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Stock Plans Often we get calls for someone looking for “predrawn” plans which can be purchased “off the shelf”. This type of plan is called a “stock” plan. You are probably most familiar with stock plans through the numerous plan books which can be purchased at hardware stores and booksellers. Because most of the homes we have designed have been tailored to our clients’ specific needs and site criteria, stock plans have not been our focus. We don’t offer them as a general rule. If we know we have a plan which will suit a clients’ needs with little or no revision, we will make it available to them. However, because we don’t archive our designs based on typical features (number of bedrooms, square footage, etc.) it is almost impossible to make them available for clients to select from. You may be tempted to look at the purchase of stock plans from a national publisher as an economical alternative to custom design. Please use caution when considering this! Most national plan suppliers do not provide the level of detail and the amount of information on their plans required to satisfy the local code authorities. In addition, they may be designed for different climates or structural considerations than we encounter in southern Arizona. If you purchase plans from a national supplier and then have to hire a local firm to provide additional drawings and information, you may end up with a set of plans which is not very well coordinated. The problems this could produce will probably not become apparent until well into the construction of the home, and the necessary corrections at that point could be extremely costly and may even require compromises in the design features of the house. Published designs are protected by federal copyright laws. If you see a plan advertised nationally which has all or most of the design features you desire, our advice is to buy the rights to use the plan from the supplier and then bring it to a local firm to produce the working drawings.
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