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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$$er
February 2022 #14271 Page #126
The Last Word on Towns Joe Kannapell, P.E.
oming soon to your town and plant are “two-over-two towns,” which I initially disdained, but not after I saw that they were just loaded with components. Even so, who would want to live in a two-story townhouse that was built over or under another two-story townhouse, and be packed in like sardines? Apparently, many people do since these buildings are rising in droves around the perimeter of the Washington, DC Metro area. Tough to live in, I thought, but a component plant’s dream – in which each stack of 2 units contains:
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8 long runs of party walls with no openings.
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3 levels of repetitive floor decks.
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Easy to handle, compact roof trusses, either flat or low pitched or both. Then, when these two-over-twos came to my small town, I had to go to see them. To get up close, I had to navigate around mountains of 84 Lumber’s wall panels. Then I spotted brave souls four stories up swinging hammers, even on Thanksgiving Day. In all I saw 8 buildings with a total of 60 units in various stages of completion. Now I looked toward their livability.
As to sound transmission between adjacent units, I observed the typical townhouse construction detail: two layers of gypsum core wall. Per Code, these area separation walls can be used in structures up to four stories or a total of 44’ in height – ideal for the two-over-two construction. Note that this barrier will completely cover the depth of the floor cavity. Continued next page
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