Where the numbers in this kit come from

The four kinds of number, and why it matters

Most remodeling advice mixes these together, which is how a recommendation ends up sounding like a legal requirement and one appliance's dimension ends up sounding like a rule about all appliances. The kit keeps them apart, gives each one a color, and repeats the qualifier in the same sentence as the figure so that no number can be quoted without it.

Published planning guideline

A published planning guideline is a recommendation from an industry body. It is not enforced by anyone. It is what a designer works to, which makes it what to argue from.

Model code figure, verify locally

A code figure comes from a model code that many US jurisdictions have adopted. The kit never tells you it applies to your house. What applies where you live is decided by your building department.

Manufacturer document

A manufacturer figure is a dimension one named manufacturer publishes for one of its own products. It is never generalized to a class of appliance, because that is the most common error in this category.

Typical range, verify with your professional

A typical range is a duration or a cost band taken from published research or from a supplier page on a stated date. It is a range, it moves, and it carries the words verify with your professional.

What this page is not

It is not a claim that anybody checked our work. The kit was built from published planning guidelines and manufacturer documentation, and that is the whole of the claim. Nothing here was reviewed, approved or endorsed by a certified designer, a licensed contractor, an engineer or a trade body, and you should be suspicious of any download that says it was without naming who.

What this page offers instead is the thing a reviewer's name cannot give you: the documents themselves, so the checking is yours to do.

If a figure looks wrong

Write to info@norphis.it with the file and the page. It is the most useful email we get. Documents get new editions and we would rather hear it from a reader than not hear it at all. Corrections are free and everybody who bought is told.

Document titles are printed as their publishers give them, with punctuation normalized. Figures were read on the dates shown. Links are to the publishers' own pages, and a publisher can move or withdraw a document at any time.