, get some great information. They can also send an email from there or an inquiry or give us a call. And Mike will answer the phone at 800-830-9788, at 800-830-9788. But I’d say take a look at the website, LHLC.com. And we’re very helpful and proactive. We answer the phone. And if for some reason you do get our voicemail, you can leave a message and we will get back with you. We understand that customers work different hours, have different schedules, have different times where the husband and wife can get together and communicate. So we make ourselves available and we will take the time to review a process with someone, help them understand how we can help them so that we can kind of mold the project, how we can help them with design, engineering, permit application, and building, so they can see the vision of their project. And we’ll take that time up-front to do it. That’s important. We’re very interested in having people that really want to do it right. It’s fun.

Interviewer: And fun is what home building should be. It shouldn’t all be headache, right?

Steve Tuma: Oh, hey, it is a lot of work. It is a lot of work, but there’s a lot of joy and sense of accomplishment at the end. And that, I think, is why people do it. We have one family, I think they’re on their 20th home or 18th or something. Wow. They’re going to do a couple more. So it’s something that people enjoy. There’s home shows all over on TV. It’s like, hey, let’s go do one. We’re here to help.

Interviewer: Well, boom. Once again, we have wrapped a very, very informative episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. So for Steve Tuma and myself, have a great day, everyone. And we will see you next time. Thanks, Steve.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, thank you. This is a lot of fun. Let’s help some people build some cool homes. There you go. Thank you.

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Show Notes: 30 Years of Helping People Build Their Dream Homes

Transcript:

Steve Tuma: Something which is interesting, a lot of people think, well I’ve never built anything, I’ve never swung a hammer. We have a lot of extremely successful customers that have been successful in building because they understand the management of a project.

Interviewer: Hi everybody and thank you for joining us for episode 52 of the panelized prefab kit home building show. With me as always is the president and founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want, exactly as they want, nationwide and around the globe since 1993. Mr. Steve Tuma and Steve you must be proud this is the 30th anniversary of Landmark, that’s pretty cool.

Steve Tuma: Yeah yeah a couple weeks ago it’s kind of weird I woke up and I was like something’s up today what’s going on and then like oh it’s a birthday you know and it’s kind of interesting because I remember starting the company and working through different growth phases, coming up with new products, expanding across the country, working internationally in different places and you kind of look back and go this is cool. Yeah. It’s amazing and just the knowledge and attitude we’ve developed to help people really get their house projects going.

Interviewer: You know it’s one thing I found kind of interesting is that sometimes it seems like the companies that are family-owned, family-started, are the ones that last forever. What do you think that is?

Steve Tuma: Well there there’s more of a desire for long-term planning. It’s not like you know let’s do something today and hurt us tomorrow. It’s like let’s do something today that benefits our customers today, next week, next month and tomorrow. And when you’re in for the long run it’s just like compounding money. You’re compounding goodwill, you’re compounding knowledge, you’re compounding the methods of helping customers and refining your product and services as you move along. So I think that’s the difference is we’ve had some customers, I’m not suggesting anyone try to break this record, but took ten and a half years of working with us before they actually signed the contract. Because they had to go through this, then they had to go through this, then this happened, then a little bit of this happened, and then they had to get their land and you know so it goes through. So this isn’t something where you’re like hey honey on the way home pick up a gallon of milk. You know people think about it. It’s a big step, big step. Yeah but it’s a big step but it’s also a beneficial situation. It’s a situation where you build and get a new home, save some money, get some equity, control the quality and get the house you want instead of someone convincing you that you need a house. It’s kind of like sticking a square peg in a round hole type of thing. It’s like why not just get the house you want.

Interviewer: I wanted to start off this episode by asking you about something you have listed on your website. Something called standardized plans and I think what that is, is plans that are generic but still they need to be updated for local building departments, code applications, specific building sites. Can we get into that with you exactly? How standardized plans start from a certain space and how they can change along the way?

Steve Tuma: That’s something what happens. There’s websites all over and some of them are actually decent but people will have a set of plans that they’ll buy and they’ll be like well I paid whatever I got them online and here’s a set of plans and they must be good for the building department. Maybe they are and most likely they’re not. So you never know. It really comes down to what the building department needs but even so sometimes these plans are drawn up for the purpose of selling them online instead of really having the details of what’s there for building departments, any changes that you may want and real structural concerns.

Everyone I’ve seen I should say has stuff saying you should run it by a structural engineer, that they’re not necessarily designed for your building department. They might be designed for one town in America and so what are the chances that someone designed it for one town in America that it fits your code? But also building departments are getting more and more sophisticated even in places where they may not have been sophisticated 5-10 years ago where they need different details, they need sections, they need accuracy. They don’t want plans that say size of beam to be determined, trusses by designer. The building department wants to see the trusses, the building department wants to know what beam you’re using. So sometimes those standardized plans are kind of generic for the purpose of maybe an idea but generally we have found our customers want to know exactly what they’re building. They want to know what the ceilings are right. They don’t want to look at a plans and say optional. What does that mean? So if you give them a builder he gets to make the option and say oh this is easy for me, you’re not getting your cathedral ceiling. So that’s one of these things. So they’re kind of a generic guidepost on building. A lot of people think that plans are there to get your building department to approve them. That’s a portion of it.

We believe that the plans are there so that the customer understands what needs to be built as the financing source, as the building department and any contractors involved as well as us. So when you have a standardized plan they’re not likely to be detailed to the degree that you will really need so you know what is being built. So it’s a variety of situations. It’s code applications, building department requirements, clarity for your contractors, clarity for yourself. You know so you know what’s being built. You should you should know what’s on your plan set. You shouldn’t look at your plan set and said room size to be determined, ceiling height to be determined, trusses to be determined. A lot of people think well a truss it’s just a truss. Well no it isn’t. It could have a tray ceiling, it could have a cathedral ceiling, it could have an energy heel on it. There’s a lot of details that that can be worked out but that’s that’s where we come in. We can help. We don’t expect every customer to know every single detail. We just want to get an idea and then help them move along for the plan set.

Interviewer: And you’re talking details like details that are very specific like like working with contractors or the or the you know trying to get building departments things like that. But let’s let’s move over to the details of the build and I mean things like ceilings, walls, windows, you know roof structures, relationship to the foundation. How does Landmark go about helping the customer know exactly what they’re building so they can be like you just said a customer wants to be clear and they want to be clear in their own mind as well as you know with the contractor working one on one and everybody isn’t just standing around guessing on a build site.

Steve Tuma: Right that’s what we do is we kind of plug in where the customers ideas where they’re formulated and then we get them you know across the line. So customer may have the general concepts of what’s there but they probably haven’t thought about grade, drainage plans, gutters, how to how to attach a beam. They might not have thought too much about the windows. You know windows are the perfect thing. People go through and say oh just put a standard window in. Well window manufacturers do not have standard sizes. Right. So they might have a window that’s three by five but is that the rough opening size or is that the window size? Right. Or is it a slightly different size if it’s a casement window versus a single hung? Mm-hmm. So it’s all those little details that once we work with the customer in a process that we have that’s a proven process to help them get the information as we need it through the design process so that they’re not out there you know they’re ordering windows and suddenly the wrong size window comes in. Right. So there’s a lot of little tricks and nuances that that we can help make it easy for them. So in a sense we kind of help coach them through different situations see what’s going on and take it from there. Like ceiling ceilings it’s you know it’s something people to understand more. Some people be like I just want a flat ceiling.

Other people say oh I want a big volume ceiling which might also be a cathedral or might be a vaulted ceiling. Kind of the same idea three different words for the same thing. But what does that mean exactly and what are they intending to do with it? So some people would say hey we have big holiday celebrations we want a spot for a big Christmas tree or hey we we want a tall ceiling so that we have big windows so we could have a view of the mountain range or the night sky. So we can work with them on on details like that. Different walls. Just had a customer working on a project and he said Steve I want a great insulated home it’s my last home I’m gonna live in it for 30, 40 years I want to do it but I want to save money and go with a two by four wall. And I’m like well I don’t know if you’re actually saving money because in a two by six wall you can get a lot more insulation if you’re going to live there for 30 years you know we could work those details out. So there’s structural concerns, insulation concerns, just different details we can work with them. A lot of people like on the plans they think hey I got a beam in my basement but who’s thinking about how that beam’s attached to the post or how that beam’s attached to the foundation.

You know different details and that that’s what we work on so with a complete set of plans the customer and us can work on it the customer understands it it’s on the plan so it’s clear to the contractor minimizing uh-oh moments and gee I forgot I didn’t know it’s on the plan so they can review the plans before they start the project and the contractor can can go do their their work. Right. You know you brought something up relationships to the foundation that’s one of those things that people never even think about. Right. You know so so let’s just say you were building a house on a flat piece of land you and I might stand out there and go yeah that looks like a flat piece of land but if you had a surveyor there might be a two foot rise in 30 feet. Right. That appears flat but in reality it isn’t so depending on the foundation you have you might have to adjust some of the the the foundation or grade around it. Also relationships to the foundation sometimes people want to a walk out basement sometimes they want to look out basement kind of half basement underground windows above ground sometimes they want a slab but they’re building on the side of a hill how does this work how do we get stuff uh together and then a lot of stuff it’s also how the energy codes work how do you insulate this so that you don’t have a cold floor and then you know the you you have an energy efficient and comfortable home so there’s a lot of details all of us will know about it’s like when you mention it you’re like yeah that makes sense I knew that well you do when that when it’s brought up in conversation going through the design process but it’s not something if if you asked a typical customer to list it that they would right yeah when’s when’s the last time you were at a cocktail party and said hey let me tell you about the relationship of the foundation to my grade on the side of a granite cliff you probably never heard that you probably also never really heard about someone just putting a slab on a fat on a flat piece of land so that’s that’s one of the things that that we work with because people don’t realize that can affect drainage to your septic system or sewer line it can affect drainage of water off your roof so it’s kind of important stuff yeah those are things that you know we’re so comfortable in our life we never think about the things that we have to do to do it but that’s what we do we we kind of geek out on this and and help people get through the process.

Interviewer: You know it just occurred me what I wish is that there were companies like Landmark Home and Land Company for all aspects of life like buying a pair of jeans online you know every every company makes so their sizes are completely different you know a Levi’s or a Wrangler and a 34 waist isn’t going to be the same in every one so if there was a a Landmark Company sort of like that for clothing where you could call them and they could talk you through this yeah that would be great.

Steve Tuma: Well what it’s true and it but it’s but it’s really a true understanding to your specific project your project in your house one thing that you bring up is like I joke with people I saw this ad for a large pizza so I ordered it and it showed up as 12 inches right I think a large peach is like six when I was a little kid there was 16 inches it was like you feed a family but now for different marketing things it’s so it’s like so what are you really getting and that’s the time that we go through and on a set of plans go through and show it dimensions what the house is like sections of a house so you could see what a cathedral ceilings like so you can see the relationship of a ceiling height in a hallway and how it transitions to an outdoor patio you know so there there’s a lot of cool stuff that that we could do and what we try to do is have an extremely complete set of plans so your excavator understands your foundation guy understands the framer the window people the roofers the electricians the building department the inspectors banks and your own family so you know what it is that you’re choosing to build.

Interviewer: It sounds to me like having the having the right plans knowing what the plans are are going to be they’re going to help not just with hey look how my house is going to look but the budgeting the schedule the overall keeping control of your own project it seems like that all is sort of shoved into what a really detailed plan would be.

Steve Tuma: Right right but we don’t it’s not something that’s so overbearing where you got to understand this all right away it’s piece by piece you work on this you work on the schedule you work on the budget you know so like like someone told me way back how do you eat an elephant you don’t do it in one bite you do a bunch of little bites you manage it you prioritize things and and we can help uh people people through the process to to get them uh push started and be there for continual support through throughout the project right something which is interesting you know a lot of people think well i’ve never built anything i’ve never swung a hammer we have a lot of extremely successful customers that have been successful in building because they understand the management of a project and they choose to go through so even though they’ve never really built anything before i mean maybe when their kids used a lincoln log or legos or something but they’re able to understand the process work with the right people to to to get the uh the the home built and that that’s what’s amazing about it so you don’t have to be an electrical engineer you don’t have to be an hvac design genius you don’t have to be the master drywaller you can be if you happen to have those skills or you have friends and family that can help right or you could be someone that hires subcontractors to get the job done and what you’ll find is when you have a real set of plans with accurate details those people take you seriously if you show up with what i call you know jokingly called cartoons the people aren’t going to take you seriously you know just think of it if you were someone offering a service and someone came to you saying hey i’m building at one two three main street here are the plans you’re going to take them a lot more serious than well we might build something that kind of looks like this you know what i mean you know so that that’s what it is it makes the the overall project go better.

Interviewer: Well it sounds to me like one of the the aspects of landmark home and land company the the I’d say one of the tightest things that you guys offer one of the most amazing things you guys offer is it sounds like you’re helping the customer keep an overall control of their house build you know and that’s got to give people confidence.

Steve Tuma: That’s that’s it that that’s it because when you retain control you you control the budget you control the schedule you control the quality you control what’s being built right yeah and that’s that’s i think ultimately why people work with us now people come to us saying you know they’ll find panelized homes on uh on our website they’ll see it but when they get into the support of the plans and they start seeing the control and how they can get it put together that’s that’s really the the key element of it yeah because it’s people build their house it’s a lot of work but the end result is something that they’re not likely have been able to get any other ways and by understanding your project controlling your project knowing about your project you’re going to get a better product you’re going to get a beautiful home.

Interviewer: Yeah and you’re you’re allowing people to be flexible because there’s a lot of of plans plan designs on your website to choose from but i doubt very often that somebody buys one of those plans and the house ends up being exactly what that plan is.

