Advice on tear-down/rebuild?

SettingOutSoon wrote:
I was hoping I could place them below the floor almost anywhere and run lines. No?

I know a structural engineer I hired once when renovating a quadraplex. (I thought the guy was going to make me pour enough concrete to build the Hoover dam.) Do you think the average structural engineer would be adequate for this, or is it a specialty?

As for your plumbing you should do a preliminary (plumbing) floor plan and an elevation drawing. These two drawings will give you an idea of where and where not to install plumbing lines. Of course the supply lines (H&C water) are the easy ones as they do not require grading (sloping), It's the drain lines you'll need to get worked out right away.

I myself did a 3" scale drwg to get my plumbing worked out and even after all that work I still changed a few things once I got around to the actual fabrication itself.

As for a structural engineer, all of them are farmilar with ground acceleration (earthquakes) but most if not any are farmilar with dynamic acceleration associated with moving travel trailers, this is where you will need to find a very creative one and one I was unable too find.

Being that I come out of the trades myself and have had a lot of exposure to structural engineering I was able to do that task for my project. The only downside to that has been a little overbuilding on my part and that's why I mentioned that next time around I'd lighten some of the framing members.

As you're well aware of engineers tend to work with 100% safety factors at a minimun, if not more.