Everyday Engineering: Understanding the Marvels of Daily Life

Considering how engineering and technology influence daily life, including high-tech devices, ordinary machines, buildings and infrastructure; learning to notice and understand these overlooked marvels.

Reviewing the eight engineered subsystems that go into modern dwellings; discovering building codes, which ensure that every new house is safe, constructible and reasonably economical without involving an engineer in each design.

Examining the design of a house for structural load carrying; focusing on two of the three major approaches to this function, which are bearing wall construction and heavy timber frame construction; both are used for thousands of years.

Turning to the house-building technique of platform-framed construction, which is a flexible arrangement of lightweight modular floor platforms, wall panels and roof trusses; this approach is widely used in the U.S. for over a century.

When a house is framed, it needs a building envelope that can shed rainwater and melting snow and protect the foundation from precipitation; the five integrated layers of protection, which include shingles, a drainage plane and insulation.

What happens to the precipitation that falls on properties; the problem of site design; focusing on how storm runoff is directed away from homes and returned to a natural watercourse, without causing flooding along the way.