Steve Tuma: I think in 30 years it happened once like 22 years ago someone said i want that exact house right and i’m just kind of like wow you know but you know people people always go through and do it that’s the cool thing because you know everyone’s watching their budget whether it’s a hundred thousand dollar adu or a five or ten million dollar home everyone’s watching the budget but there’s still stuff that they want they want to make it their house i want my kitchen with my window overlooking the yard i want my garage with my workbench i want my basement with the pool table and a walk out to to the garden or whatever it may be so that’s that’s the the thing that we have so you know there’s a lot of ways to get a house but i look at it as when you’re done you you give yourself the best chance to sit there at the end look at it go this is cool this is what we want we designed it the way we want it it works and five ten years later still have it work.

Interviewer: Yeah yeah well you know we talk about plans on this show a lot because that’s where everything starts but we all but plan isn’t just one piece of paper it’s not just a letterhead with here’s your plan and i’m there’s there’s so many aspects to just the plans themselves explain that explain what what plan sets are and and how they work as a tool between you and the owner builder.

Steve Tuma: Well i look at it as a communication tool you know so that everything is there in a drawing and writing with details showing what the customers have built so the banker understands if financing’s involved the building department contractors the the owner us to go through and get it put together so it’s details it’s architectural design sections structural designs electrical layouts plumbing layouts different levels of availability of hvac design energy calculations site plans if a customer wants it green codes in certain areas but the key is not just that you have those individual items but it’s that they work together and the plan set is consistent right so that you don’t have a conflict here you know the energy calculations say you should have R and R 19 and the drawing says R 13 right to have everything there so so so that it uh so that it works together and that allows the customer to fully understand the process so it’s it’s a communication tool first of all in the early stages for the customer to kind of communicate with us and the customer to go through the process of of thinking it through because you know sometimes the design process it kind of starts the overall form what does it look like where’s the big window where’s the garage but as you get into it suddenly it’s like hey wait a second where do i want the dishwasher hey where’s the pool table going to be where where is the big screen going to be where you know some customers they they have different shifts or they want a room that’s quiet you know what room’s going to be super insulated is there a theater room how’s the theater room going to work how’s the garage going to access where’s the utility room and and just by spending a little bit of time we can go through and and help people through through the process to get the home they want so we don’t expect people to understand everything the first time through it’s it’s an it’s an evolution kind of to go through and get the plans good together and you know what’s interesting um i’ve actually never counted how many customers we’ve helped but in in 30 years every project is different and we’ve had customers build the same house multiple times and there’s always different concerns sure yeah because one lot’s different than the other the sewer comes in on the back instead of on the front or hey it’s on a septic or hey the evolution from regular hvac systems to mini split heating and cooling systems you know different different situations a lot more people are going with heated floor systems how do those work so as people go through they they get different questions and you know some might be more involved with the windows some people might be more concerned about their basement in their garage some people might be uh more interested in other things.

We had a customer great guy todd hey todd he’s in wisconsin built a uh a retirement home and and his concern was he saved his life for his life to get a lake property so he wanted to be able to sit in a chair his lazy boy look out the lake nice see the fireplace and his big screen tv and he didn’t want to really have to rotate so we actually we actually worked to make sure the windows were there the fireplace was there and the tv was there so i jokingly said with him because we we got along and just had a great time like we do with all of our customers and i i said but todd who’s going to bring your your soda he goes oh my dog does that he knows how to open the fridge and bring me bring me bring me what i need so in that case this particular customer that was an that was his dream that he worked for for 30 40 years to have a home where he could watch the lake the swans on the lake watch the fireplace and he was a green bay packer fan well so he could be in one place he knew what he wanted get that taken care of we’ve had other people that have exceptional views of mountain ranges and the sierras um in the rockies or in the plain states or oceans whatever whatever it may be and there’s specific things that they want to be able to uh to look at and this doesn’t always mean that you have to have the most expensive coolest piece of land on the property everyone’s property has something that that they that they like that we work with we’re we’re actually just delivering a house uh this friday um a nice two-story kind of colonial design where we actually shifted a roof line in the garage so that a window coming out of the the upstairs master suite would get a better view of the the sunset you know it’s just this this little thinking of like hey wait if we jockey the garage back two feet he’ll get the sunset because this particular customer bill he could watch the sun rise in the kitchen in the morning with coffee and then at night when he’s winding down reading he could look out the opposite window and see the sunset and those two things the inviting the day in and closing the day out were extremely important in in this house a beautiful home yeah and that that that’s that’s the cool thing about it so when we get to standardized plans it’s like yeah that’s someone’s idea and they’re they’re in the business of duplicating plans we’re in the business of saying but what about you what about your land how how do we get the most out of it because the time it takes to adjust a window size slide a garage back a little so that you get the sunset that you want it’s just a little bit of thinking yeah and and and we uh we we got it taken care of.

Interviewer: How how good have you gotten over 30 years at at playing let’s say psychologist in the way that people you know if i were building a house i know there’s going to be panic times and the fact that you guys are so available and on the phone so readily and uh you know talking somebody off the ledge who really thinks a small problem is really much bigger than it is.

Steve Tuma: You know amazingly that doesn’t happen a lot really because i i think the process of finding us and working with us the people have a level of comfort we’ve got great reviews you know people could read the reviews on our on our website from the better business bureau it’s right at the top of our web page you can click it and i think that there’s a comfort there that hey you’re being taken care of because all of us have been consumers where you know there’s some company that’s got some award from who knows what company and then you you get to call in and your hold time is 52 minutes you know 10 minutes later your hold time is 56 minutes oh but if you want us to call us back you won’t lose your position yeah you know just leave your number and you never get a call thus you give a call and there’s there’s a knowledgeable person likely me that will go through and work specifically to answer your question right not with a canned standard answer but with an answer that relates to you your house your project and what you need and sometimes we’re we’re even able to jump ahead of it because sometimes people ask questions and they don’t realize that there’s a downstream question right so so we could kind of say hey we’ve been here before you’re asking this question but let me let me expand it a little bit farther and help you through this process.

Interviewer: Yeah and just it’s you guys help people prepare that’s the thing so that’s the more the more preparation the less of those um panic of talk me off the ledge moments there’s

Steve Tuma: But but it compounds so a lot of people are like they don’t realize the value of the the right set of plans and when building so what it does by compounding is we also build the panelized home package that matches this plan so a good decision in the early stage allows us to build we’ll develop the final set of plans that go through permitting and then build the the panelized home package that fits that plan set so it matches the plan set which makes for easy assembly and easy building department inspection and approval so it’s kind of a compounding of good decisions and good decisions make for a better project so the key to it is the the unity and the design and the panelized home package so that you don’t end up in a situation where someone has a set of plans and then a local contractor sticks builds something that might be easier more convenient different that doesn’t match the plans and then an inspector says hey that doesn’t match what we approved and you the customer gets to pay for that that’s not the way we do it we do the set of plans that matches the panelized home so what’s delivered is what was approved by the customer the bank and the building department right yeah so that’s that’s an extremely important part we’re doing a lot of talking about the the plans which are good but the plans it’s it’s the kind of the roadmap to the construction of the house so how it ties into the panelized home package the floor systems the walls the headers the roof systems electrical layouts plumbing layouts that’s that’s what the key issue i don’t want to simplify it too much to say it’s kind of like a recipe but it is if you have a good recipe you’re gonna have a better meal and that that’s kind of the same situation of uh.

Interviewer: Well it’s kind of life i mean preparation builds confidence that’s how our confidence comes from the more prep you have

Steve Tuma: And that’s why when you say to people you know are they on the ledge it’s like no they start seeing this they start seeing how we help right there you know some people be like well what’s a section i’m like well it’s kind of a slice through the house and i’ll be like well why do i need that well because you see the relation of the land to the foundation to the floor system to the walls to the the ceilings to the roof systems how how you approach from a garage into a house how you know make sure that you have all these accesses so you do so things are well thought out so you’re not out there building something and someone goes well this isn’t working you know we we’ve already worked through those items and that’s that’s the the key element and another thing is we also suggest that during the plan phases our customers share the plans with the contractors because sometimes different places people have different ideas of how to do the same thing the end result is likely the same but maybe they like to do something differently sure you know there are just some places where people do block foundations other people do icf other people do poured cement you know so there’s different theories you can’t really say one’s better than the other there it’s just a different one and each has their benefits you know to work with so we like to go through and make it make an accurate set of plans so that people do so that people work with it the the important thing about this and the very interesting thing is people appreciate it when they’re into it they don’t realize the value of front but when they’re there and it’s going smooth and maybe their friends building a house in different methods and this house gets done quicker it’s easier and they still have their hair there they’re all doing i gotta be honest about it building a house is a lot of work it can be stressful but it’s in the management and like you you brought up confidence and understanding of your project that puts you in in position to build it better right it’s the pre-planning that goes through to uh to make the actual execution of building a lot better

Interviewer: Awesome well that’s gonna wrap it up for us today for this episode of uh the panelized prefab kit home building show and uh but before we let you go Steve i want you to tell our audience how to get ahold of you guys over at landmark home and land company.

Steve Tuma: I think the best thing to do is check out our website um maybe you found our podcast on the website or you just found them floating around the internet but our website is l h l c dot com kind of like the initials of landmark home land company l h l c dot com and there’s videos on there there’s these podcasts there’s thousands of plans there’s general discussions about different things and you can submit inquiries on plans or just general comments through the website but you can also give us a call at 800-830-9788 again it’s 800-830-9788 and you could work with Mike he’ll work in the initial phases to find out what you need how we can help you do you have land you know what kind of help you need and get you you know preliminary concepts and then once you’re at a point where you’re ready to go um i would contact the customer and then then we get into the you know the details of actually getting the project going it’s a kind of a seamless process it’s easy going and we work at the pace that a customer wants to work at we don’t push it along you know it’s i mean if a customer needs us to push it along we will but we work at the pace that that they do for their timeline their budget and and the expectations so it’s a lot of fun it’s it’s a great time.

Interviewer: Perfect well thanks again for taking time out today Steve and thanks to all of you for listening to the panelized prefab kit home building show always informative always helpful so for Steve Tuma and myself have a great day and we will see you next time thanks Steve.

Steve Tuma: Thank you.

View Details

Show Notes: Customer service does matter when designing and building your new home!

Transcript:

Steve Tuma: Yes, we get to know our customers well, we talk, we spend time on the phone, we talk about details, whatever questions they have we’ll take the time and through that, you get a great understanding of what people do.

Interviewer: Hello everyone and thanks for joining us for episode 51 of the panelized prefab kit home-building show. With me as always is the president and founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, a company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want, exactly as they want, nationwide and around the globe since 1993, Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you, my friend?

Steve Tuma: Life is good, it’s another good day. You know I was listening to this, he said around the globe since 1993, we’ve been doing this 30 years.

Interviewer: Yeah, you’re just babies in the industry.

Steve Tuma: Actually, we’re one of the oldest, but it’s amazing, I’ve helped every single customer since 1993. Every single one? Every single one. Wow. And many of them come back and build another one or help a relative or a friend and it’s just kind of amazing to think, you know, all the stuff that we’ve done, the different people we’ve helped, different places around the country, different styles homes, different budgets, it’s an amazing situation.

Interviewer: That 30 years man, that’s a landmark, that’s amazing. So in the industry, and we were joking around earlier, but are there any other panelized companies out there that are as old or as seasoned and experienced as Landmark?

Steve Tuma: I’m not sure that there are any that do exactly what we do, you know, with the complete service where we work with our customers, you know, from the inception of the design, their architectural design, the structural engineering, the energy codes, the site planning, working with the building department, working with the customer on their exact needs to develop their plan. And then actually manufacture, oh, sorry, back up, get them the plan so they could submit for permits, work with them through the complete permitting process, and then also go through and supply the panelized package that matches the approved plans. It’s an incredible amount of work that I know of, we’re the only ones that do it because it’s an incredible amount of work. A lot of details goes over many, many disciplines, and I guess we just enjoy it.

Interviewer: Yeah, well, I mean, if you’re doing something 30 years and you don’t like it, you probably would have gotten out a long time ago.

Steve Tuma: Oh, well, this is fun because we’ve developed a system that works pretty well so we can help a customer with the one-stop shop idea. And that’s what’s really cool about it. Someone could call us and say, hey, Steve, I want this house on that lot, how do we do it? Instead of saying, well, you’ve got to call 20 people, and by the way, coordinate them, it’s kind of like lining kittens up, good luck. It’s hard work with us, we’ll be able to work with someone to make it easier for them and have fun doing it. So we want to work with good people, build cool houses, and have a good time doing it.

Interviewer: I want to get to that one-stop shop idea that you were just talking about later in the podcast. Because I think it’s really important that people understand exactly what the services are that Landmark provides. But for today’s episode, I thought we might bend your ear regarding what types of situations come up with your customers from time to time when they need help that they may not even realize at the beginning of a project that they need help on. People walk into these things like, oh, I can build a house, it can’t be that hard. But you guys probably have to step in a lot. Are you psychic? Are you able to ascertain? How do you ascertain a customer’s needs even when they themselves can’t express or articulate their desires because they simply don’t have the knowledge it takes to build a new home?

Steve Tuma: Well, this is kind of interesting because a lot of customers do understand the building processes, whether or not they’ve done it. And then you’re right. Some people are like, I’m going to do it. I’ve wanted to do it. I’ve never built a birdhouse, but I want to build a house. So we’re able to do it. So there’s different ranges of what people can do. Some people, we’ve had families that actually work together because they’re in the trades. They know how to do all the work. And then other people are more kind of managing it. So it becomes more of a project management situation. So in a sense, you don’t necessarily need to know the details of how to pour a cement foundation. But if you understand how to find a good person, work with them, go over a good set of plans with them, coordinate it, it becomes more of a coordination situation. So we’ve had a lot of people that have never swung a hammer built a house.

