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Show Notes:
You will learn how custom structural engineering allows owner-builders to incorporate specialized, heavy-load lifestyle features into their floor plans without sacrificing floor stiffness or causing structural bounce. You will discover how roof framing and drainage can be engineered to support rooftop hot tubs, flat sun decks, and widow’s walks while preventing water pooling and long-term deflection. Additionally, you will learn how pre-engineered panelized home packages can accurately recreate historical architectural styles—such as 1880s Victorians, Southwestern Territorial adobes, and rustic chalets—using modern energy-efficient wall assemblies and materials. Finally, you will explore how thoughtful architectural design accommodates unique family priorities, from dedicated drive-under underground garages and multi-RV storage to split-wing in-law suites and multi-generational living spaces.Key Q&A Highlights from Episode 94
Q: How do you engineer a floor system to eliminate bounce from heavy dynamic loads?
A: Eliminating floor bounce caused by large running dogs, workout equipment, or heavy gatherings requires upgrading the subfloor stiffness and sizing deeper floor joists or open-web floor trusses. Structural engineers calculate dynamic live loads and reinforce supporting beams and load-bearing walls to prevent vibration from traveling throughout the house.
Q: What structural framing is required to put a hot tub on a deck or flat roof?
A: Installing a hot tub on an elevated deck or flat roof requires designing for significant dead and live weight—often several thousand pounds of water and occupants—by tightening joist spacing and adding heavy structural support beams. The underlying framing must also be engineered for extra deflection stiffness and sloped properly to prevent standing puddles from accumulating over time.
Q: Can a panelized kit home accurately replicate historic architectural styles?
A: Yes, panelized building systems can precisely reproduce historic period styles, such as 1880s Victorians, Southwestern Territorial adobe homes with vigas, or New England widow’s walks. Modern pre-engineered framing allows builders to capture historic exterior profiles and high ceilings while incorporating 2×6 energy-efficient wall assemblies and modern HVAC layouts.
Q: How do you design an in-law suite for privacy in a multi-generational custom home?
A: An in-law or multi-generational suite is typically designed on the opposite wing of the house, in a walkout basement, or above a detached garage to maximize acoustic separation and privacy. These independent suites incorporate private kitchenettes, dedicated bathrooms, and separate exterior entries so extended family members or remote workers can function without household distractions.
Q: Can a custom home be engineered with an underground drive-in basement garage?
A: Yes, homes built on sloped or walkout lots can be engineered with drive-under basement garages that accommodate multiple exotic cars, boats on trailers, or indoor motorcycle ramps. Structural engineers design reinforced concrete foundation walls, clear-span steel or open-web truss ceilings, and dedicated ventilation systems to safely house large vehicle collections beneath living areas.
Transcript:
Steve Tuma: You know, as owner-builders, people don’t just do it to, well, the big thing is they save money, they control the quality, but a lot of them just want to get into the design. You know, “Hey, this is what makes this period Victorian,” or “This is what makes this period Adobe look,” or or this type of a modern look that I want.
Host: How you doing, everybody, and welcome to Episode 94 of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me today, as usual, 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, big guy?
Steve Tuma: That’s going great today. It’s, you know, there’s always interesting things that happen. There’s always a customer that needs a different type of help, a land situation, a different house design, or special request of, “Hey, Steve, have you ever done this before? Has Landmark ever done this for a house?” So, it was one of those cool days where a lot of fun things happened. But, I think we got some good questions today, right?
Host: Well, we’re going to go back to our top 10 list. I think these are pretty popular, so I’d like to continue, if you don’t mind. And these are, this is another top 10 list of potential panelized home owner-builders, and questions they seem to be asking or searching on the internet. And these are all sort of real specialty questions, so it should be a lot of fun, I think. So, if you’re good to go, let’s dive in.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, let’s do it.
Host: Okay. So, here’s a question that we found. We have three huge dogs. Can you engineer the floor system so the home doesn’t shake when they chase each other around? That’s a legitimate question.
