Drawing your plan

Every reading on this site begins with a plan: the command position is a line drawn on one, the bagua is a grid laid over one, the flying stars are a chart placed on one, and the in a day guide assumes one is on the table. Most readers have never drawn one, and the practitioners’ manuals, which assume it too, do not say how. This guide does: the measuring, the scale, the north, the centre, the sectors, and the mistakes that make a reading wrong before it starts, in an afternoon with a tape, squared paper and a compass.

Measure, draw, north

Fig. 01 Drawing your own plan, in the order the site’s guides assume it was drawn. First measure: every wall in centimetres with a tape, the doors and windows marked with their positions along the wall, the thickness of the walls guessed at fifteen. Second draw: at one to fifty on squared paper, so that a square of five millimetres is a quarter of a metre and a room of four metres is eight centimetres; the plan of an estate agent is not to scale and is not used. Third north: a compass reading taken at the front door, standing outside on the threshold facing out, away from steel and twice, and the bearing drawn on the plan as an arrow, which the facing direction guide gives in detail. Fourth the centre: the balance point of the outline, from the calculation or the pin. Fifth the sectors: eight lines from the centre at forty-five degrees, turned to the bearing, which the bagua essay lays over the plan. Sixth the fixed things: the doors, the windows, the stove, the radiators and the sockets, drawn in ink, since they are what the furniture is placed against. The movable things are placed last and in pencil. A plan takes an afternoon for a flat and a day for a house; a laser measure halves it. The scale is the site’s own, and every plan drawing on the site can be laid over a reader’s at one to fifty.

The plan is drawn in six steps, and the drawing above gives them. First measure: every wall in centimetres, with a tape or a laser, the doors and windows marked by their distance along the wall from a corner, the wall thicknesses guessed at fifteen centimetres inside and thirty outside, the ceiling height noted once. Second draw: at one to fifty on squared paper, where a five-millimetre square is a quarter of a metre and a room of four metres is eight centimetres, which is a scale the whole plan of a flat fits on a sheet at; the estate agent’s plan is not to scale, is usually mirrored or rotated, and is not used except to check the room names. Third north: the compass reading is taken at the front door, standing on the threshold facing out, away from steel, twice, and drawn on the plan as an arrow with its bearing written beside it; the facing direction guide gives the method and the three cases, and Skinner’s manual gives the practitioners’ habit of taking it three times. Fourth the centre, which the next section gives its own drawing. Fifth the sectors: eight lines from the centre at forty-five degrees, turned so that the north line points along the arrow, which the bagua essay lays over the plan and every compass reading on the site uses. Sixth the fixed things, in ink: doors with their swings, windows, the stove, the radiators, the sockets, the beams overhead as dashed lines, because these are what the furniture is placed against; the movable things go on last, in pencil, so that the bed can be moved on paper before it is moved in the room.

The sheet and the scale

Fig. 02 What fits on a page. A sheet of A4 is two hundred and ten millimetres by two hundred and ninety-seven, and at one to fifty, the scale every plan on this site is drawn at, it holds ten and a half metres by fourteen, which is a flat: the worked reading’s flat of nine by seven, drawn on the left sheet at that scale, fills it with a margin for the compass reading and the notes. At one to a hundred the same sheet holds twenty-one metres by thirty, which is a house and its garden, and the flat shrinks to a quarter of the page, too small to place a bed on with a pencil; an A2 sheet at one to fifty holds what an A4 does at one to a hundred and keeps the scale; an A3 at one to fifty holds seven tenths of each side of that, half the ground, which is a house but not its garden. The rule for choosing is the pencil’s: at one to fifty a centimetre on the page is half a metre in the room, and a bed of one and a half metres by two is a rectangle of three by four centimetres, which can be cut from card and moved; at one to a hundred it is a stamp. Draw the flat at one to fifty on A4, the house at one to fifty on A3, and the plot at one to a hundred or two hundred on whatever it needs. Squared paper at five-millimetre squares makes one to fifty a matter of counting: one square is a quarter of a metre. A laser measure reads to a millimetre and the drawing does not need it; the tape’s centimetre is enough.

The guide says draw at one to fifty and the drawing above says why, and on what. A sheet of A4 at one to fifty holds ten and a half metres by fourteen, which is a flat, and the worked reading’s flat of nine by seven fills it with room at the foot for the compass reading and the findings; at one to a hundred the same sheet holds twenty-one by thirty, which is a house and its garden, and the flat shrinks to a quarter of the page, where a bed is a stamp and a pencil cannot place it. An A3 at one to fifty holds what an A4 does at one to a hundred and keeps the scale, and is the sheet for a house. The rule is the pencil’s: at one to fifty a centimetre on the page is half a metre in the room, and a bed of one and a half metres by two is a rectangle of three centimetres by four, which the in a day guide has cut from card and moved about the plan before anything is moved in the flat; a sofa is four by two, a desk is three by one and a half, a door’s swing is a quarter-circle with a radius of a centimetre and a half, and all of them can be drawn with a school ruler. Squared paper at five-millimetre squares makes the scale a matter of counting, one square to a quarter of a metre and four to a metre, and a plan drawn on it needs no scale bar. The measuring that feeds it needs a tape and not a laser: the laser reads to a millimetre and the drawing rounds to five centimetres, which is the width of the pencil line at that scale, and a household that measures each wall twice with a tape has a plan the site’s own drawings could be laid on. The one thing the page must carry that the tape does not give is the north, and the facing direction guide gives how the arrow is found and where on the sheet it goes: the top, on every plan on this site, so that the reader who turns from a drawing here to their own does not have to turn the paper.