A lot of single moms are great at multitasking and coordinating 20 things at one time. We’ve had people that are professional builders after they retire, they work with us on their own homes. So it kind of runs the gamut. So what we do is we fill in and help customers where they are. You bring up the, you know, joking, I’m sure you said, are you guys psychic? I don’t know if it’s psychic, probably not, but it’s more of a situation where we’ve been doing it so long where we could kind of see patterns. So sometimes people will say, you know, say in the design stage, you’re like, I don’t know what I want. Well, sometimes they know what they don’t want. And sometimes they do know what they want. They just haven’t thought it through or haven’t been questioned. So someone might go through and say, hey, I want a nice kitchen. And they’ll be like, but Steve, can you help us design a kitchen? And I say, well, we’ve got designers that can do all the kitchen layouts and everything. But what are you intending to do? Okay. So sometimes you kind of back into it.

Some people say, well, like we had a customer in Prescott, Arizona. His wife loved baking pies. She had to have double stoves, windows overlooking the yard to see the grandkids, certain amount of countertop space. And you know, she had her layout because she’s been baking pies for 40 years. Other people are like, you know what? It’s real simple. I just want a simple galley kitchen. It’s a small house or an ADU. I just want something where one person can quickly put a meal together. Maybe it’s two people living in the house, one person, something different. And then other times people be like, hey, when my family comes over, they come over. You know, the kitchen needs to be by the great room, which has to be, you know, I got to be able to put a table for 14 there. We’re going to have two TVs and music going and there’s got to be a pool table. You know, so that people have an idea. So they may not know exactly how they want it, but they know what they’re trying to achieve and how they want to enjoy the house. So that’s how we’re able to do it. And typically it’s most people know, but if they don’t, it’s just a little conversation. I get a couple ideas based on that conversation. So we listen to our customers and what they tell us.

You know, we may ask some questions back, get some details, and we make some suggestions to the designer. They draw the house up with the kitchen or bedrooms or bathrooms or garage, whatever it may be. And then a set of plans shows up, which becomes kind of the basis. It comes a starting point of a black and white drawing that you can look at and see exactly what’s there. And then you make adjustments from there. And by the way, we’ve had varieties of customers. I bring up kitchens because people relate to it. We’ve had people that have to have family rooms, theater rooms, guys that want man caves, they restore cars, they work on cars, father, son projects, you know, whatever it may be. There’s people, equestrian properties, they wanted kind of a small tech room in the house. So there’s a variety of situations. And then there’s other people that just have a view and they want to be able to sit down, soak in the view, enjoy nature, watch a fireplace, listen to music. So there’s a variety of different ways that we can do. So sometimes it’s not specific, like, hey, I want the best kitchen for baking pies. Sometimes it’s like, I got a beautiful view and I just want to soak it in. So we get into, you know, different windows, how the windows are angled, where the views at, how the house is positioned on the lot. So it gets pretty interesting. And I think that’s something where people really appreciate it because it’s not just the house. We’re helping them create an environment that will change their life and allow them to live the best life that they choose.

Interviewer: And I think it’s funny because that’s, you know, we’re talking about people not maybe not knowing exactly how to explain what they’re looking for and to have that experience that you guys have where you go, oh, I know what you’re talking about. And they may go, hmm, I don’t even know what I’m talking about, you know. But this goes back to like plan details. You guys have a lot of plans, sort of plan templates on your website and people can go on there and pick and choose. But everything, what I think is special about Landmark Home and Land Company is your ability to be so adaptable, you know, and so not all plans are equal. And you guys have to sort of navigate people through that whole process of what what plan they really want and what’s going to give them the most bang for their buck and the most bang for their emotional need. You know, it’s a home. It’s important.

Steve Tuma: Right. How it fits on the land, how it’s oriented for zoning issues, you know, whatever it may be. But it’s not just that. There’s also the issue of plans of the physical information in the plan set. So in certain parts of the country, people will just build a house. They’ll go find some local guy that won an award in high school and he’ll draw a set of plans. And you know what? Their plans are good conceptual plans. You could look at it. You can see what the house looks like. You can see the different bedroom sizes, the living room sizes, and this and that. And in some areas, people will get permits on that. And then it’s up to the builder to interpret what that plan is. And then hopefully it lines up with what the customer wants. Right. So generally on plans that are real simple, even though they might be accepted by a building department, you know, who knows how deep the building department is actually looking at them. But the details may not be there to make sure that the customer gets what they want. So it’s not a generic situation. It’s not a gallon of milk where you could say, hey, I want a gallon of vitamin D milk, whole milk. And generally, it’s done to a certain standard, to a certain degree.

Plans aren’t like that. There’s details that need to be there, sections, insulation details, connection details, foundation details, ceiling height, wall heights, ceiling details, eave overhangs, and a lot of things. So sometimes people don’t understand this and they’re like, well, I got a set of plans from the local guy. Then he did this. He does a great job. He does it for everyone. And then I say, but how tall is your wall? They’re like, I don’t know. How tall is your basement? I don’t know. Is there a cathedral ceiling here? I don’t know. And they start to understand that it’s good to have it because a plan set, the way I look at it, is really a communication item between the customer, us, the building department, the contractor, and any financing sources that might be involved. So it needs to be clear as far as what’s there. Sometimes people say, hey, you know, I heard that construction goes over budget. I’m like, yeah, it can, but it doesn’t have to. And sometimes the over budget or off schedule is more a result of bad plans. So someone looks at the plans and say, well, it didn’t say that you wanted a cathedral ceiling here. So the builder just puts a flat ceiling.

You walk in your house and it’s like, I wanted a cathedral ceiling. And he said, well, it’s not on the plans. Well, I told you about it eight months ago. You should have remembered, you know, type of thing. And with our set of plans, we have the details. We show the sections so people can see how a house goes together. They can see the ceiling heights, wall heights, get a lot of details on the windows, basement, foundation situation so they could see how it’s put together to minimize and hopefully eliminate the chance of the what ifs and the oh calls at five o’clock on Friday where someone’s sitting there going, what do you mean by this? How big of a window instead of big window, you know, have a specific window detail. So that’s that’s what we’re able to do and make sure that a plan set is is is detailed so everyone in the project understands it. And it makes it easy because I’ve seen it. People sit there and they talk to a builder and they’re talking to him saying, I want this and I want this and I want this. No one writes it down, you know, and I don’t know who has that type of memory to remember stuff over every detail over six months. So with the plan sets, we’re able to keep things clear and one final set of plans so everyone could refer to them and everyone knows what’s being built. Just makes it easier. You can control your budget, you can control your schedule, and the nicest thing is you can help control your headaches. Right.

Interviewer: So two things in what, you know, that what that list of things you just were talking about, two things that I gathered from that right off the bat is first, how much of a collaboration it is building a house between you at Landmark and the customer. I mean, that’s a huge, big thing. And then also listening, you were talking about, you know, you listen to the customers and I’m sure even if the customer can’t exactly articulate a need or a desire or whatever, just by listening, do you think that you have the ability to foresee problems or foresee changes down the line, you know, with just by what they’re talking, you know, how they’re expressing their desires for what their house should be?

Steve Tuma: Yes, we get to know our customers well. We talk, we spend time on the phone, we talk about details, whatever questions they have, we’ll take the time. And through that, you get a great understanding of what people do and how they live and their outlook on life, and what’s important to them and what isn’t important to them. So through the process, the listening, the paying attention, conversations, the evolution of designing a home, you know, we don’t expect them to give us everything and we draw the perfect set of plans the first time. We work towards it. But even if we draw exactly what they asked for, sometimes people say, hey, now that I see it, I thought about it a little more and I need a little change. So we don’t rush the development thing to make, you know, we want to make sure that they have it. And yeah, it’s a listening thing. This is kind of a partnership. Even though it’s our customer’s home, we kind of consider it to be ours. It’s representative of our efforts and desires to help a customer build, you know, what I just say is a cool house.

In my opinion, if you’ve got to work as hard as we do to make a living, I think you should pull up to your house every day and go, this is cool. I like it. Mm hmm. Instead of, oh, I wish I made the window better. Oh, I should have had a two-car garage or I should have done this, you know. So what we want to do is work with people to kind of prod ideas, get conversations going, let things flow so that we can work with them to get help develop the ideas if they don’t have it. And then on the other side, we’ve had people that have come in and know exactly what they want. Right. You know, they want this and this and this needs to be here and this needs to be this size and they’re detailed to that degree. And that’s also cool as well.

Interviewer: Do you prefer that?

Steve Tuma: You know what? It’s it’s all it’s all kind of fun after 30 some years, 30 years right now of doing this. We just look at it as let’s get them the cool house, the house that they want. Right. Even when someone knows exactly what they want, there’s always a deeper detail we need to work out. There’s always something here. Sometimes you have it and they still want to make a little change or they’re like, hey, what about this? Or, hey, I was at the store and I saw this window. So suddenly my dream window is out. Now my double dream window is in. So it’s always an evolution. Some customers get into different types of materials, different finishes, different situations where we’ve really got to look at it. You know, let me just take, for example, car guys. You know, the guy’s got to have his man cave. He kind of doesn’t worry about the house. He just wants his garage, right? So a guy will be like, well, I want to lift. OK, so what are you doing with this lift? Are you storing cars or are you lifting vans up and pulling transmissions out of them? It’s a different wall height and it’s a different ceiling system. Sure. So even though a guy might go, hey, I want to lift, I know exactly what it is, I got to put my classic muscle car in here. It’s like, but wait a second, what are you doing? You know, so that’s what we’ve got to look at. And then you start working on electrical layouts where the windows are sometimes security, you know, make sure that, you know, the people’s assets are protected. So it’s always kind of fun because I think we’ve been able to help someone even if they think that they’ve designed every square inch of the house. There’s always something that through a conversation we can help them work out. Or sometimes in the design phases, there’s just little details that until you’re deep into the design, you couldn’t possibly think of.

Interviewer: It must be kind of fun to drive by a house that you’ve designed and helped someone build.

Steve Tuma: Every once in a while, I’ll just go on a road trip and look up on the sign and say, oh, there’s that town. We did a house there last week, two years, 10 years ago. And it’s kind of amazing. And it’s amazing of how customers keep in touch with us. One customer from 24 years ago called back and said, hey, this is Rich up in Ann Arbor. Remember me? And I’m like, yeah. You know, and it was just kind of cool. And then we helped as one of his family members build a house. So it’s something where we’re helping people get a house, but really, you know, kind of affecting their life, helping them get the house they want for the price that they’re choosing to pay at the place that they want to build. Right. So it’s pretty cool.

Interviewer: To be a company like yours, and in 30 years, I’m sure this is also one of the cool aspects of being around for a while, but you know, to help like even generationally or just people coming back to you guys to build their second and third house, that’s got to be a great feeling.

Steve Tuma: Oh, it is. It is. It’s kind of like your old pal coming by. We have some customers we’ve been working with in Florida for a couple of years. We’re on 10 or 15 houses. I think they started a little business and it’s pretty cool. They call up, say, hey, Steve, I need this. Hey, Steve, I need that. And a shout out to Bill and Clifford because I know they listen every once in a while. But it’s kind of interesting. Then we’ve had customers that do 20 homes, five homes, two homes, you know, whatever it is. Sometimes we’re actually getting, the company’s been around long enough where we’ve done the starter home, the kid’s home, and now we’re getting into the retirement home. It’s just, you sit back and go, wow, you’ve seen the evolution of a family. Three decades is a long time. It’s kind of interesting.

Interviewer: Let’s get back to the sort of customer service aspect of Landmark Home and Land Company. One of the big things is people are going to more than likely have to deal with building departments in their area and getting permits for their build and things like that. Landmark never just lets people just off on their own. You guys just don’t set people off without a rudder. You actually do a lot of work in that department helping people with permit issues, et cetera.

Steve Tuma: Yeah, because building departments are interesting. A lot of people look at them as like the benchmark of knowledge and make sure the house is right. Well, building departments each look at different details. It’s not a universal, all-complete check. So you can go in a little town and you might be able to walk in, pay 25 bucks, and leave with a permit. They don’t even look at plans. Sometimes you go in places and there’s three plan checkers, each with three totally different opinions as to what needs to be in your plan set. And you know what? If it’s a day on Monday when they woke up on the wrong side of the bed, your plan check requirements might be a little different than if it was Friday and they woke up on the right side of the bed. And then there’s other places that are very sophisticated that give you a complete list of every single detail. And even if you fulfill every single detail, they may come back and ask further details. Kind of one question, you give them an answer, and that leads to two more questions. The point about it is, is we’ve been doing it long enough and we have a personal interest and kind of excitement in working through the challenge of building departments that every customer that we’ve worked with has gotten the permits for the plans that they’ve submitted.