Steve Tuma: I’ve actually, I’ve actually been asked this question a few times, whether it’s two huge dogs, or three huge dogs, or the grandkids come over, you know, people with larger families, and, you know, they’re five or six little kids running around playing soccer in the living room or something like that. But, I, yes, we can take care of special requests, and the weight of, you know, three 150-pound dogs running around, there’s things like floor bounce and different things that can shake through the house, and if, and, you know, just make it a little more uncomfortable. The house isn’t going to fall over, but there’s ways to, you know, to tighten things up.
So, I think the basic question is: Can we design a house for special needs, and, you know, if someone has a heavy item, a big pool table in there, a hot tub, three huge dogs, or the family gets together, or they have a grand piano in the living room? Yes, we can engineer the floor system, the beams that may support it, the walls around it, to carry the loads. So, yeah, we’re fully able to do things like that for special needs, special lifestyle requirements, you know, just cool things like dogs that people have in their houses.
So, yeah, we’re able to look at that. And in fact, that’s part of our design element when we first start, is do you have anything that’s like an abnormally heavy weight that’s going to go into the house? You know, sometimes people don’t think about it, but, you know, people don’t really use waterbeds, but way back they did. Sometimes people had big fish tanks, workout equipment, you know, whatever it may be. So, we like to know about that so we can make sure that the design is proper for it. So, yeah, we’re here listening for interesting things.
So, yes, this was a real question. We get it asked probably once or twice a year. So, we thought it’d be an interesting thing for people to understand. We can custom design not just the floor plan, but also the structure of your home to take care of any special requests that you have.
Host: Has Landmark ever done any like indoor pools or indoor jacuzzis, things like that? I’m sure that could be definitely a problem.
Steve Tuma: Yeah. Yeah, and that actually poses a whole different thing in climate control because of the moisture in the air. But we’ve done it. Where people are more concerned about like hot tubs, you know, hot tubs are the more common thing is, you know, they’ll have like a garage and they want a deck on top of it. And what’s interesting about this is a lot of the hot tub companies, they’ll say, “Oh, it just needs a regular floor.”
Well, you got to really look at this and see how much do you want to push it, because if you have the weight of the hot tub, the weight of the water, some of these hot tubs are three to eight people, and, you know, suddenly there’s a lot of weight in an area. So they can say, yeah, it fits on it, but how well does it and what happens over time?
And when you get into different situations like that, like if you had a garage, an attached garage off the side of a house, and you wanted to make that a flat roof on it, there’s a lot of different situations that can come into it. It’s not just the weight of it, but then it’s the flex. So some people say, “Well, hey, floors normally flex.” I’m like, “Yeah, you’re right, they do. But do you want like a puddle sitting in the middle of this area?” You generally don’t.
So we got to slope it and then use different materials for that roof so that it doesn’t create little low spots for puddles that would go there. So sometimes we have to use different structural members to increase the stiffness so that, you know, things don’t flex over time, creating a little bit of a spot for a puddle. So, yeah, if it gets into a hot tub on a roof or or even an exterior deck in the front or backyard, we always like to know about that so that we can, you know, design the home for it.
Host: There’s a question that’s a little off of what the questions I’m going to ask today, but I mean, just before I forget, does Landmark run into a lot of people who like to do kind of historic retro stuff? I know when I was in New England last, I’m just into that kind of architecture and stuff, and I noticed there were a lot of homes that were kind of, you know, kind of built old school, in other words, like Victorians and even pre that. And I noticed things like specialty things like, what’d they used to call them, widows’ walks, where they were like a porch on top of the house that had a railing around it. Do you guys ever get asked to do like historic reproductions and things like that?
Steve Tuma: Oh, yeah, we just did one in Northern Michigan. It was a house, I think it was an 1880s Victorian, the first house in the town by the people that settled the town. And the current owner was in it, and it burned, and they rebuilt that same house with the modern twist, because if you’ve ever been in some of these older Victorian homes, closets were small. People just didn’t have the wardrobes of today. They obviously didn’t have TVs. They didn’t have, you know, they maybe had cooks, so people didn’t have eat-in kitchens or bigger kitchens and maybe great room kind of concepts.
