Residential Design and Construction Program

This program of six courses is designed to provide detailed information on the design and construction of residential buildings. The program is primarily intended for members of the general public who intend to design, build, or renovate their own residences, but it also has strong appeal for tradespersons who wish to increase their construction knowledge, or for persons seeking employment in the residential construction field. Each course is intended to be delivered in a part-time studies format on a 3-hour, 12-session basis, but is easily adaptable to full-time college or high school formats.

All courses in the program are extremely practical in nature and present current building, framing, drafting, and energy-efficiency methods and techniques. While each course has been written to complement the others in presenting this important body of information, they are also designed to be offered as "stand-alone" courses if so desired. It is suggested that no prerequisites be required for any of the courses and registrants should be allowed to take the courses in any order, although the ideal sequence follows the order of the course titles listed below. My textbook, listed below, is used for each of the six courses and no others are required unless specifically requested by the course instructors.

There is only one copyright restriction on the reproduction, distribution, and use of this course material inside your institution:

Each course contains 36 hours of instruction for a total program content of 216 hours. The documentation for each course consists of fully detailed lesson plans, master pages for all overhead presentations, and, if required, terminal-objective course outlines for administrative purposes. There are 227 pages of lesson plans and 597 pages of overhead masters, each contained in separate packages.

There is no requirement that Institutions offer all six courses.  Some Institutions lack shop classrooms and have difficulty offering the Framing or Electrical/Plumbing  courses, although such classroom space can often be found in local high schools or other training facilities.  Instructors are encouraged to modify the Program contents to utilize available facilities and to reflect the regional and climatic aspects of their locality.