Exploring Enlarged Plans and Sections for Stairway Number Two: A Comprehensive Overview

Exploring Enlarged Plans and Sections for Stairway Number Two

Explore the in-depth analysis and understanding of architectural plans and sections for a stairway in a multi-level building including parking and hotel levels. Gain insight into the significance of various elements such as structural column grid lines, interior dimensions, stair sections, and material fallouts in architectural drawings.

Key Insights

  • The article provides a comprehensive breakdown of plans and sections for a stairway in a multi-level building, highlighting elements such as structural column grid lines, interior dimensions, stair sections, and fallouts for materials.
  • Each plan is cut four and a half feet above the appropriate floor, with specific focus on the details of each level including the length of the stairs, the finished floor height, and the change in wall types surrounding the stairway.
  • The article emphasizes on the importance of various elements like door position, handrails position, stair width, and code requirements in the architectural design of stairways.

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Let's look at the enlarged plans and sections for stairway number two. If you look at the key plan down here, you will see that it's highlighted right here as far as the location of stairway number two. There are plans for every level of the stairs as we go up the building.

So this is at the parking one level, we go up to the parking two, up to parking three, hotel level one, hotel level two, hotel level three, and hotel level four. If you look at each of these drawings, you will notice that there is a stair section that cuts through this left-hand side of the stairs, and this is that stair section. As a reminder, we have these seven enlarged stair plans.

Please remember that these plans are cut four-and-a-half feet above the appropriate floor. So this image for P1 parking would be cut four-and-a-half feet above this level, P2 four-and-a-half feet above this level, and so on and so on. So let's zoom in to the first.

We see the structural column grid lines. We see the interior dimension of 10 feet 6 inches. We see the dimension from column grid to column grid. We see the reference to the stair section.

We have some notes. We have the finished floor elevation on this concrete pad. Here is the door that goes outside.

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Notice that people would be coming down the stairs, and they would have to push the door open to get out. We have items that are listed in the legend. I go up to the next level.

You can see where the handrails are. The same interior dimensions, the same column-to-column. You're seeing that the stair, the top of the stair, is dimensioned to the structural grid.

We see the length of the stairs themselves, and we're showing seven treads at 11 inches. That means that each of the steps is 11 inches long. We have similar information at this level.

Again, the finished floor height down there and the finished floor height there. One thing that's happened at this level is that the wall types surrounding the stairway have changed, whereas on the lower levels we had masonry. You can see now that we have masonry on this side, but we have metal walls with insulation showing dimensions.

The stair section cut, callouts for materials, similar here. Now again, in this situation, what's going on is people are coming into the stairway, and so they would push the door to go into the stairway itself, come into the stairway, and go down. This is what we call a break line right in through here.

So I'm coming from this level. I'm going down, and I would keep going down, or I would come in, and I would go up. Here we are at level four.

Again, coming in, there's a guardrail that caps here and comes down. We're showing that the width of the stairs is consistent from column grid to column grid. And now we can look at the section itself.

You notice that over here, this was being called as zero feet, zero inches. So the elevations for each of these are relative to zero, zero, whereas the elevation here is relative to street level. I have a detail reference on page A708, image three, that will talk about the handrails.

Please notice that the handrail on the wall sticks out beyond the end of the stairs. That is a code requirement. Another detail is here.

You can see here that we have the balconies in the distance. We have a detail for what a stair actually looks like, a stair step itself. There would be a section through the roof up here.

So this is the kind of information that is typically included on enlarged stair plans and sections.

Al Whitley

AutoCAD and Blueprint Reading Instructor

Al was the Founder and CEO of VDCI | cadteacher for over 20 years. Al passed away in August of 2020. Al’s vision was for the advancement and employment of aspiring young professionals in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industries.

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