So we’ve worked with a lot of those. Sometimes we’re in historic districts where the house has to stay like on the exterior to an extremely specific look, but the interior can vary. You know, it could be a little more modernized. They’re more worried about the exterior look. But then, some customers choose to have the look of the inside stay like a Victorian.
But it’s not just, you bring up the Victorian, but there’s also, you know, territorial homes. We’re doing some of those in the Southwest. You know, there’s different looks in the mountains, in the Sierras, chalet-type designs, modern design, you know, kind of boxy designs with mono-pitch roofs. So, I think the point you’re getting at is not just the historic, but the extremely specific design.
Host: Well, it’s an area, if an area has a lot of architecture, like you said, let’s say Santa Fe, New Mexico, they have a lot of those adobe-look houses with the with the big round wood beams that just… Yeah, yeah, those are great. And I notice some of those on the Landmark website. Those are cool.
Steve Tuma: The vigas. Yeah. Yeah, and in fact, we’re getting a lot more customers doing that. As owner-builders, people don’t just do it to, well, the big thing is they save money, they control the quality, but a lot of them just want to get into the design. You know, “Hey, this is what makes this period Victorian,” or “This is what makes this period Adobe look,” or or this type of a modern look that I want.
So we’ve got a family in Michigan doing a very specific modern design. You know, they want where they want a specific look of certain houses they’ve seen in in Europe in their travels, so they want to take these ideas and get it put together. So, yeah, I mean, we’ve run into all different types of houses like that. And sometimes people are really concerned with the outside, sometimes it’s interior finishes, you know, beams or different looks, whether the beams are designed to be decorative, or they’re real structural beams that also have an extremely decorative look.
So we’re able to go through and work with the different designs. It’ll take a little bit longer because there’s just details and specifics that have to be worked out, and then sometimes when you get in into a different design, sometimes the way the life was then, they just used different materials. So a lot of older Victorians may have 11- and 12-foot ceilings, you know, in the East Coast, because a lot of it was for heat. And they had taller windows so they can have a double-hung window, open the top sash, drop it down, and then the heat would go out. So sometimes it was design elements, sometimes it’s, you know, they didn’t have the heating and cooling systems that we have today.
So sometimes you’ve got to work this little blend together of, “Hey, do you want 12-foot ceilings in your house?” If you do, we can do it. But then there’s also different situations where we can say, “Hey, we can still have that Victorian look, but do you want 9-foot or 10-foot ceilings?” So we’re able to hit the exact Victorian look if someone wants it, or, you know, territorial, or, you know, a mountain design, what, you know, lodges, you know, we can work with that, or we can have kind of a modernized hybrid of it.
And that’s the key, is we have a full design and engineering team, so we have direct control as to the plans and get everything taken care of for the particular look that they want.
Host: It reminds me of those cars. People who do those reproduction sports cars, they’re like brand new in the inside, but they’ve got that old look, and that’s just kind of cool.
Steve Tuma: Very, very similar. Yeah, very similar. It’s like, “Hey, give me a territorial home that would have been in Tucson or something in 1920, but let’s make it energy-efficient with good windows, and do a variety of different situations.” So we’re able to do that. We’re having a lot of people do the old farmhouse looks.
Host: Yeah, that’s cool. That’s also very cool.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, so there’s a lot of details where we can go through and look at these different requirements and put it together. And like I say, if people want to stay historic and picture-perfect, or if they want to have the general look and kind of hybridize it with it, you know, or like pay homage to it, have certain features, but then blend it with today.
We’ve got some people doing some homes actually from the Los Angeles fires where some of the homes had thicker walls, it’s just the nature of the architectural design. So they don’t necessarily want to have a wall a foot thick, they want to go with more modern things. So we’re going to have the regular 2×6 walls with with the type of stucco, a certain type of stucco, and then accents so it looks like certain windows are recessed and stuff, just to give it that kind of older architectural look without the expense that it would take today.
So, yeah, we’re currently working on projects like that right now, doing one outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, a territorial home, doing the old Los Angeles house, you know, style architectural styles from, you know, some of the homes we’re helping rebuild from the Los Angeles fires. And then, yeah, we did the Victorian up in Northern Michigan. And, you know, over time, there’s been a variety of them. We’ve done some in Pennsylvania.
