Using Typical Wall Details

Typical Walls and Partitions

My early design experiences were mostly masonry buildings. Masonry exterior walls and masonry interior walls. Distinguishing among wall types wasn't an issue. Exterior wall sections defined the exterior walls, and dimensions defined interior walls - just plain old concrete block of different thicknesses. The more usual case, I learned, was a bit more complicated. Exterior walls were still covered by wall sections, but interior wall differences were exploding. Fire rated construction. Sound separations. Plumbing concealment. Chase walls. Abuse-resistant walls. Shaft walls. Furred walls. My example below shows 26 interior wall types!

How do you keep all the types organized and clearly defined?

After using several tactics such as: notes (too much real estate required), and key notes (better but easy to miss), and loads of sections (lots of work); my partner hit on a pretty neat solution. If you haven't discovered this years ago, here's your chance to advance.

First, you define your standard or default interior wall and place a bold note somewhere that all walls unless noted otherwise [UNO] are constructed in such and such a way. A details is nice because you can cover head and base conditions easily and graphically.

Second, you start a sheet of typical wall details as you come across different wall types. We actually got to the point where this was a master sheet that we copied from project to project and edited.

Third, you tag the walls that are different with a diamond, add the type designation letter, and extend a short 'cut' line from one point of the diamond through the wall in question. Placing the diamond near an intersection of two walls of the same type lets you place one symbol and tag two walls at the same time. My example shown to the right predated the diamond idea, but was handy and shows the end result very well (except using squares). Actually any shape that wouldn't be mistaken for something else works just fine. Click to enlarge image.

The drawing below is an example of the typical wall detail sheet. You can see that minor variations in wall types can be addressed through the tag designation by adding a subscript and a note explaining the difference. On this one sheet there are 26 walls defined using 14 drawings. You can download the PDF here for future reference.

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On the typical wall details sheet is a good place to locate a metal stud sizing table so you don't have to make that a distinguishing characteristic of your wall types. 

So my take is that Typical Wall Details does three things for you:

1. Saves you time.
2. Creates a better work product.
3. Helps the contractor find information easier.

As you can see there isn't much to it. The added benefit is that after several jobs, if you have been building up a master sheet, you will save even more time and improve your quality control as well. 

This topic was covered in a previous post, published on December 22, 2013.

You can also check out another article on using Wall Types at Life of an Architect.

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