Passed all ARE's!!

Passed the last exam and now starting in on the California supplemental.

Structural Systems Vignette - Custom Alternate

Found this on the areforum.org ftp site under the building technology folder.
Posted for peer review on forum @ http://www.areforum.org/forums/showthread.php?307037-Custom-Alternate-Testing-Thursday&p=1444469#post1444469

Lower level

Upper Level

Structural Systems NCARB Vignette

LOWER

UPPER

Schematic Design - Interior Layout FTP alternate 04

Second pass at Alt 4.

Schematic Design Building Layout Sajjad Alt III

Room names aren't right, the file wasn't right so I used substitute rooms. Sajjad Alt III
Program pasted below.

From Ironwarriors ftp 

http://www.ironwarrior.org/ARE/Building_Planning/Alt_Vignettes/Alt%20SD%20Files/

Alt III Program

The community library will house general and special collections.  Meeting areas for the public will also be available.

1.   The site is located adjacent to and to the south of a decorative arts museum.  Parking is provided off the site.

2.   The major view is to the South.

3.   The lending desk/office is to have visual control of the entry to each of the following spaces: the lobby, the workroom, and the children’s reading room.

4.   The main entrance door shall face New York Avenue.

5.   All spaces shall have a 9 ft ceiling height except the main reading room, which shall have an 18 ft ceiling height. 

6.   The area of each space shall be within 10% of the required program area.

7.   The total corridor area shall not exceed 25% of the total program area.

8.   The second floor envelope must be congruent with or wholly contained within the first floor envelope with the exception that doors to the exterior may be recessed for weather protection.

 

 

Program - Spaces

 

Tag        Name                                  Area   (ft²)      Requirements

ST          Stair                                     800                 2 per floor @ 200 ft² per stair

E            Elevator Shaft                    200                 1 per floor @ 100 ft² each

                                                                                    Minimum dimension = 7 ft

EE          Elevator Equipment Room          100    

EM         Electrical/Mechanical Room       500    

L             Lobby                                  350                 Main Entrance

LD          Lending Desk/Office        200    

MR         Main Reading Room        2,500              View--exterior window required

                                                                                    18 ft ceiling

                                                                                    2 exits

                                                                                    First floor

T             Toilet Rooms                      600                 2 per floor @ 150 ft² each

W           Workroom                           400                 Exterior windows prohibited

                                                                                    Direct access to Lending Desk/Office

S            Stacks                                 1,000              Exterior windows prohibited

                                                                                    Direct access to Main Reading Room

LM          Large Meeting Room        750                 Exterior window required

                                                                                    Second floor

SM         Small Meeting Room        350                 Exterior window required

                                                                                    Near Large Meeting Room

CR         Children's Reading Room          500     View--exterior window required

                                                                                    Near Main Reading Room

HO         Head Librarian's Office    200                 Exterior window required

                                                                                    Direct access to Secretarial Office

AO         Assistant Librarian's Office         150     Exterior window required

                                                                                    Direct access to Secretarial Office

SO         Secretarial Office              300                 Exterior window required

                                                                                    Near Large Meeting Room

SC         Special Collections          500                 First floor

                                                                                    Exterior window required

                                   

B            Break Room                       300                 Near Large Meeting Room

C            Custodial                            200                 2 @ 100 ft²

               TOTAL PROGRAM AREA         9,900  ft²

Schematic Design - Building Layout - Dorf Alternate 02

First Floor

Second Floor

Schematic Design - Interior Layout Alternate 04

Alternate 04 interior layout. A few minutes under an hour.

Schematic Design: Interior Layout Alternate 01

From FTP www.areforum.org/up

Schematic Design Dorf Alternate 1

Dorf 1st alternate. Took 3 hours and 20 minutes to complete. 

FIRST FLOOR

 SECOND FLOOR

Schematic Design: NCARB Building Layout

Update: See the following link for review comments: http://www.areforum.org/forums/showthread.php?301617-BL-first-timer-please-comment-thanks!

First pass at building layout practice exam. NCARB original program.
took 5 hours total to complete. I will be working on this one. Scheduled to take this March 7th, 1.5 weeks from now.
FIRST FLOOR

 SECOND FLOOR

Schematic Design - Interior Layout (NCARB)

2/23/13

First pass at Interior Layout. This is program and layout that comes with the NCARB practice software.

Program and code review, notes and parti went quickly. Completed all room layouts except Reception in 52 minutes. Reception took an additional 42 minutes. 

PPP Site Zoning Vignette

First take on the NCARB practice vignette.

SPD - Sun Chart

ref: http://www.new-learn.info/packages/clear/thermal/climate/sun/sunpath_diagrams.html

Earth rotates about on a fixed plane that is tilted 23.5°

Averaged, the Earth will complete one rotation every 24hrs (based on a solar day) and thus moves at a rate of 15° per hour (one full rotation is 360°).

For northern hemisphere, the shortest solar day occurs around December 21 (winter solstice) and the longest solar day occurs around June 21 (summer solstice).

 time the earth takes to move around the sun is approximately 365 days. This path that the earth takes to revolve around the sun is called the elliptical path.

The angle between the earth- sun line and the earth"s equatorial plane is known as the angle of declination.

Searched for "sun path diagrams" and came up with this great site:
http://wiki.naturalfrequency.com/wiki/Solar_Position

Look in the back of the MEEB book (Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings)

ARE Exam Study Links

http://www.dustingoffron.com/ARE/

This is a page I found on the ARE Forum that I thought is worth sharing. It contains links to information and study material relating to each exam. It looks to be very useful and comes highly recommended from other forum users. Enjoy!

Site Planning Exam Scheduled

I finally set a date for this exam. I submitted time off from my job to take the exam on December 4, so now I have to get moving.

Site Planning Book Update

I am about halfway through the book, Site Planning 3rd Ed by Lynch and Hack. I have only documented a summary on Chpt 1 though. I have been reading it off and on for two years now. I am going to continue reading more often now that I have set my Site Planning Exam date for one Month from now. I look forward to posting more summaries as this is how I seem to best retain information.

ARE Exam Practice Software

The practice software does not install on an x64 operation system (Windows 7).
This post I found is the clearest instruction on how to handle that:
http://blog.arefaq.com/?p=137

New Exam Timeline

Just realized I only have one year to complete four exams until the 5 year rolling clock takes away my first one I took in May of 2008. 

Tentative exam order:

Site Planning and Design

Schematic Design

Programming Planning and Practice

Structural Systems

Started study for SPD yesterday. Downloaded the NCARB study guide and started reading the book I was partway through already, "Site Planning" 3rd Ed. by Kevin Lynch and Gary Hack. I will be posting notes from this book eventually.

Take Two Exams In Same Week

Here is a screenshot of the ARE 4.0 guideline page showing exam times.

I'm thinking about taking SPD (Site Planning and Design) and PPP (Programming, Planning & Practice) in the same week. Each test is too long to take in the same day I believe. It Might have to be an overnighter. I am in San Luis Obispo, CA. The nearest Prometric test center is in Camarillo just outside of Oxnard. It's a 2.5 hour drive for me one way. We'll have to see how that works out. I'm used to it being 4 blocks away when I lived in SF.

Site Planning Book

I finally received and started reading this book, Site Planning 3rd Ed., by Kevin Lynch. It is recommended as a great introduction to site planning as well as one of the main source materials for the ARE Site Planning and Design exam. I will attempt to post brief highlights as I read through.