Nails & Numbers

Lucas Pradella

I build the calculators on this site and read the documents they come from. I am not a tradesperson, and this page says exactly what that means for the numbers you are reading.

What I do here

I built every page on Nails & Numbers, and I maintain them. That means writing the arithmetic each calculator runs, finding the document behind every figure it uses, and rebuilding the page when the document changes.

The build itself enforces the rule. A specification module refuses to load a figure that has no source and no revision, so a page cannot ship with a number nobody can check. That is a mechanical check, not a promise.

What I am not

I am not a builder, a contractor, an engineer or a licensed tradesperson. I have never framed a house for a living, and nothing here should be read as if I had.

So the site does not offer opinions about how a job should be done. It reports what a named document says, shows the arithmetic, and states plainly where a figure is ours rather than a source's. The 10% waste allowance on the material calculators is the clearest example: no manufacturer publishes one, we chose it, and both pages say so.

Where a value cannot be published honestly, it is not published. Frost depth and soil bearing are set locally and appear as questions for your building department, not as numbers.

There is no engineer byline on this site, and there will not be one until a licensed engineer has read the specific page they are credited on.

How a figure gets onto a page

Every number follows the same route, and you can retrace it from any page:

  1. Find the primary document: the code section as adopted by a jurisdiction that publishes it, the manufacturer's own data sheet, or the trade association's technical sheet.
  2. Read the section rather than searching for the number, because the same word appears in sections that do not apply.
  3. Record the figure with its document, its edition or revision, and the date it was read.
  4. Put the link on the page, so the reader checks the source rather than trusting the site.
  5. Where two sources disagree, publish both and say so rather than picking the convenient one.

That last step produces most of what is worth reading here. The IRC accepts a 6-mil vapor retarder under a slab while NRMCA recommends ten. Composite decking joist spacing is set by the manufacturer, not the code, and the real figures run from 8 in to 24 in. Every printed paint coverage figure is 1,604 divided by the wet film thickness beside it on the same sheet.

My background, and why it is relevant here

I work in digital marketing, and I have spent years reading technical documentation and publishing structured, checkable information. That is the skill this site needs: finding the document, reading it carefully, and refusing to publish what it does not say.

The trade knowledge on these pages is borrowed from the documents and attributed to them. The care taken over which document, which edition and which section is mine.

Tell me when something is wrong

If a figure here does not match the document, or the document has been superseded, I want to know. Corrections get made or the figure gets removed, and the source list on the page shows when it was last checked.

Write via the contact page. How every figure is verified is set out on Sources & Method.

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