We did one that’s really interesting was a kind of a house that matched a house that was used in the Civil War as a medic camp. That was a little while ago, but that was kind of interesting, you know, to say, “Hey, we don’t exactly want the exact medic house, but we want to pay homage to what happened on this land.” And it’s kind of cool. You learn something new on every one of those.
So, yeah, we’re up for it. It’s just part of the game. It’s part of, you know, the excitement of this business is helping people get the house they want, and every once in a while, when someone has a special request, it’s just really cool, you know. Kind of fun to work on those projects.
Host: When I’m ready to build my medieval castle, I’ll be calling you. Because you guys seem to have, in 30 over 33 years now, you guys have, I would imagine there’s not much you haven’t seen or done. So, you know, but a few of these questions, I’m going to try to see if I can stump you, but I doubt it.
Steve Tuma: Well, we’ve actually done homes with castle-like features, you know, just different turrets, or different pediments, or different different details that are there, the battlements, you know. So, amazingly, you can have those features that kind of pay homage to it. But to go out and make a real castle out of stone, that that’s a whole different planet of things, and I don’t think anyone’s really going to attempt that.
But as far as having details with the different type of castle rock, the different types of looks that they want, yeah, we’ve done it. We’ve had people going and put just big beams, almost cathedral-like beams inside of homes. You know, that’s some you might say some of the older castles would have had in their roof system. So, yeah, we actually did a house a couple years ago, the guy wanted to it was a simple ranch home, but he wanted the living room in the middle to be medieval-like. So we had to design things certain ways with the windows, and it was going to be some like medieval chamber.
Host: Wow. That’s cool.
Steve Tuma: So, I forgot about it because, you know, you kind of think castle, but if you looked at this particular house from the outside, you’d say, “Hey, it’s just a regular boxy ranch.” But inside, it was quite different.
Host: You know, that leads us to materials, too. I mean, do you get asked to do like, okay, let’s talk about the castle look, I don’t want to hang on this or whatever, but you would probably people might take some form of some form of cinder block or something like that. When you guys are asked about specialty materials like that that aren’t normal for a house build, you’re pretty adaptable to that kind of thing, all right?
Steve Tuma: Oh, yeah. Like in a situation like that, you can get real stone, or you can get like a fake stone that mimics it. So we can go through, and the customer will say, “Hey, I want to put real stone here,” or “I want to put fake stone,” or or whatever it may be, and then we would design the home, the structure, and the foundation to properly support it.
Because if you have real stone, it’s heavy, it would need a footer to support it in the foundation. If it’s a fake stone, it’s not as heavy, and it could just be attached to the side of the house. But depending on the features and what people want, and the the effect that they want, you’d go one one material over over another.
So it’s that. It’s pretty rare that people get into the castle. They get into the castle features, but to wrap a whole house in stone, that, that’s something that’s pretty, that’s pretty rare, but we’re, we’re fully capable of doing it.
Host: Yeah, there is no, I didn’t mean to get caught up on the medieval castle, but I noticed out in desert areas like out by Joshua Tree I’ve seen houses that look like they’re trying for some sort of stony effect and they’re using a lot of, a lot of cinder blocks. So anyway, sorry about that, I didn’t mean to take you off on that tangent, but…
Steve Tuma: Oh hey, it’s fun stuff.
Host: Good answers. So let’s get back to our top 10 list and I’m trying to keep things as serious as possible, but some of these questions are pretty, they’re wacky, but they’re definitely cool. So, one guy says…
Steve Tuma: Well, it’s what people want. It’s, it’s the priority in their lives, like we talked about their dogs. It’s important, you know, for them. What’s this next one?
Host: A guy, a guy asks, he says, “My wife loves to bake pies, but she doesn’t want to be out of sight of the grandkids. Can you design a kitchen with very big windows so she can bake and still see the kids play on our two acres?”