Yeah, that’s a good track record. So that’s whether, you know, we hear a lot, oh man, I’m building in this town and it’s just the worst building department ever. And I’m like, oh really? You know, let’s check this one out and everything works out. So and then there’s other places where, you know, places where there’s earthquakes, hurricanes, high snow loads where they really, really want to do it. And a lot of people think that it’s us against the building department. It kind of isn’t. The building department is just making sure that you don’t do stupid things that other people have done. You know, they’re kind of safety, a lot of them call building and safety. So I agree, I’m not into the whole big brother thing. But on the other side, they’re just double checking and make sure that you’re doing it right. Right. You know, so I’ll agree every once in a while they ask questions where you scratch your head and say, I’ve never heard of this, but you know what? We get through it. And we’ve had some interesting situations in some areas, occasionally they’ll lose a building inspector and nothing happens and then the new guy comes up with a new attitude. But the bottom line of it is we’ve done so many plans and so many different building conditions below, you know, you get to almost below sea level or at sea level up to places in Colorado that, you know, Leadville, 11,000 some hundreds feet up above sea level. It’s the highest populated town, hurricane zones, earthquake zones, all these different situations where there’s just a lot of details. We’ve done it. So the chances of someone coming up with something that just kind of stumps us is extremely remote. But if by chance you’re the customer that has that one question, we’ll get the answer. And what’s nice about it is I work directly with the customer, the building department, the checklist items to make sure that it’s done. So we’re not just giving answers to push the process. We’re giving answers to solve the question, to work towards obtaining the permit. So it’s a pretty interesting process that we have. It’s actually kind of cool. Customers at first might be a little like, oh, the building department, I’ve heard about them. But when they get into it, a lot of them have said, this is pretty cool. And they learn stuff because people want to build their own home. It’s not just to save money, control the cost, get the house they want, kind of a life experience.

Interviewer: Sure. And it’s a journey. Building a house is a journey. Not, you know, it’s you can look at it that you’re bumping into walls with building departments and permits or whatever. And you can just look at it and look what I’m getting and learn educational-wise out of dealing with speed bumps or whatever might come your way. What about, I know you’ve mentioned in the past that customers sometimes will, during the construction phase, will look and go, you know what, like, I’m not sure I want those windows there anymore, or that side of the house just doesn’t work for me. What’s the process that you go through to helping people get through the adjustment of maybe their plans aren’t quite working the way they thought it would visually and emotionally for them when they’re just looking at the house build?

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s an interesting thing because it’s actually something where the plans are what they want. But in the evolution, as you kind of fall in love with it, get more excited, you know, it’s kind of like unpeeling an onion. There’s certain phases where you think about stuff. So a perfect example is we have a man building a very nice home in Eager, Arizona. Like a 1,500 square foot ranch. He said, it’s perfect, exactly what I want. We’re going through permitting phases and he said something like, Steve, I got a great view out of the side of my house and I realized I don’t have enough windows. So it’s when he’s out there staking the foundation, you know, going, okay, you know, the guys are going to excavate. There was a sunset or something that went on and he was standing where the living room was. And he goes, do I have a big enough window? Now, it’s kind of an interesting thing, but yeah, we were able to go through, re-engineer that portion, get the window in, get everything approved, and he’s getting his windows. We had to jump through a couple of flaming hoops backwards, but I bet you I’m going to get a picture of the sunset through that window, you know when the house is there. So what it is, is, you know, sometimes people run into situations.

We like to avoid things like that, but if we have to, under certain conditions, we’re able to do it. But then there’s also other things which have come up. You know, we talked about building departments. Building departments do what building departments do. They’re not all consistent and every once in a while you’ll have a plan checker approve one thing, but the inspector decides he has a personal issue and he wants something different. Just because in his mind it’s there, even though it’s approved on the plans, he wants something a little different, or totally by chance, you know, maybe there’s a more, I don’t want to call it more legitimate, but it is, they go in and they find something out. Even though you get a geotechnical report or you find, you know, you have an understanding of the soil conditions, you know, the guy’s out there excavating and you believe that it’s, you know, a certain type of soil going down eight feet or whatever for a basement, and they go down and they hit granite in a foot. And suddenly it’s like, uh-oh, how do we change the foundation? Putting a foundation in regular dirt is a lot different than pinning it to granite. So if there is a situation that comes up where someone comes into one of those uh-oh moments, we’re here to help them. Chances are we’ve heard or seen of that situation before, and we can go through and… In 30 years there probably isn’t a whole lot that surprises you, right? I mean, you’ve pretty much seen it all. Right. Until we start building on the moon or Mars, I, you know, I never want to say never type of a thing, but, you know, in most situations we’ve been able to get through, and amazingly this is one of these, you get back to where you said, hey, are you guys psychic? We’re not psychic, but we kind of know the realm of potential issues. So we have a little bit of leeway in the design or engineering. So if something comes up, we, there might be like a standard deviation of things where we can, you know, get through issues just by the way we design and work together.

Interviewer: One thing Landmark is really known for, and this comes back to what you said earlier about you have, you know, over 30 years you’ve dealt with every single home builder, every single one personally that you’ve dealt with. That’s an amazing thing. But one of the things you guys are known for is just being able to get back to people. I mean, your response time to answer questions, you guys are on the spot. It’s like your phones are, it’s almost like your phone is taped to the side of your head. You’re ready to get there.

Steve Tuma: I think it might’ve actually attached to my head. I don’t need the tape anymore. Well, this is, this is one of the things, and it’s, it’s I’m a customer myself. You know, we’ve all called someplace and there’s a leave of voicemail and someone will get back to you in 24 hours. So you look at your clock and say, it’s two o’clock Monday. I should get a call by two o’clock Tuesday, which in my mind is totally unreasonable. But they know they’re going 24 business hours, which goes, okay, there’s Monday to Tuesday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know, maybe it’s Thursday they think you might call. And then someone calls to register your, your issue, but it’s not someone with knowledge. Now when I call places needing help, chances are I need it now or, or very soon. So what I, you know, my customers, they caught me direct on my direct cell phone, the same cell phone my 80 year plus year old parents call me on. And I have an understanding of the project. So if they’re able to, you know, to get to me and say, Hey, what about this? Or, Hey, you know, we’re thinking of changing the type of cabinet or countertop, does that affect anything? Or, Hey, we, we have a situation, we’re able to get deals on windows. How does this affect thing? Chances are I can answer, I want to say 96 out of a hundred questions right there, right? You know, of course I, you know, some things I got to be in front of a computer, which are during the typical business day. If you call me Sunday at 10 o’clock at night, chances are I’m not sitting there in my computer with your plans up, but you know, I’ll, I’ll do whatever we can. So we’re, we’re, we’re on top of it, but we do encourage customers to call.

My attitude is, Hey, if someone needs help and they need a question answered, it’s better to help them right then and there so that they can keep forward moving forward in their project. Because I know in my own life, sometimes you just need a simple answer. You know, it’s simple, but I don’t have the knowledge to do it in that particular situation and houses I can, you know? So if someone has it, we, we, we can move along. Customers will email me, they’ll text me, they’ll, they’ll give me a call. But what’s really cool about it is after 30 years, we have a pretty good set of plans, a very good set of plans. So most of the answers are right on there. So it’s not something where we have a hotline that’s constantly people constantly there. The calls are here and there because we’ve worked through it with the customer under the customer understands it’s on the plans. So we do a lot to have a very good set of plans and then help the customer understand it so they can move along. But if there’s that time they need something, um, we’re there.

Interviewer: This all goes back to the, what we had begun with, which was the one-stop shop. And uh, I’d like to go back now and just go over that again. Why, why has landmark become known as being a one-stop shop and being able to help from beginning to the final, uh, portion of the build? What do you think has gotten you guys to the point where you’re so well known for being, I don’t want to say Jack of all trades cause you know where that leads to, but I mean, you guys are definitely experts in so much and uh, that must make you pretty proud to have gotten to that point.

Steve Tuma: Oh, it’s a, it’s exceptional. You have a couple of points there, but the, uh, the one-stop shop, it was actually an evolution of, we realized that customers needed help, you know, no matter how many homes you’ve built or how many shows you’ve watched, or maybe you’ve never built anything. It’s hard in today’s world to get customer service from knowledgeable people that care. So if you go and tie an architect, a structural engineer, an HVAC designer, someone doing site plans, doing energy plans, um, tying all these things together so the plans actually communicate and work together and, and, and have, um, the same information, not conflicting information. Good luck. I mean, that, that’s like chasing grease pigs and having them, you know, line up. I mean, it’s, it’s just the way it is. We actually get a lot of plans from people. They’ll be like, Oh, the award-winning architect and the double award-winning structural engineer did it. And the plans conflict. So everyone says, that’s not my job or, Hey, I did my part. This is what I do. It’s like, well, that’s great, but you didn’t solve the customer’s problem, right? So what we’ve learned and developed over, over the course of time is develop a set of plans that works together. The architectural plans match the structural, the electrical layout is actually for that exact house. Not a bunch of generic stuff that says we’ll figure it out, but stuff that actually applies to that building site, that building department, that customer’s desire, and then our ability to help them. So it’s, we, we’ve developed a streamlined system to tie all of this together and tell you the truth.

It’s just 30 years of work, 30 years of work, 30 years of knowledge, 30 years of experience and, and working with a lot of good customers that, you know, maybe 29 years ago, someone asked us a question and we’re like, well, it’s that’s knowledge. We know that, but realize, Hey, the customer may not. So, so we add that, you know, maybe 25 years ago, someone asked us a question and that ends up being on the plan. So that’s all part of getting the plan set that helps you know, the contractor understand the building department understand. And it’s just easy. Yeah. There’s no, Oh, we’ll talk about it later or Hey, hopefully, it’ll work out. It’s like, no, let’s get it. Let’s get it to work out on paper or PDF, actually, you know, let’s get it to work out so that you don’t have guys on a field guessing, scratching their head going, well, where does this beam go? You know? So that, that’s, that’s what we try to do and that that’s where it is because people are busy. They have kids, they have jobs, they have parents, they have hobbies, they have, um, you know, whatever faith they have, whatever, whatever their lifestyle consists of.

There aren’t too many people with an extra eight hours a day, right? Everyone’s busy. So to know that you’ve got a knowledgeable, good crew where you can just send an email and not have to think about it and get an answer quickly, that’s accurate and specific to your question. That’s fine. You call places and you say, Hey, my, my whatever isn’t working on the car and they send you some standard answer that has nothing to do with your question, right? So we’re, you know, we’ve noticed that with the advent of artificial intelligence, you get these kinds of canned answers. Yeah, it’s, you got an answer, but there’s nothing, the substance of the answer for your specific situation isn’t there. And that, that’s, that’s what we’re trying to do. So, uh, we’re trying to work with real intelligence and, and get something like this put together so that if a customer needs help or we see an issue coming up, we can, uh, give them a specific answer specific to their house and their building site.

Interviewer: I think we’re noticing that people are, are a little, you know, they’ll look at a, they’ll look at a company that does things the old fashioned way and it used to be all their dinosaurs. They used to do everything in the old-fashioned way and nowadays people are saying, yes, give me more of that. I want dinosaurs who can get back to me and I don’t have to talk to robots or, or people from, you know, like say 60 other countries that you have to talk to and they just have these pad answers enough to get you off the phone so they don’t have to deal with you. And I think it’s, it’s pretty commendable that landmark, um, is in the customer service department a little bit of a throwback and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think most people want that.

Steve Tuma: Well, I, I, I think it’s cool because no matter what your budget is, where your house is, your house is your palace. So we’ve, we’ve helped people do four or five, 600 square foot ADUs, little, little granny flats, guest houses, and, and there, and that project is as important to them as the person doing the $10 million mansion. Right. And that’s, that’s what we look at and we also, it’s, it’s, it’s really cool to help someone and you know, to, uh, I was talking to one of my friends and I’m an amazing person and, and he said, he owns a company and he says, Steve, do people ever tell you, thank you? I said all the time, he goes never once in my company and someone said, thank you. And I’m like, wow, that’s not what’s going on. I’m like, we, we get it a lot. People are like, Steve, you really helped. I got a couple today. You really helped. This is amazing. We were able to get this building, you know, this, this worked out and, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty cool. It’s, it’s, it’s a good feeling. And I think that that’s why we continue to grow because it’s an excitement of wanting to help someone make, make their house better or make it easier.

It’s, it’s not all just some profit driven thing, you know, to, uh, just pump more houses out. It’s like, Hey, let’s make sure these people really get the house. Like I say, I want them to pull up to the house and build and go, this is cool. That that’s, that’s what it’s about.

Interviewer: All right. So that’s going to do it for today’s episode of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But Steve, before we let you go, um, tell us how we can find you guys and get ahold of you so we can learn more about Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building.

Steve Tuma: I think the best thing is take a look at our website at, uh, L H L C.com. Those are kind of the letters for Landmark Home Land Company. It’s actually Landmark Home and Land Company, but just for easy L H L C.com. And you can see videos, check out just different write-ups, opinions, ideas we have. Um, there’s also these podcasts, there’s thousands of plans that you can look through and you can inquire through there. You can also just give a call and Mike will work with you at 800-830-9788. Again, it’s 800-830-9788. And Mike will work with you to kind of process what you need, find out what you want, get preliminary discussion, see if you have land, see what type of help you need. And then, uh, you know, once you get going, get some ideas together, he’ll, he’ll, uh, have me contact you and then we’ll, we’ll, we’ll get you taken care of. So we invite all people inquire whether you want to build today, two years from now, you’re just thinking about it, you know, so it’s, it’s never too early. It’s also never too late to call. Well, we’ll, uh, we’ll help you out.

Interviewer: And there you go. Well, thanks again, Steve, for your time. And thanks to all of you for listening in. It’s been fun as always. So for Steve Tuma and myself, have a great rest of your day and we will see you next time. Thanks Steve.

Steve Tuma: Thank you. This was a good one. It was fun. Yeah.

View Details

Show Notes: How detailed building plans will control your schedule, budget, timeline and the cost of your home.

Transcript:

Steve Tuma: Now, a lot of people say, well, I don’t need detailed plans. I’m like, well, you might not think you need detailed plans, but if you want to control your schedule, your budget, timelines, communication with your subcontractors and your supplier, the better set of plans you have, the less changes, less headaches you’ll have during the process. So it’s kind of like, do your homework up front, design the home properly, not just for permits, but also the building phases. I think you’ll find that your budget will appreciate it your timeline will appreciate it and it’ll work better for you.