The centre, three ways

Fig. 03 Finding the centre of a plan that is not a rectangle, three ways, on an L-shaped flat of eight metres by six with a three-metre square missing from one corner. A: the centre of the box that would enclose the plan, which the paperbacks use; on an L it falls near the edge of the missing corner, a metre from where the flat’s own middle is, and every sector drawn from it is wrong by that metre. B: the balance point, the centre of gravity of the shape, which the classical practitioners found by cutting the plan from card and balancing it on a pin, and which a calculation finds in a line: it sits inside the larger arm, where the flat’s mass is. C: the plan read as two rectangles, the main body and the wing, each with its own centre and its own eight sectors, which is what the yang-house manuals do with an annexe and what a practitioner does with any wing more than a third of the whole. The site uses B for one plan and C when the wing is a room in its own right; it never uses A. The balance point is found by weighting each rectangle’s centre by its area, or with scissors, card and a pin, which the in-a-day guide describes; the manuals used the pin. On a rectangle all three methods give the same point, which is why the difference is only noticed on an L.

The centre is the one measurement everything else depends on, since the eight sectors, the Lo Shu grid and the flying-star chart are all drawn from it, and it is the one the paperbacks get wrong. On a rectangle the centre is where the diagonals cross and there is nothing to decide. On an L, a T or any plan with a wing, there are three candidates, and the drawing above gives them on an L-shaped flat. The centre of the box that would enclose the plan, which the paperbacks use because it is easy, falls a metre from the flat’s own middle and can fall outside the flat altogether, in the missing corner, so that every sector is wrong by that metre and the missing-corner reading is made from a point that is not in the house. The balance point, the centre of gravity of the shape, is what the classical practitioners found by cutting the outline from card and balancing it on a pin, and what a line of arithmetic finds: each rectangle of the plan weighted by its area, the larger arm pulling the point into itself. The third way reads the plan as two rectangles, the main body and the wing, each with its own centre and its own sectors, which is what the yang-house manuals do with an annexe and what a practitioner does when the wing is a room in its own right, more than a third of the whole. The site uses the balance point for one plan and two centres when the wing is large, and never the box; a reader who has been given a reading from the box has been given the wrong flat.

The errors that spoil a reading

Fig. 04 The five errors, each drawn in the plan it spoils, with the symptom under it and the check under that. The first is the mirrored plan, a developer’s drawing reproduced the wrong way round: the two are drawn side by side, and only one of them has the kitchen where the kitchen is. The second is the wrong north, taken from a phone held against a steel door frame, which the frame pulls, or from the top of a street map, which is not north either; the angle between the two needles is the size of the error, and it is enough to move a reading by a whole sector. The third is the centre taken from a box drawn round the plan instead of from the plan itself, which in an L moves the centre into the missing corner, so that a flat acquires a sector in a neighbour’s bathroom; the open cross is the box’s centre and the filled dot the house’s own. The fourth is the plan drawn by eye, on which a bed fits and in the room does not, with the true size ghosted over it and a scale bar beneath. The fifth is the plan with its fixed things left out, the beam, the radiator and the door swing drawn here in the second colour, and the bed put where the beam is. Panero and Zelnik 1979 for the furniture dimensions a plan has to carry; Alexander 1977 for why the fixed things decide where anything can go. The site’s own rule is shorter: a plan that has been walked with a tape is right, and one that has been downloaded is a guess.

A reading is only as good as its plan, and five errors account for most bad ones. The mirrored plan: a developer’s drawing reproduced the wrong way round, which puts the kitchen on the wrong side and the sectors in the wrong places; the check is to stand in the flat with the plan and turn it until the door is where the door is. The wrong north: a bearing taken from a phone against a steel door frame, or from the street map’s up, which is not north; the check is the compass on the threshold, twice, and a look at the sun. The wrong centre, from the box. The wrong scale: a plan drawn by eye, on which a bed that fits on paper does not fit in the room; the check is one to fifty and a ruler. And the missing fixed things: a plan without its beams, its radiators and its door swings, on which the bed is placed under a beam nobody drew; the check is the ink. Panero’s dimensions give the sizes of the furniture to draw, and Alexander’s pattern language the reasons the fixed things matter, but the site’s own rule is simpler: a plan that has been walked with a tape is right, and one that has been downloaded is a guess.

Drawing your plan, in order

Measure every wall. In centimetres, with the doors and windows placed along each wall; the ceiling height once; the beams noted.
Draw at one to fifty. Squared paper, a quarter metre to the square; the estate agent’s plan only for the room names.
Take north at the door. On the threshold, facing out, away from steel, twice; the arrow and its bearing drawn on the plan.
Find the centre on a pin. The balance point of the outline, or the arithmetic; two centres if the wing is a room in its own right; never the box.
Draw the eight sectors. From the centre, at forty-five degrees, turned to the bearing.
Ink the fixed things, pencil the rest. Doors and their swings, windows, stove, radiators, sockets, beams; then the bed, the desk and the sofa, moved on paper first.
Walk it twice. Nine in the morning and nine at night, with the light and the noise written on the plan in a third colour.