Steve Tuma: This is a real situation where, a house we did in Prescott, Arizona, where the, the family, it was actually grandparents. They were retiring, building their home, and he wanted a shop in his garage to tinker. He’s the old-style grandpa, you know, fixing the lawn mower, fixing the kids’ bikes, wanting to show the kids how to, you know, change an inner tube and stuff like that. And then the grandma, she just loved baking pies. Amazing pies.
And she wanted to have her kitchen laid out extremely specifically for her flow and how she baked, and then also how the kids came in and ate, ate the pies. But also, she wanted big windows so she could be pretty much anywhere in the kitchen and scan the two acres.
Host: Right.
Steve Tuma: You know, just look out. “Hey, what’s grandpa doing with the kids? What are the kids doing? Where’s the dog?” You know, just, just kind of, so still, you know, be able to take care of her hobby and, you know, have a great dessert for the family, but still be part of it, and, and still, still go through.
What’s really interesting about this in the last year or two, we’ve had a lot of grandparents build houses with the grandkids in mind. And a lot of these are flashbacks to what the grandparents when they were kids…
Host: Right, yeah.
Steve Tuma: …what they saw as being important. We’re doing one outside of, well, by New Buffalo, Michigan, southwest Michigan, where she wanted to have a window for serving ice cream, just like she was served ice cream when she was a little girl. That was the memory, getting ice cream from her grandma, or going to the local ice cream shop.
Host: Right.
Steve Tuma: So on, there’s a side porch on this house, and she has a very specific custom window being built, which is like ordering from a local old-time ice cream shop.
Host: That’s cool.
Steve Tuma: And she, yeah, so there, there’s a few grandkids, and she said that’s like the highlight of it. So there’s this really extremely well-designed home. She’s an interior designer, has some great ideas. We had to work hard to put it on the land, but this little spot for the ice cream is, is there.
So the concept of things that are very specific or quirky, but are very important. To me, this was a, a unique design, but it was weird. After one customer asked for it, we’ve had multiple other customers with very similar things. They’re like, “Hey, I always remember having ice cream with grandma. I always remember, you know, a certain type of pie.” And they, they want to carry that tradition on, which, which is kind of interesting in the thought processes, and why a lot of customers want to build their own home with us, you know, Landmark Home and Land Company, why we specialize in things like this.
A lot of people are saying, “Hey, my family’s on the other side of the country,” or “Hey, my family’s two towns over,” and even though we’re really connected through text and telephone, they’re not connected in human, you know, some human thing. Let’s get together and barbecue. Let’s go for a walk. Let’s have ice cream. Let’s talk about the good old times.
So a lot more families are working on and, and having places for people to get together. What I called heirloom homes, we might have spoken about them before, where families actually are building it so that everyone does get together on the big holidays, birthdays, you know, so it’s, it’s, it’s interesting to see what people are doing to kind of put a personality or or a specific use to a home.
Host: I was reading something about that… families are starting to kind of get back to the roots kind of thing, and in all communities, you know, they’re, they’re starting to realize that they’re missing something by all this modern technology, and home is where it starts, man, you know?
Steve Tuma: Right. I mean, like in the case of this window, I call it, with the customer, the ice cream window. You can send a picture eating ice cream or you could be there with your grandma. Which one’s better, you know?
Host: Right. Yeah.
Steve Tuma: So, so that, that’s what it’s about.
Host: I love stuff like that, man. Well, let’s get back to the questions. This one you’re going to love.
Steve Tuma: Tell me.
Host: A man says, “I love my in-laws, but can you, can we put an, an in-law suite on the other side of the house as far away from the primary house as possible?”
Steve Tuma: Yeah, well, this is a little bit opposite of, “Hey, everyone getting together for ice cream.” Now it’s like, “Yeah, let’s have ice cream, but do it a hundred feet away.”
Yeah, and and it is, it is kind of humorous because there’s always the comedy about in-laws, like, “Yeah, they’re great, you know, two states away.” But sometimes people do it for that reason, other times people do it as like, “Hey, the family still comes over, but I still have to work,” or “I still have to sleep.”