Interviewer: Hello everybody and welcome to episode 50 of the panelized prefab kit home building show with me as always is the President and founder of Landmark Home and Land Compay a company Which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want nationwide and around the globe since 1993 and that man is Mr. Steve Tuma. Steve how’s it going?

Steve Tuma: Yeah, things are well. I think we got a lot to talk about today. Yeah. Plans and it’s a kind of a little bit of one of these things that it’ll compound it like a snowball. It can get big and deep and but we can help. We’ve done it before.

Interviewer: I’ve got plans for to talk about plans and a million other things. I thought for this episode I’d like to go just go back to the basics. I’d really like to go back to the Landmark Home and Land Compay website, and talk about everything you list on there that makes your company, Landmark Home and Land Compay, unique among not just other panelized home designers and builders, but among home construction companies in general. I know it’s a very open-ended question, but I think you might be able to give the listeners and future owner-builders a rundown of exactly how Landmark Home and Land Compay stands out among the rest. If we go the way I want to do this, which is just go through the website and ask you a few things about what’s listed on there. So are you good with that?

Steve Tuma: Yeah.

Interviewer: Cool. Let’s do it.

Steve Tuma: This is an interesting spin on it. I guess a lot of customers find us on the website. Look at it. So we may as well talk about the details to help them understand.

Interviewer: I was thinking that people could go to the website at LHLC.com and follow this podcast while you’re going through the website and I would actually be a good companion. They would complement each other. Let’s start with what you guys have listed on the website as a complete building plan services company. I’m not exactly sure what that encompasses, but give us a rundown of what complete building plan services means.

Steve Tuma: Well, that’s really interesting because it’s a, it could be very definite or it could be a broad scope type of a situation. If you go to certain parts of the country, you don’t even need building permits. They don’t issue permits. They think you don’t even need plans to do it. Now, a lot of people say, well, I don’t need detailed plans. I’m like, well, you might not think you need detailed plans, but if you want to control your schedule, your budget, timelines, communication with your subcontractors and your supplier, the better set of plans you have, the less changes, less headaches you’ll have during the process. So it’s kind of like, do your homework up front, design the home properly, not just for permits, but also the building phases. I think you’ll find that your budget will appreciate it, your timeline will appreciate it, and it’ll work better for you. A lot people say, hey, we’ll just design our home and build it as we go. It’s kind of, I’m not sure how successful people are that just think you’re going to design a home real time, because there’s a lot of things in place.

So what we found is it’s best to take the time, like we say, do your homework upfront, to find out what your land is about the type of house you want to build any zoning restrictions, planning department restrictions, building department ideas, homeowners associations whatever it may be so that we can help you actually develop a set of plans that make sense we don’t look at the big challenges being the building department they’re an important part in obtaining a permit because a lot of building departments don’t ask the right questions or don’t have detailed enough questions to go through so if you’re building for some building department developing a set of plans only for the permit In some of these areas, it’s still very open-ended as to what your house is going to look like. There’s building departments that don’t ask for sections. They don’t ask for electrical layouts. They don’t even ask you where your septic’s going to be. So I guess they think someone’s just going to go out there, dig a hole, put a septic in and hope your house ends up on the right piece of land. So there’s a lot of details that we found. The better you have it, it in a sense gives our customer more ammunition to understand their project to properly budget it, to properly schedule, and the most important thing, communicate with building departments themselves, any financing sources, their sub-contractors, and with owner builders, a lot of friends and family are helping, so that it’s clear what’s to be done. Instead of saying, hey, just give me a big bedroom, it’s defined on the plans what a big bedroom is, where the windows are, where the doors are, how tall the concept of just designing a home and kind of building it on the fly is probably gonna end up being very aggravating for people. So we think it’s better to plan it out so everyone knows what’s going on and it’s just easier.

Interviewer: Yeah and then no pun intended you think it’s easier to plan it out so let’s continue with the basically the plan structures that you guys offer and let’s go with structural plans. Run that down for us. How does landmark, home and land company help the customer, you know, develop structural plans.

Steve Tuma: Well, it’s kind of interesting. First is you do the architectural plan. So you do the design. You do the design of the home. So you know what the outside looks like, the foundations like, the roof is like, sections are like cutaways through a home, like a slice through it so you could see where ceiling heights are, our floor systems work, how the look of the house. The floor plan show the inside, the exterior elevation show the outside, roof plan gives more details on a roof and a foundation plan shows how the home is going to be supported, the attachment to the ground.

The structural component of it is in a sense what’s holding it up. Where are there beams? Where are there posts? Where are there headers? Where are there sheer walls? You know different details like that so that you can justify how is. Now both of these are interesting because it’s the level of detail. Some building departments don’t ask for structural details. They may ask for architectural details. Others may ask for basic structural details saying hey how big is a beam? How big is a post? You know is it a four by four? Is it a six by six? Others get a lot more complicated and need a licensed structural engineer to actually go through and do beam calculations shear wall calculations justify the connections and what you’ll generally find is as you get to higher wind speeds like hurricane areas or higher wind speeds in mountain areas higher snow loads earthquake conditions expansive soil conditions or different soil conditions is when the building departments were requested but yes there are building departments out there even in these areas that do not ask for complete structural design. They just figure somehow it’ll get worked out on site. And if their inspector seems to see an issue, he’ll just have you change it on site. To us, it’s kind of weird to build it and then have them say, hey, that’s not right, let’s rebuild it. Why not design it upfront? So we can work in whatever condition someone is, their building department or their choice of design level.

But so we can go through, simple designs for simple homes but if it gets to be a more complex home even though the building department may not ask for engineered plans if you have a house with 20 foot walls something needs to be done there because a lot of people think it’s like hey but we don’t have a big snow load what’s the issue well you’re in a seismic zone so the home may shake or there’s wind mm-hmm so if you take a 20 foot wall 20 foot tall wall with a lot of in it. There’s not a lot of structural components. So in strong winds that wind can kind of flex or the wall can kind of flex. So we’re a believer in making sure the design is right. It’s better to take the time upfront to design it right than it is to build something and then later find out that you’ve got cracks in walls or sagging beams. So the architectural plans are done first, the structural plans follow. So the architectural plan is more look. What’s it looking like? How big are the rooms? How tall are the ceilings? Where are their cathedral ceilings? Is it a basement? Is there a crawl space? A slab? Or is it a house on piers? The structural plans explain how it stands up. It’s kind of cool stuff.

Interviewer: Yeah and speaking of cool stuff, so let’s move on to site plans. Explain what site plans are as opposed to any architectural plans or whatever and explain also how landmark helps develop site plans?

Steve Tuma: Well the site plan is basically a bird’s-eye view of your lot. So for simplicity purposes let’s just say you had a 100 foot by 100 foot lot. You know whether it’s rural or in a city type of a situation the site plans the building department and planning and zoning may ask for where the set the building setbacks. So your front setback might be 20 feet the rear setbacks might be 20 so that gives a kind of a building potential building envelope so if you have a hundred feet wide you take five off each side that’s ten feet of a hundred feet so you have a 90 foot wide footprint if it’s a hundred deep and you have 20 foot setback on the front and 20 on the back you’re taking 40 off so you’ve got 60 so you basically have a 60 by sorry 90 foot wide by 60 foot deep potential footprint they want to know where the house is distance to the lot lines you know where your water supply is where your sewage is where your driveways are where sidewalks are and they may get on to details of how much of the lot are you covering you know different details like that so that that’s generally the basics of what they want to know but some building departments will get a lot deeper you know do you have patios, do you have exterior decks, are there outbuildings, you know, is there a storage shed, if it’s an agricultural property, is there a chicken coop, is there a barn, or whatever it might be, a man cave, a separate building. So they just want to know what’s on the site plan so they can check for zoning, building setbacks, and also just building conditions.

Some of these can get a little more complex if you’re building say on the side of mountain there’s terrain issues topographical details are you building on a slope are you building on a flat piece of land if it is a slope how steep is it mm-hmm you know different things like that which affect you know how the house sits on there you know can you do a walkout basement is it a lookout basement is it a crawlspace so the site plan gives the people in the building department and understanding what’s going on but where it also relates to people involved with the building process sometimes people look at it your cement contractor will likely go to the land but if he had a site plan you could send him the complete set of plans he could he could plan out hey this is where the cement trucks can go this is where we can stage things the site plans also help builders understand okay when we deliver the materials how the truck can get in there where their crew needs to be and kind of kind of get an understanding what’s going on other site plans can get very complex with landscaping details lot coverage details and like I say topographical details, drainage plans, different things like that.

At a certain point, you have to get a licensed civil engineer to come in and take care of it. So a lot of it depends on how deep the building the department is requesting. And sometimes even if the building department doesn’t request details, it’s just smart to have on there because we’ll need to know the topographical details to see what your foundation’s like. So it kind of ties together. so for example like topographical details which are basically showing you know is there a slope to the land is the land flat that that’ll affect your foundation so if you have a if you’re building on a slope piece of land you might have a walkout basement well that would have a complete different structure that would be a different architectural design than if you had a flat piece of land with a basement right so that that can affect the structural thing. So they kind of work together and in general, you want to make sure the foundation and the house works on the site and move forward through the processes. So site plans are generally done.

We have an understanding of the site conditions at the beginning of a project, but information may become available as we move along with the plans or more detailed information. So a customer may start out saying, Steve, I have a slope and I went out there and then the house is 40 feet deep there was a six foot drop from the front to the back now maybe later their foundation guy comes in or a surveyor comes in and says hey that’s not a six foot drop it’s a six and a half foot drop and then we can adjust so it’s all stuff that kind of works hand in hand it’s interesting stuff and again if someone hasn’t really worked with it can give the appearance of being confusing but what we like to do is when a customer’s that is talk specifics on their project. So then we can explain to them hey this is this is how you know a good foundation would be for your type of land.

These are you know an architectural design that that would be good for your type of land and we can help people whittle down. We’re not going to tell people the house that they should build. We’re going to work with the ideas that they have and then you know work at work at so that it does work the land. Sure.

Interviewer: Now something you guys list on the website is energy calculations and I know people are confused by that or who even knows what that is. It sounds complex. Is it really complex?

Steve Tuma: And yeah just kind of give us a rundown on what developing energy calculations is all about. Well in most parts of the country, most states, there’s a there’s a process where they just go through, generally called res check, or an IECC, where they’ll go through and say, hey, the house is to comply. And it’s a calculation that our designers can do. And they basically look at the zone where the home is being built, and then what’s necessary for the house to comply. How much insulation needs to be in the roof, the walls, the floor, foundation, the energy efficiency of windows and doors and things like that. Got it. So our designers are very good at calculating that out.

A lot of places don’t ask for energy calculations. It’s something that we provide as our service because we think it’s important. I think that energy bill comes every month and it’s probably not the most, it’s probably not the favorite piece of mail that people get. But the point about it is if you’re gonna do, if you’re gonna insulate your house, do it right. So you’re getting something effective out of it. There’s a lot of stories people will say well the code in the areas You have to have an R19 wall And I’m like, I don’t know that that’s necessarily the case. It might be the common knowledge But if you have a big glass wall overlooking, you know Your favorite backyard or meadow That glass isn’t an R19. So it’s not a nature of the wall has to be it’s the It’s the home as a unified object. So if you have an area with weaker insulation, say a glass wall which is essentially our values are so low, it’s little in relation to a studded wall with insulation, they might have you beef up, you know, add more insulation in the roof or other walls or get a better window to have it. So we can work through those details and it’s important that people understand it so that they get the right window, the right furnace, the right type of insulation there. But it’s easy to understand once you see the form. Now the other side of that are states that are getting a little bit more complex.

California for example, you essentially have to build a net zero home. So the orientation to the sun, the efficiency and type of the furnace. Do you have duct work? Where’s the insulation? Your hot water heater? Your furnace? What are the fuels? And then the solar requirements. So, it gets a little more complex but again, we have geniuses that work on all these things so that they come up with a simple printed report and in the areas where it’s more complex, it’s actually registered with the state and they’ll have guidelines and in some case some deeper inspections to make sure it’s installed right. I’ll take a little side diversion that we’ve spoken about. Energy calculations are good.

That’s the theory of what you should have in your house. Making sure the items are installed properly is the key to it. Sure. So for the simplest idea of that is if you have a piece of insulation say an R-19 which would typically go into a two by six studded wall that has to be installed properly because the insulation is made up of the materials with a lot of air space which limit the transfer of heat or cold. If you compress that insulation, you’re, you’re removing some of the air spaces, which then don’t allow it to perform as well. So it’s the proper, it’s a kind of a tongue twister, the proper installation of your insulation is something that that needs to happen. So people can put duct work in if it leaks like crazy, you know, right? Yeah, this is another topic. I’m talking about insulation, but now the duct work off of a heat system, if your ducts leak you could be losing 25% of your heat or cooled air just in the channeling of the ducts to your house. Sure. Or through your house. So people you know people don’t always sit there and at a cocktail party say hey man I got the coolest furnace you know it’s doing this and you know there’s less than 5% leakage.

Generally they’re talking about, you know, their fireplaces or the family room or the garage or their big, you know, entertainment area in the basement. But the energy is something that we can get all the details so someone can work to comply and, and go to just be more energy efficient and have it more affordable to, to run your home. So again, it varies by what is done in each area. And some of like California are getting more and more strict and the areas that are more and more strict they’re not just hitting on the calculation they’re hitting on the verification that it’s Installed properly. Got it. So that that’s a key you want to make sure that someone’s doing it. So I’ve run into situations where people say hey son I’ve been doing this for 40 years what are you gonna tell me? Maybe like well the code changed last year are you installing it properly?

