In the aisles at Home Depot, store manager Dave Giza sees a variety of homeowners’ plans, but the most common is the dinner-napkin plan. The vision of "Harry Homeowner," with plan in hand, was one of the focuses of International Building Safety Week.
"That's the most popular one, the drawing to a napkin," Giza said.
Building plans and codes were the topic that kicked off International Building Safety Week, where Giza was joined by building code enforcers as well as firefighters from all over the area on Friday, April 2, at the Fairfax County Government Center. Patrick Nnaji, Fairfax County chief mechanical engineer, was joined by Allyn Kilsheimer, the president of KCE Structural Engineers, who provided emergency stabilization of the Pentagon after the airplane hit the building on Sept. 11, 2001. That kicked off the week, April 4-10, which focused on residential and commercial building codes.
"Any edifice on a building can fail at any time as long as they’re made by humans. Code officials save lives. We are the other public safety people," Nnaji said.
Kilsheimer talked about people's commitment at the Pentagon on 9/11. He worked a week of 20-hour days when he first got there, pulling out people and making sure it was safe as possible for the other rescue workers.
"That clearly was my life-altering experience," he said, recalling using ingenuity to get a fire truck into the courtyard of the Pentagon.
"I took a torch and cut off the top of the fire truck," he said.
In the home, though, many times the fault lies with "Harry Homeowner," a plan on a napkin and not much more. Faulty plans can lead to fires and collapsed structures.
"Each of us think it's not going to happen to us. The Harry Homeowner thing is a big factor," Kilsheimer said.
Doing an electrical project without a certified electrician or inspector is one problem that they run into.
"I'd recommend going to hire a contractor yourself. A lot of times, [when] people try to do their own plumbing, soldering or welding, there have been fires," said Richard Sisler, City of Alexandria deputy fire marshal.
"I can assure you that the insurance people will not pay," added Nnaji.
Another area is decks, according to Giza. With new regulations on wood treatments and the metal joists, it can be more complicated.
"We don't quote code. We put them in touch with the county or city. Especially with the new wood treatments, it's better to be safe than sorry," said Giza.
Rand Gaber, City of Fairfax inspector, sees most of the problems with decks when the homeowner attaches them to the house.
"The most common problem is the failure to attach the deck to the house in a proper way. Collapses happen because it's not attached to the house," Gaber said.
Termites and dry rot are two factors that might come into play with a deck collapse, too.
"It's all our jobs to make sure people understand those things," Kisheimer said.
Several examples of construction tragedies in the area the engineers brought up were a building collapse at Skyline in the early 1970s, a collapse in Rockville, and the porch collapse in Chicago last year.
On the weekend of April 3-4, inspectors were at area Home Depot and Lowe’s stores answering questions.