So in those cases, what people have done is they’ve had little in-law suites whether they show up for a weekend or maybe for a season, you know, maybe they come over in summer or they winter, you know, at a relative’s home where, where it’s a warmer climate. But so, yeah, so there’s the funny part of it of, “Hey, keep, you know, love my in-laws, keep them five miles away,” and then there’s also the part of it of, “Hey, if they do come over for four months, you know, let’s, let’s give them their own little private area, you know, so that they, they can live in privacy, the other family can live in their own,” and then with a lot of people working from home, they, they kind of want to keep their little business life, you know, in a spot where they can work without the distractions and, and noise of, of day-to-day.
So, yeah, I guess we’ve kind of run the gamut of, “Hey, get everyone together for ice cream, and then keep the in-laws someplace else.” But the point of it is, can, can we design a house that makes sense for, for, for the lifestyle.
Another one, I don’t know if we’ve really spoken about this, is multi-generational homes, where people want the grandparents there or the kids move in, or three generations are there for affordability reasons, temporary housing changes, you know, different situations which can can come back into play. So we’re working with a lot of situations where where people have a separate suite. Sometimes it’s an ADU for Airbnb or other type of rental situations. Other times, they might have a special-needs kid that or or a family member that needs its their own complete different living space, but they still want to be part of the home. So, you know, sometimes that’s in a bonus room above a garage, sometimes it’s in a walkout basement, sometimes it’s just on another end of the home.
Host: Yeah. As we were picking these questions today, we realized that a lot of these were very tongue-in-cheek, so I hope our listeners are taking it in in the in the way we intended it. Some of these are are just kind of funny, but when you when you throw a question like this at you, Steve, you seem to get a chuckle out of it, but then you bring it back around to to tell us, you know, “Hey, this is real stuff, and this is how we can accomplish it.”
Steve Tuma: Oh, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting, you know, to to see the different needs. And when when people ask these questions, there’s usually a very sensible purpose for it. So that, that’s why we understand it. We’ve seen it enough where, in a sense, it’s kind of normal to us, so we can take care of problems like It’s not really a problem, it’s a design element we just have to add.
Host: Going back to the subject of cars, which we briefly hit upon, here’s a question from somebody who says, “I have 15 antique exotic cars. Can I design a garage or an under garage for them specifically?”
Steve Tuma: Oh, an underground, yeah, like a basement garage, drive under.
Host: Yeah, that’s very cool.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, we’ve had a few people do that. Car guys or people with different types of hobbies like that where they want either a separate a whole separate garage for it, or if their land allows, they they want drive-under garage for security or just fun. Sometimes they’re on the sides of hills, and you know, they want to have some like Ferris Bueller type of setup, you know, for their for their their car.
Right. So, yeah, we’re we’re able to do that. I mean, it’s basically a basement. Sometimes there’s different ventilation situations, or lights, or security, or or different access. But we’ve had people do that, and also with airplanes, you know, whether there’s a hangar under the house, you know, like a a hangar garage level living space above it, or a hangar off to the side.
We’ve had people request situations like this if in they’re into the the motorhome lifestyle, where we’ve had people have an extra garage for the motorhome. We’ve actually had people do it for three or four motorhomes for seasonal parking. You know, if their relatives have one, they can all do it, and then they can still hang on their motorhomes, or or someone comes over for an extended time.
So, yes, we’re able to go through and and take care of different situations with, you know, for different cars, motorhomes, boats. A lot of people have boats, and they’re like, “Hey, I want to store it inside. You know, I got a 20-foot boat or 30-foot boat.” And it’s not just the boat, it’s the trailer we have to consider, and then clearance and and different things like that. So, yeah, we’ve had a lot of customers do stuff like this, and it’s always cool because some of the cars they have are just amazing.
Host: Yeah, that’s got to be fun for you guys, too. Let’s keep things in the motor world, and a man writes in, he says, “My Harley-Davidson motorcycle is important to me. Can you add a ramp so I can drive my bike into my living room?”