If you installed it improperly for the last 40 years on this project you need to do it right you know and that that’s the thing so just because someone’s been doing it forever doesn’t mean that they’re doing it right so you want to make sure that people do duck leak you make sure that there aren’t duck leaks they can test for that make sure the insulation is installed properly and kind of go from there and we can give them guidance on that but there’s also like I say it’s not just insulation it’s not just duct work it’s a proper installation it’s the right hot water heating systems, a lot more places are going to the instantaneous. And then also, more energy efficient furnaces, and then also the use of solar. So it’s pretty deep. And if people want to geek out on it, this is one of those really interesting things, where it can it can go on and on. You know, sometimes it’s simple stuff, like some places, and I’m sure people have seen us, you know, someone’s there, they, they frame up a house, the plumber comes in, he a hole through a wall for a spigot or an electrician cuts a hole for an outdoor electric socket and they don’t put caulking around it.

Right. You know to stop the air infiltration. So yeah it’s one of those things people don’t pay a lot of attention to but every time they get the monthly bill for utility they get reminded about it.

Interviewer: Yeah it’s very involved but it’s also something that yeah everyone who’s planning on building a home should keep an eye out and You know, it just everything is let’s stick with design a little bit because everything is sort of it all comes back to the initial design So let’s talk about the Landmark Home and Land Compay offering plumbing electrical and heating design And that’s a whole another design aspect in on in itself. I would imagine.

Steve Tuma: Yes it is Plumbing, electrical and heating design is getting to be more and more interesting. Now, most places plumbing, they just want to know where the water supply lines come in, where hot and cold goes and drainage line goes, where toilets are, where sinks are, where spigots are.

That’s relatively simple and straightforward. Sometimes building departments will ask for different individual details which we can take care of. Electrical design, kind of like plumbing, is a relatively simple project that we take care of. It’s simple for us because we do it so much and it shows where electric sockets are, where switches are, any typical lighting for codes. But some building departments get a little deeper. They want to know the size of wires or other separate circuits and say appliances in the kitchen or islands or things like that. Other times, customers will have special requests. We’ve helped a lot of people, you know, car guys, they have a big garage where they restore cars or they like working on their own cars or, you know, father son projects or father daughter projects on, you know, restoring the old truck where they’ll need special circuits or in some places even special computer circuits, you know, if people want certain cables. So we can work with those details as well, as well as more day.

Sometimes people want to detail out hey I want a ceiling fan here, I want a ceiling fan here, I need extra ventilation. And in some cases the electrical plan is tied to the energy calculation because the energy calculations may dictate recirculating fans for the house. Whole home fans so that there’s certain amount of air exchanges in the house. So that’s so we can work with it but most people 95 percent are typical layouts showing where the electric sockets are where the switches are where lights are things like that it works but if someone’s building department or their individual desire to have extremely complete plans we can do it most homes are 200 amps at that case generally they don’t need electrical engineering if they get above 200 amps some building departments will ask for actual electrical engineering load calculations and other details which we can do.

Now the one which is getting to be more and more popular is actual heating design because a lot of people say well you know I’ve been building for 30 years and I always put 100,000 BTU furnace in a house. Well 30 years ago people weren’t insulating houses the way they are. They didn’t have the better performing windows as they do today. So sometimes if you have too big of a furnace you’re going to be wasting fuel. So actually a lot of these bigger homes need smaller furnaces because they’re not losing the heat or the air the cool as they would have 30 or 40 years ago. So sometimes the building department will just ask us hey where do you want the furnace you know where do you want the hot water heater. Other customers will ask us to go through and actually do a manual J.S. manuals J.S. and D. which are heat locks calculations, sizing of the furnace and duct layouts and in some cases actual register design as well to make sure that the air circulates properly. So what that is, is a justification of the heat design based on the energy calculation. So they’ll go through and say hey here’s house of a certain size it’s in this type of a climate you know whether it’s hot cold moderate and they’ll figure out the heat loss it’ll have and then they’ll will design specifically the exact furnace and air conditioning system that are there now what’s really cool is you know technologies evolving and these mini split systems are coming out that are sometimes easier and more affordable for people to install and it also allows for easier zone heating and cooling. So we could work with the mini-split systems as well, air pumps, whatever might be typical in the area.

We also are working with people that are going off-grid. Even so, sometimes, even though the customer wants to build off-grid, sometimes the building department says, well, you still gotta stay a little. You still have to have a heat system to keep a house to a certain temperature under certain conditions. So we can work with people through those different details. It’s pretty interesting. Another thing on heating is people with wood stoves and fireplaces. You know, what wood stove are they using? What fireplace are they using? How does it fit in there? How does it need to be ducted? What types of clearance are there? So there’s a lot of details that we need to look at. And we can help people with it. And we’re glad to explain it with them as well.

Interviewer: It’s a lot to remember, so it’s nice to know that your Landmark Home and Land Compay’s a phone call away because there’s a lot to building and it’s not daunting. It’s actually sounds like it could be a lot of fun in a lot of ways, but it’s just nice to know that you guys are a phone call away to help out with this stuff.

Steve Tuma: The key to it is when I start working with people, they have my direct cell phone, so it’s also a phone call that’s answered. For some reason, I’m on voicemail, you get my voicemail, I’ll call right away. And get you taken care of. So it’s the customer service that allows a customer to keep on moving forward and understand their project. That’s the key element.

Interviewer: Right. And you guys talk about coordination with civil engineers. Tell us about that process.

Steve Tuma: That’s happening more and more. Basically flood situations, drainage situations, grade situations. So you know it seems now that we’ve just got a lot more situations where you hear more about natural disasters. I don’t know if they’re happening more, their internet just spreads it quicker. But the point is there’s floods. So someone might go through and say, ah, you know, it’s a hundred year flood zone. This never happens. Well, there’s a lot of places where there’s been hundred year floods every couple of years. So what people want to do is make sure that their house is positioned properly. First, there’s a variety of different situations, floods, storm surges, and then different situations like, can a fire truck get in the driveway? You know, just working on things.

If you’ve got a more complex piece of land, say on the side of a hill, in any mountain range, how does the house sit on there? How is the driveway going to get up there? Where’s the septic going to be? How are the utilities going to get in? So it’s just kind of engineering the land so the house can be usable. sure you can’t just always take a piece of land and stick a house on it and think that it’s just going to naturally work maybe on a flat piece of land with a simple design it would work but as your land gets more intricate whether it’s in hurricane zones flood zones storm surges mountainsides different communities that have you know control more of their drainage situations that that will work now this is one thing which is interesting we were working it working in a very nice beach community in Southern California and in those cases the we had to work with different things hardscape which you know in a simplicity is like a cement patio where that actually helps because it’s not something that people water and introduce water to sure so then also if people so by working with that you need someone to do the calculation to say hey under a big rain what are the conditions hey if this is um if this is landscape land that’s going to have water what’s happening with that water that’s there so that water from this house doesn’t go into the neighbors the neighbor’s property so there there’s a lot of uh a lot of cool situations where the civil engineering really helps put it together everyone can say You know everyone knows a friend that whose house was fine up until the neighbor next door built a house And then suddenly a puddle ended up in their yard It’s to avoid things like that sure but also make sure you can easily get in and out of your driveway.

You know make sure that Emergency vehicles can access it make sure it’s reasonable You know where are the utilities and it places with people with pools? They make sure drainage is right you know make sure you got patios so that you don’t design something where say you had a beautiful home with a cement patio in the back and then you know the husband has his man cave with a car with more cement patio and then you find under a big rain that all the cement the water doesn’t go through the cement it flows over the cement and find out that you created a funnel in your yard right so it’s a lot of that just working with it to make sure it works now like I say some areas they don’t even care about it they’re like oh the contractor will figure it out he’ll put the slab in the right place and maybe that’ll work other places are very specific and knowing that the exact design is there and some of these that we’re working on and some of these areas that it’s pretty interesting to see what’s going on we have one project in southern California right now where the nature of the road conditions the roads that were planted create essentially a pond at an intersection right where one of our customers houses is. Right. So someone says in southern California that doesn’t rain there.

Well there’s mega rains and storms that can come through there and every once in a while they do it. So it’s better to know before you get into the project that there’s one of these flooding areas that’s created by the nature of the road that’s there. So it’s pretty cool. Again we don’t want to scare people with this. It’s just the nature of the project. If your building department requires or you want to get it done we you would get your own civil engineer but we work with them with the plans to kind of work together to make sure the house fits on the land for the for the proper design more and more places are becoming concerned with civil engineer mainly we’re big mountains mm-hmm or you know parts of California Washington State and occasionally on the East Coast you were we’re seeing some states that are now adopting it. And then these grading and drainage plans, we’re also starting to see more of that in Florida because of the storm surges. After each hurricane comes through, a little bit more data has changed. So just because someone told you that 10 years ago base flood elevation is 10 feet in an area, FEMA could have changed it. Now it’s 12 feet. So it’s stuff where you want to have accurate information.

Interviewer: It sounds like Landmark Home and Land Compay is really in like helping the customer just to review the building department requirements I mean that that could be a daunting task I’m sure it’s nice to have you a phone call away again you know.

Steve Tuma: Right but it’s not just the building department because they don’t cover all the things so the goal is yes the goal is to have an accurate set of plans for building but the building department doesn’t guarantee that their check is sensible mm-hmm for the land so that that’s why we have the capability of looking at the project. What a lot of people don’t understand is you can have someone draw a set of plans. You know some people have a son or friend or neighbor some associate somehow that for five hundred dollars will draw a set of plans and the customers think all plans are the same.

That’s kind of like saying every chicken sandwich in America is the same. It’s just a piece of chicken on a bun. It’s not the case. So that’s why going through with Landmark, we help with the plans to work so that the home fits on the land. It’s not just a panelization service saying, hey, here’s your panelized home. Hope it goes together and hope it doesn’t flood and hope your driveway works and hope your energy codes work. And by the way, you have to get your own structural engineer and you have to do your own energy calculation. It becomes a little bit of spider’s web there where you can get caught so it’s good to have a complete understanding and like I say we answer the phone we’ll talk to you we’ll spend the time to explain to you what the process would be for the best design possibilities so that you end up with a well-designed home you don’t want to have a beautiful home and then find out your basement floods.

Interviewer: Right so they’re acting you guys are there to do basically that building department checklist and make sure that you go by one by one of what the customers’ needs are going to be regarding plans and how the building department looks into those.

Steve Tuma: So that’s right project specific. Right yeah. Like your house on your piece of land. You know so it’s the building department requirements but checklist is interesting because they typically have some building departments most of them will have a checklist of what they want on the plans. But what’s interesting about it some of these building departments aren’t as organized as you would believe they are or they should be. Right. So some of them won’t even pay attention to their checklist. Some of them will be very specific and on top of it and organized. Others will give you a checklist. You turn your plans in and they may have a follow-up checklist saying hey we need clarification on this and that which is fine. If that that shows up it’s common. We can do those changes and turn it in. Generally after you do that they give you a permit but we are running into more building departments that will continuously have a new checklist because for some reason, they don’t have an ability to look at the set of plans up front and do it.

They do pieces here and pieces here and bring this out and bring that out and a second checklist could have items that were never even on the first checklist. So, those are things that we can deal with and a lot of people get intimidated by that. Well, it’s our game. It’s what we deal with every day. So, Chances are what your building department is asking for, even though it might sound like some alien language to you, chances are we’ve seen it and we can get it taken care of. So that’s what we do is we look at the building department checklist to see what’s required, make sure the plan set’s complete, but also have our own details on the plans that we know are of essence to building the house properly. So it’s not just a matter of make sure the building department’s right, make sure the plan set is right so your contractors understand it. Right. So that’s why you want to do it. Planning the home is the most important thing. Make sure the house fits on the land. Make sure the foundation’s right. It avoids changes during the building process. It avoids hurting your budget. It avoids hurting your schedule. It just gets rid of headaches. And that’s what we do. So you got to watch out when someone says hey I bought this set of plans. You know my neighbor who’s the best guy on earth and planning is you know put it together. Or hey I got it from this plan service they told me I could build from them, and I’m like, well, you might be able to build, but chances are it needs a lot more detailing to apply for your project, your building department, and get that taken care of. And that’s what we do. We put a reality check of the dream of drawing to how does it actually get built.

Interviewer: Yeah. There’s something on the website where you guys offer the panelized package to match the approved plans. And it seems to me like that’s pretty cut and dry, but there’s got to be more it than that. So explain to that what that what that service is.

Steve Tuma: It sounds weird, right? It’s like why wouldn’t someone send a panelized home that matches the approved plan? Right. Well, if they didn’t pay attention to the panel, if they didn’t do the plans, if they didn’t do the plans accurately, if they weren’t involved with the plan check, they may not even know it’s approved. they might it and this happens it’s as weird as it may be people will buy material lists or different packages that are for a house of what that vendor chooses to sell you uh-huh right okay so there’s a difference of what’s designed what fits on your land what meets energy codes what’s right for your land what you want what your building department is approved compared to what a supplier will choose to deliver. There’s a lot of work to be done on energy code, structural design, and architectural codes. People don’t want to go through the work. That’s our forte. That’s what we do. That’s where we’re very good at figuring it out. So where it helps the owner-builder is say that there’s ten steps to getting, you know, something approved. There’s actually way more. I’m just using that for an example. There’s a confidence that what’s drawn gets approved by the building department, the budgets will send the matching panelized package so that they don’t go through and say hey why did this change hey I wanted a two-car garage you but only one was there right we do the plans make sure it’s built through the process of designing developing the permit plans in the back we’re working with a production facility and make sure trusses are built right idroids layouts are right. Bean positioning is right.

