Hello all,
I've been searching since yesterday and can't find an answer to two of my questions. I'm designing a small house, 18x26 footprint, and I want to build it as efficiently and simply as possible. My idea now is a 3 bent (18' wide with ~13' bays) high posted cape with 40" knee walls on the 2nd floor which I would love to house 2 rooms. For now I plan on a principle rafter system with purlins and a summer beam down the center of the 2nd floor. This would use queen posts much like this frame posted by Daiku in an old thread:
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My question is how far down the rafters can the queen posts go in order to minimize the intrusion of the braces into the 2nd floor space? In the middle bent, stairs will rise parallel to the bent framing, from outside (north) to inside, and reach the top about 18" from the center of the tie beam. Then on the other side of this bent will be a chimney so my goal is to make as much room for the chimney and an entrance way, on the far (south) side of the bent, to a small bedroom. In other words, in the picture below, the chimney would exit on the far side of the bent, fairly close to the center of the tie beam leaving little room to travel from bay to bay.

The other issue I have is can I then make the first floor of this bent a clear span if the queens are spaced far apart, using struts from the tie beam, directly below the queen, to the bottom third of the outer posts? Oh, and how high can I safely go with the knee walls? Thanks for all the help!

I'm excited to get started building this Spring as this is a first for me.

Josh