Steve Tuma: You know, when I first heard this, I I thought it was a, you know, like an old friend calling me up, pulling my leg. This person was dead serious about it. And him and his girlfriend, they have big Harleys. They don’t believe in leaving them out in the rain, and sometimes they just want to work on them or look at them, you know. Hey, people have art in their house, why not your Harley? Why not your Ferrari? You know, your Corvette, what whatever it may be.
So, you know, we we can take care of things like that. Basically, what we had to do is just design a ramp in, and then we made sure that the floor system could could carry the the the additional weight. So, yeah.
You know, in a sense, a lot of the things we’re talking about are, you know, like in the bigger part of of the dog, you know, a dog running is the motion. It’s not necessarily the weight, but it’s the weight of the motion. But the Harley’s kind of the same thing. It’s a heavy item, it’s rolling, and then it’s sitting. Right. So, yeah, we’re we’re able to to work in different situations like that and and go through and and get it taken care of.
We’ve had people say, “Hey, I I want a clear-spanned basement,” say say a basement without posts, without to, you know, in the basement, so there’s no posts, so we would clear span it with open-web floor trusses or I-joists, and and get these situations all taken care of.
But then they say, “But our our dining room upstairs, sometimes we have 30 family members come over, and we’ll have a big open space.” So we’re we’re also taking care of the open space in the basement, but also taking care of the, you know, additional group of people. You know, 30 people in a house is a little abnormal. It’s cool a lot more people are doing it, but we have to design the floor system for that.
So, yeah, we’re we’re able to do that. It’s Oh, and back up, your your witch’s walk. We’ve had people do that on roofs where, you know, the top of the roof, instead of a peak, there’s a little flat spot, and there there there could be an area to sit. We had a customer do that out in Nevada because there was a certain race, a big thing in town, where they wanted to be able to sit on the roof of their house and see this race go through town.
Host: Yeah, that’s cool. That’s good stuff.
Steve Tuma: Yeah. Oh, it’s it’s pretty amazing. Some of some of this stuff is just way too cool, and it’s kind of fun working with customers to to get that really truly customized home for them.
Host: Yeah. Well, that’s about all the time we have for this edition of the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. But, Steve, thanks for being such a great sport and and fielding some of these goofy questions, but they all seem to have logical answers and explanations, so that’s great. Thanks so much.
Steve Tuma: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.
Host: Yeah, and before we let you go, let the listeners know how they can find out more about Landmark Home and Land Company and and what all it is that you guys do over there.
Steve Tuma: Well, the best thing to do is check out our website. The company’s Landmark Home and Land Company. The website is lhlc.com. Again, that’s lhlc, kind of like Landmark Home Land Company.
On there, there’s plans, there’s discussions of what we supply, engineering, there’s these are these podcasts, there’s videos, there’s a variety of details, but a lot of people like to look at the plans and then send an inquiry and say, “Hey, can I build this house? Can you, can we talk about this house?”
So they can email in on a specific plan, they can send a direct email, or they can call at 800-830-9788. And Mike will answer the phone, and they can talk about their project, kind of get the ball rolling. We do answer phones. We’re very proactive. So if, for some reason, you do get a voicemail, Mike will call back right away, and then, at a certain point, it it gets handed off to me when we get into the finer design details and work through, you know, exactly getting the plans going, the code applications, how to set it on land, energy codes, and other details.
And then we’re also on all the major social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and people can go through there and take a look at pictures, videos, different things we’ve posted. But, yeah, so we invite people to check out the website, but give a call. We’re we’re here to help. We’ll take the time to get to know you and get to know the project and see what we can do to help. It’s a lot of fun.
Host: Fantastic. And there it is. Thanks again, Steve, and thanks to all of you for listening to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. So for Landmark Home and Land Company President Steve Tuma and myself, have a great week ahead, and we will see you next time. Thanks again, Steve.
Steve Tuma: Thank you. This was a good one. It was interesting. This is part one. We we have to do part two.
Host: Well, it’s sort of part two. They’re not quite as… they’re a little more serious questions on the next one, but, yeah, this is another one of our top 10 categories episodes, and we’re going to continue this series as long as we think it’s interesting. So thanks, everyone, and we’ll see you next time.
Steve Tuma: Thank you.