The connections are there. And that is the key element. It is an incredible amount of work to make sure that the right materials show up for your approved plans, compared to some people that might be like, well, let’s just get a bunch of materials out there and see what else we need. Well, that’s a way to get into cost overruns, frustration, and breaking your schedule. It’s aggravating. It’s stupid. It’s all controllable up front, but people don’t want to spend the time to plan it out properly up front. And that’s what we do.

Interviewer: Right. So you guys offer a complete and accurate set of building plans, of course, but how does that lead into like the basics, like easier permitting and building and inspection phases with, you know, unified plans that work for the permitting and the building of the actual house?

Steve Tuma: Where it’s easier as a lot of people don’t realize this but they think hey you go to someone that’s a quote pro in the business you think that they’re doing a complete set of plans okay kind of kind of like a doctor you go there and you say hey my knee hurts and then he says well take an aspirin and see what it’s like tomorrow another doctor will like look at your knee and wonder what’s going on and say, hey, your knee isn’t working right or you’re old or weight or whatever conditions are there. Someone else will go back and say, hey, what were you doing that created? So it’s a different level of knowledge and caring to get it taken care of. So a good accurate set of plans with a building department that’s paying attention will be easier for the plan checker to understand and raise less questions. So they can tell that, hey, complying with their codes the way they enforce them.

Their interpretation of what they believe they need to issue a permit. Where it goes through in building is there aren’t any loose ends. Sure. Okay we’ve gotten plans and we’ve worked with different customers that say well you know my cousin’s a builder he’ll just make that work and I’m like well I’m sure he can make that work but what’s the end result going to be? Is it going to be what you want? You know, and the people say, well, he’s been doing it for 20 or 30 years. I’m like, that’s great. But don’t you want to build a house that you want and understand where your cathedral ceiling is, how big your window is, how big your garage is and avoid that. So by planning it upfront and getting through all of it, there’s less changes through there, less what ifs. And the funny thing about this, all these what ifs come up five and six o’clock on Friday before a holiday. Right. It’s just annoying. Take the time up front to build it and then you avoid the issues. People say home building is stressful and yes it can be. But how much of that stress is because people aren’t paying attention up front? Doing the job right to properly design and specify the home on a piece of paper, get it approved and build it compared to saying, oh we’ll just deal with that later. That’s kicking the can down the road and it is going to lead to a bigger headache. So, what ends up happening is when you have an accurate set of plans, permitting is easier, the building phases are easier, and then when we build what’s approved on the plans, you don’t run into as many inspection issues. If someone’s out there just haphazardly saying, I’m going to add a window, I’m going to move a door, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that, well, that can affect a lot of the structural components. So if you’re in an area where building inspectors pay attention, and most of them do, they’re going to say, hey, your shear wall is affected. You proved a 3 by 5 window. You now have a 20 foot by 10 foot nano wall, one of those big accordion walls.

The shear structure is there. What about the size of your head or what about the wind loads against it? It creates issues. So someone might say, hey, the inspector is being a jerk. Well, is the inspector being a jerk or is he avoiding the problem? Now, I don’t want to sit here and say inspectors are good and bad. But the point is, by having a well-designed home, a good execution of that with the right panelized package that we supply, there’s less of a chance of issues like this arising where someone says, hey, what if, what if, what if. So that’s what it is. It’s the unified plans project that what is on the plans and gets approved by the building department, the materials we supply are going to match that. Sure. Yeah. So it’s, you know, it’s going to be a situation where it just makes the whole process easier. And it’s not just the ease, it’s staying on schedule, staying and, you know, working and staying in your budget and just avoiding aggravation.

Interviewer: Yeah. This may sound like a dumb question but, you know, you know, on the website it talks about how Landmark Home and Land company offers a complete and accurate set of building plans and a clear and accurate set of assembly plans. What is the difference between a building plan and an assembly plan? I’m curious.

Steve Tuma: Well the building plans are like a complete setup. The architectural, structural plans, electrical plans. So let’s just say an electrician he could look at the electrical layout and go okay now I know where the sockets are now I know where you know the ceiling fans are, any computer cabling, you know, any special circuits that need to be in a home. A plumber knows where the toilets are, you know, where the sinks are. The foundation guy knows the size of the foundation, the dimensions of the details of the foundation to build. So that would encompass the building plans.

The clear and accurate set of assembly plans is the assembly of the panelized package. Where does each wall panel go? Where does each truss go? Where do the beams go? The puzzle pieces of actually building the house. Yeah in a sense puzzle piece is an easy way to put it but they usually don’t give you the answer in puzzles. So we’re kind of saying you know for example let’s just say for simplicity purposes let’s just say someone had a 40-foot wall in a conventional ranch home. We might make that in a five eight-foot wall sections. So it’s start wall one, wall two, wall three. So you can go to the panels and say hey here’s wall one, wall two, wall three and you put it up. So what that does is it allows people to understand where the placement of the panels go. So it’s quicker to assemble the home. They know where each truss gets placed. There’s a detail of each truss so you see what it looks like as well as with the wall panels. So you is eight feet wide and has two windows in it. They can see that. So, that’s the key. So, the building plans are more the design for permitting and the execution of the complete building process. The assembly plans are more for the panelized package. Where do the floor joints go? Where are the beams at? Where are the wall panels? Where are the roof trusses? Details like that. And it’s very important. A lot of people don’t do it. They put stuff together and then later look at the instructions we say look at the instructions it’s right there and it just goes together fast it’s amazing you know the calls that we get from people saying man this is up I’m halfway up and they’re two days into it and they’re on a big house or the execution you know where it’s more of an assembly instead of a thinking cutting calculating it’s more of just put wall panel one up wall panel two up that’s the that that’s the key to it and those are things people don’t think about. When they call they’re like, hey I want a panelized home.

I’m talking to a stick builder. I’m thinking about going modular. Well that’s one component but what about the overall plan? You can’t just look at the tree in the forest. You got to understand what’s going on in the forest is a good relationship to it to help someone understand how the whole project is because we are providing way more than panelized homes. People find us wanting to purchase a panelized home. They buy from us and working with us because of the design the support the assembly plans the ease of executing the panelized package the panelized packages I’d like to say I don’t want to undercut it but it’s actually the easier part the designing and making sure things flow and the customer support that kind of you know is where we shine on it and I think that’s why people really under enjoy working with us because it’s not like a lumberyard where someone says, well, you ordered a two by six, we gave it to you. We tell you why the two by six is there, what it’s doing there, where it needs to be positioned and go on from there. And we also have the capability if someone needed to do a change to be able to guide them on how to properly do the change, so.

Interviewer: Well, all of this leads to one thing that I know Landmark Helm and Land Company is quite famous for, and that’s customer service. I mean, from just working with you on these podcasts, I’ve learned so much. And mostly what I’ve learned is just how knowledgeable Landmark Home and Land Company is. I mean, understanding the building codes, the permitting. You guys have 30 years of experience. That’s insane. There’s also the…

Steve Tuma: Same ownership. We founded it.

Interviewer: Right. 30 years. That’s insane. That’s great.

Steve Tuma: We broke a record a month ago, a customer from 23 years ago called up and said, Steve, remember me? I want to do it again. I’m like, yeah, Rich, what’s up? Let’s help you build another house. That’s amazing.

Interviewer: That’s amazing. Yeah, and I think that all stems from the fact that you guys, first of all, your responsiveness, your quick reaction to, you’re not famous for a lot of voicemails, you guys are there answering the phone, you resolve issues, you build relationships with your customers to allow a project to run much more smoothly, your attention to detail, that’s just something that people don’t even think about when they think about customer services. Like, it’s all the little things that help to sort of build this partnership with the owner builder and take a lot of the stress, as we were saying, out of home building. And you’ve got to be pretty proud about that.

Steve Tuma: Oh, that’s actually the fun part. In a sense, it’s, you know, we have a very strong pulse. I work with every single customer on every single project. So I have a very strong understanding of what’s going there. we don’t have 50 layers of people it’s very lean trim you know if someone calls me up and says hey Steve what about this window can I do this can I do that if I don’t have the answer I have a direct line to the designers and engineers to get an answer very quickly to see how we resolve it but a lot of it’s because we are directly involved every day with the pulse of it we don’t have big community meetings we don’t have a boardroom with 20 tables at it for people to ask questions and create confusion. It’s kind of like the buck stops here type of thing. If the customer needs something now, hopefully we’ve taken care of it upfront, so they understand it’s in the plans. But if they come up with something and say, hey, we have something happening, we’re having a kid, we suddenly need to change this family room into a fourth bedroom or a nursery that can later convert to this or hey, we bought a boat, can we change it? We have an understanding of how to get it taken care of so that when a customer calls, emails, texts, whatever it may be, we can work with them, understand the situation and get them taken care of in an accurate and effective way. I’m a consumer myself and all of us have great experiences with our cable companies or internet companies or whatever where someone says, I’ll get back with you.

A week later, you’re twiddling your thumbs after you leave five messages. No, we answer the phone. If we can’t answer right away, we’re likely on the phone with someone else and we’ll get back with you right away. We pride ourselves in communication, knowledge, responsiveness, passion, and tell you the truth, have a good time doing it. Right. It’s a lot of work. We work long hours. We do everything we can to help every single customer specifically to their problem. We want to enjoy it. It’s a two-way street. Customers want a good company, good designer, good structural engineering services. We want to know we have solid customers that are intent on building good homes. Solid homes, the best home that they can do.

Interviewer: And when you bottom-line everything, really what you’re saying, what Landmark Home and Land Compay are saying, is why should the experience of building a new home be a pain? There’s always going to be issues on any project, but why does dealing with and solving issues necessarily have to be unpleasant.

Steve Tuma: Right and the thing is you know I’ll relate it to like an internet outage that’s gonna happen but when you don’t get a call back or you get empty answers that’s when it really becomes annoying and it’s just it’s played plain stupid you know you know so what we do is we work to have a relationship with our customer to understand what’s going on what’s cool about is our understanding of details building 30 years working with owner builders working around the country and around the world is a customer may ask a question and sometimes it’s a very precise answer other times they’re asking a question because they don’t know what it leads to the domino effect of five and ten follow-up questions so we’re able to work with them to say hey you’re asking can I my driveway but I’m saying hey wait we need a grading plan can the fire department get in there is there a big boulder there you have to work around a tree are you on a hill so we need to have an understanding what’s going on so if even people that have built a long time there’s stuff that just it doesn’t hit them sure it doesn’t say doesn’t say something people send us plans for a house on a slab and they’re building on the side of a hill well you can do that but you might have to do a lot of work so is it better to do a crawl space or some type of a walkout basement so sometimes the question is there and I think what people will really appreciate is the understanding of the problem so it becomes a problem-solving situation not just an answer the question right someone says hey can I put a slab on the side of a hill in a mountain yeah well someone might take that as an answer the reality is but wait before we decide to slab what’s situation.

Is there something with the side of a hill? Can you have a building pad there? Can your driveway still access it? Why do you want a slab? Maybe a basement with different height walls is actually better. You know so there’s a lot of different situations that can go through. People say things like hey I was out with my friend and he said that I definitely have to put solar on my home and I’m building up in Humboldt County California with redwoods all over. Do I have to cut this beautiful redwood down? No. You don’t have to do that. You know someone will go through and say, hey my neighbor has a house on a slab in in Florida. Why do I have to put my house on stilts? Well that home was built in 1940. You know before they understood these flood elevation things or different situations like that where they’d be like well my neighbor was at base flood elevation of 10 feet.

Why do I have to go 12? well FEMA changed the maps FEMA changed the flood zones as they learn things so that that’s one of those things that that we can go through and also on man this is this is getting interesting you like hit a spot because this is one I can go for hours on it this is this is the reality of stuff mm-hmm we had a customer doing an exceptionally beautiful home in a very expensive piece of land in Southern California overlooking the ocean and there’s a thing called shear walls which is basically putting strength in a wall to keep the wall from racking you know being blown over but you also have to look at wind you have to look at seismic codes well there was a window that they had that was a let’s just say it was 15 feet wide and a wall that was about 25 feet wide so there’s five feet of wood on each side and then the wall in the middle well they wanted for a view for that window just to like six inches wider six inches or a foot wider well that limited the structural components to the side of the windows which then did not have enough strength to support it they had to then bring in steel framing systems so someone will say but come on Steve it’s only six inches wider well that put it beyond the limits oh right yeah so we can explain to people hey this is why it’s going on and when people understand what’s going on they appreciate it It’s the cool part of the building. People are building their own home to control the quality, know what’s going on. And it’s kind of just a cool thing they want to do. So we’re able to work with them to explain why certain situations have to be put. I could go on for hours. I don’t know.

Interviewer: Well, that’s one of the passion that you have for your business comes through when I hear you talk about like, you know, just anecdotal stuff. It’s like, wow, the guy’s really into building houses. It’s really pretty cool.

Steve Tuma: Uh this this is this we we’ve been doing this 30 years by choice because it’s fun it’s yeah it’s a job but it’s not a job as some people do it you know they say 90 some percent of America doesn’t enjoy the job we’re on the good side of that you know we enjoy it it’s kind of one of these passions and as you go through and do these different projects and understand it and truly experience it that that’s what allows us to do it where i work with every single customer on every single project and component of the project so there’s a lot of knowledge and a lot of understanding and I think that’s uh that’s a big reason why people buy it’s not just calling someone and saying hey can you deliver a pile of wood it’s how is it designed right how is it going to work right how you know how’s the process going to go how are we going to work to stay budget how are we going to keep this accurate that that’s the element of it you know like I mentioned before people come to us because the panelization but they stay because the service the knowledge the support the getting it taken care of yeah that that’s the key element we’re a partner we got your back we’re here having fun with it you know and we’re doing what we can’t avoid the pitfalls and make it an enjoyable process it’s a great experience looking back at it it’s just it’s just amazing. We’ve been doing it 30 years. It’s still cool to contact a customer when a house is being framed or done or if we have communication with them a year or two later to see how their lives have been impacted by building a home they want that they enjoy in a place where they want to be in and see how it affects people’s lives. It’s just really cool. It’s an amazing process.

Interviewer: Well great information as always and Steve before we cut you loose, as we always do, please tell the audience how best to contact Landmark Home and Land Compay if one is looking to get more info into building a new panelized prefab home.

Steve Tuma: The best way to do it is take a look at our website. We’ve got plans on there, videos, these podcasts, different details, and you can send an inquiry through there and Mike will respond to you very quickly. If you like, you’re always welcome to call in. We are real people with real knowledge that are willing to take the time to talk to you to find out exactly what your project is like and how we can work to enhance your efforts and that phone number is 800-830-9788 again it’s 800-830-9788 and Michael work with you and it once you get to a certain point I’ll become involved I’ll give you my direct cell phone number where you can communicate with me I make myself available we work and do it. The key to it is the hands-on kind of approach you know working together as partnerships to make sure it’s put together right. Yep. And enjoy it.

Interviewer: That’s the bottom line. There it is. All right so that’s gonna wrap it up for us today on the panelized prefab kit home building show. So for Steve Tuma and myself, thanks for listening and we will see you next time. Thanks Steve.

Steve Tuma: Have a great day, this was a lot of fun!

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Episode 49: Discussing the importance of how the building site, location, and actual physical property on which one plans on putting up a house can affect the cost of the home.

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Show Notes: Discussing the importance of how the building site, location and actual physical property on which one plans on putting up a house can effect the cost of the home. Transcript: Steve Tuma: So, what we look at is, you know, they have the idea, the dream. We’re the people that take that idea, put it on paper, get the panelized package so that they can then go through and end up with the house they want, but also control and understand what they’re building. Interviewer: Welcome everyone to episode 48 of the panelized prefab kit home building show. With me as he always is for the podcast is the president and founder of Landmark home and land company a Company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want nationwide and around the globe since 1993. Mr. Steve Tuma Steve. How are you buddy? Steve Tuma: Yeah, pretty good. Another day helping people build houses Interviewer: Pretty good is good. I’d say. yeah I, since our last episode, I’ve been thinking about what this episode should be all about and I think we’ve been hitting on some things that we probably, I would have thought we’d have gotten to in past podcasts, but here we are on episode 43 and there’s a couplethings we haven’t touched on yet.So I want to get into something today that seems to me would have been a very important topic for anyone looking to become a new home owner and builder, and that’s building sites, the actual physical property on which one plans on putting up a house. So if you’re good about this, let’s talk all things build site today, and I’d like to take these one at a time to be precise about the pros and cons of whatever sortof lot one might choose to acquire for their new home. Steve Tuma: Yeah, that’s kind of interesting because a lot of people think a piece of dirt is a piece of dirt. You know, hey, I’ll just go buy an acre or city lot or whatever it may be or 50 acres and go build it.But what I found in my own projects, and even as we get in a variety of different building sites, sides of mountains, waterfront, whether it’s lakefront or oceanfront or whatever the plains whatever it may be that there’s there’s always little complication or potential for complications. What I found in my own is if it touches dirt there’s a bigger risk because first of all you can’t really see what’s under the dirt. There’s also a perception situation like you know we’re going to talk about flat lots. What’s kind of interesting you could go to what appears to be a flat piece of land Just a perspective from where our eyes are in relation to the ground It may be flat, but where the house is from the front of the back of the house There could be a two or three foot difference, but if you’re walking on it it may appear to be flat We also had a funny situation. This is more like you know funny Just a little building humor the person said I have a flat lot, so we asked for some topographical things We asked for some details, and I came out. I’m like this isn’t a flat lot this is a side of a mountain. The customer said it is flat. It’s just on an angle going down. So, so sometimes we, we, we need to work on what […]

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Episode 47: Discussing why Home Building Plans are Important.

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Episode 46: Small kit homes versus large kit homes. Different design features and how they affect your new home project. New home design for your specific building site.

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Episode 45: One Stop Shop home plans, engineering and panelized homes. Making things easier for Owner Builders. Approved plans and matching panelized home kits.

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Episode 44: Guest houses, ADU’s (Accessory Dwelling Units), Granny Flats, Short term rental homes, Tiny and Smaller homes, Studios and Offices. With our Kit Homes, Landmark Home and Land Company helps you design and build one for your specific building site anywhere in the country.

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Episode 43: ADU’s (Accessory Dwelling Units) for California! Guest Homes, Granny Flats, In Law homes or a Tiny Home. Designing and permitting for your new ADU Kit Home. California has opened up and made it easier to get your ADU approved.

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Episode 42: Helping people turn their new home ideas into real plans and then a panelized home.  More ideas about site planning, civil engineering, utilities, septic and more. Are plan service plans usable?

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Episode 41: Kit Homes, working with building departments and their quirks! Unique sites and neighborhoods and designing your home fit within them. Discussion of zoning issues as well as more details on energy codes and mechanical systems.

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Episode 40: Unique and difficult building sites and how to design a Kit Home for these beautiful areas. Taking advantage of great views, sun and how Landmark helps you make it happen!

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Episode 39: Off Grid Kit Home Design and Building! Sun, Breezes and Natural Benefits of home design! Organic Design concepts.

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Episode 38: Budgeting your new Kit Home! What if a building department asks for more information than they initially requested. Do building departments need HVAC, electrical, plumbing and gas piping design? How is a foundation designed?

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Episode 37: Architectural design and all of Landmark Home and Land Company’s custom design capabilities. Designing for unique sites and how to make a challenging site beneficial. Technology and safety items in homes.

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Episode 36: History of Landmark Home and Land Company. The desire to design a custom home specifically for each customer’s needs and building site. Custom plans for lifestyle and building sites. Review of Landmark Home and Land Company’s reputation for exceptional customer service.

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Episode 35: Why build your own Landmark Panelized Home? Save money, understand and control your new home project. Build the new kit home you want versus buying an existing home to remodel.

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Episode 34: First time kit home building and Owner Builders.  Quality plans for your Owner Builder project.  Building Codes and building permit application and approval.

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Episode 33: In this episode we cover Tiny homes, what they are and why they'are becoming so popular.   What is the difference between ADU's Additional Dwelling Units, guesthouse, and granny flats.

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Episode 32: Customer Service and Support makes for a better set of plans and panelized home package.  Can changes be made to my new home plan and panelized home kit?  The value of quality home plans and how they benefit your new home build.

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Episode 31: New home design processes from picking a plan to turning them into plans for permits and building. What are “engineered plans” and do I need them? Landmark reviews building department permit requirements. Delivery of a panelized home.

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Episode 30: New Kit Home building in the city, suburbs and rural areas. Home Owners Associations and Architectural Review Boards and how they affect my home and new home building. Do Historic areas affect my new home design? What if I am in a flood zone, are there home plan issues?

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Episode 29: Off Grid Kit Home building and Organic Design.  In this episode we talk about how organic design and off the grid design can merge. We can help people with the orientation of the house, the energy calculations to make sure the house is efficient in keeping heat or cool that it creates.  We work with you on solar design to make sure the solar capabilities are taken advantage of and we’ve had customers that have worked with wind power as well.

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Episode 28: General Contractors versus Sub Contractors and what is their role in the new kit home building process with an Owner Builder. Should they be involved with the design processes of a new home? Assembly of Landmark’s panelized home package.

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Episode 27: Energy efficiency, Calculations and how it affects new kit home design. What are the options for insulation? Solar power and hot water heating for my new home. Landmark Home and Land Company can help with Energy efficiency to lower utility costs.

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Episode 26: How does my new home stand up? discussions on foundations: basements, crawlspace, pier or slab foundations. Poured vs cement block foundations. WUI, Wildland Urban Interface and how is protects from wildfires. Do I need fire sprinklers? Engineer stamped plans are reviewed by Landmark Home and Land. What are Engineered lumber materials? Can I repurpose items for my new home?

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Episode 25: An easy going discussion on finishing items such as cabinets, doors, windows, siding and more.  Mechanical system design.  Insulation for an efficient home is discussed along with some structural details and roof loading.  Details on kit home site planning.

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Episode 24: Panelized home landscape design and how important it is to the health of the house in general.  Kit home landscape designing, lawns, gardens, they’re for more than just putting plants in. There are many other reason to choose certain landscaping over another. It’s not just the beautification of the property, but also functional, technical and safety that needs to be considered.

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Episode 23: In this episode we go through some past experiences with customers and projects we have helped design in taking advantage of the views of property that somebody might be building on, controlling the budget and how to avoid pitfalls.

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Episode 22: Site plans and what is required to develop a good one. Building department and Home Owner Association requirements. Grading and topographical plans reviewed. All interesting details to understand if you have a more sophisticated building department or complex building site.

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Episode 21: Different structural design details by location of building project.  Also review of the different structural design types required to obtain permits in different jurisdictions.

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Episode 20: Adding architectural design details to make the home more enjoyable and code compliant. Interesting conversation regarding building departments and how they work. Mechanical design discussion to benefit your new home project.

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Episode 19: More in depth design details and their benefits. What is structural engineering and design? Why do I need it. WUI, Wildland Urban Interface and how it affects my home and permitting. Different structural design concepts and Mechanical Design. Plumbing, Electrical and HVAC design.

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Episode 18: How the building site affects a home’s design. Foundation types and how they benefit a home. Details to properly develop your site plan for your enjoyment and building permits. What is a grading and drainage plan?

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Episode 17: Proper positioning your home on your land adds to the home’s value and enjoyment.  Setting the floor plan up for entertaining and family enjoyment.  Can a home be “wheel chair friendly”, ADA compliant?  Cathedral ceilings add to the style of the home.

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Episode 16: A fun episode in which Landmark Home and Land Company president Steve Tuma recalls some interesting building situations the company has helped its customers contend with. Landmark Home and Land Company’s reputation for service is well known.

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Episode 15: On this episode, Landmark Home and Land company president Steve Tuma reviews the company’s philosophies and methods of helping customers, and why Landmark Home and Land Company’s reputation matters.

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Episode 14: On today’s episode, Landmark Home and Land Company president Steve Tuma discusses why renovating a new home is much harder than building a new home, and how can you can build the home you want.

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Episode 13: On this episode, Landmark Home and Land Company president Steve Tuma answers Interesting questions from customers on how Landmark can help with designing and building their new home, and addresses some common fallacies regarding Panelized home building.

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Episode 12: On this episode Steve Tuma, president of Landmark Home and Land Company, reviews questions about plans and design. How to visualize your home so you know its what you want. What is mechanical design? Why do building departments require so much information to issue a permit? What if your building department does do a plan check, meeting code regulations, and more.

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Episode 11: On this episode, Landmark Home and Land Company reviews sorting out if your land and proposed build site are “buildable” and suited to your new home project. Building setbacks, Home Owners Associations, soil tests for septic system and geotechnical reports, height restrictions and topography.

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Episode 10: More of the best questions answered! Windows and rough openings for a panelized home. Delivery and details of individual wall panels and roof trusses. Assembly of your new panelized home package. Limited building seasons and how panelized home kits can help you. Is a panelized home like a stick built home?

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Episode 9: Interesting and common questions. Benefits of different foundation types. Designing your kitchen and bathrooms. How are panelized home kits priced. Energy calculations and building permits. Lot coverage and setbacks. Siding for my custom panelized home.

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Episode 8: Common questions answered. What is a panelized home and how does it compare to stick built, modular, prefab and prefabricated homes? Customization capabilities of Landmark’s panelized homes and what is included. Selecting a foundation type and assembling your panelized home kit. How do I know windows will fit?

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Episode 7: Ideas on how to develop the plans for your new home project. Can you draw your own up or should we help you? How do I know plans are good for permits? Will they be usable to build my new home? What if I want to customize a standard or online plan? Working with building departments. Do I need an Architect to design and build my own home? Fitting your new home on your lot. How does a Structural Engineer help.

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Episode 6: Benefits of being an Owner Builder and the support you may need. How Landmark’s services and panelized homes help with your design, budget, control of the project and quality and pride of ownership. Building what you want and not being limited by standard plans. Understanding your new home project and getting the right help.

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Episode 5: Structural engineering and its benefits for the intended use of the home and the building site. What is done in the structural engineering processes? Can I put a grand piano in my bedroom? Why do homes sink and sag and how to avoid this in your new home.

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Episode 4: Permitting and building departments. Working with tough building departments. How to obtain permits when codes are changing and tightening up. Design and code impact when building in different building conditions. The value of unified plan sets where all the information is uniform and matches. Green and energy codes and sun analysis to make your home more comfortable and enjoyable.

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Episode 3: Planning and designing your new home is the most important step. Where to start. Are standard plans or online plans usable? Can my friend design the plans? Fitting the home to your building site. Taking our conceptual ideas and getting them into usable plans. Benefits of a one stop shop for plans, engineering, energy codes, and site plans. How proper plans help your project, permitting and budgeting.

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Episode 2: Building your new home is exciting and it all starts with the initial design ideas. We discuss preliminary architectural design to fit your family’s needs and lifestyle. How different building sites and geographic locations affect your home's design.

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Episode 1: Panelized, modular, prefab or stick built homes reviewed. How to properly develop a home design and plans for our new home as an owner builder. Discussion of architectural and structural plans and energy codes. Developing an accurate and complete set of plans to submit for permits for your specific building site and building department.