setting the correct scale on an imperial architectural drawing

Good morning all,

Here's the intro:
My name is Stu Rhodes.  I'm a retired Tech Ed teacher and Red Seal Carpenter.  I used to do quite a bit of residential architecture as a side job.  Initially all my work was on the board with conventional drafting tools.  Later I became quite proficient at using MiniCAD (for a Mac) to execute my designs/drawings.  Fast forward about 20 years and I've found myself roped into helping some friends create drawings for several buildings on a remote recreational property.  I no longer have access to the now outdated MiniCAD so so thought I would give LibreCAD a try.

Here's the dilemma:
I'm pretty old school (as are the friends I am helping) so I prefer to draw/work in Imperial (feet, inches, fractions of an inch) and use the standard residential scale for these drawings of 1/4" represents 1'-0" (or 12") or 1:48.  I need to create/present the drawings on a standard A1 page format.  Past practice for me in MiniCAD or AutoCAD has been to open the A1 page, create a border and title block, then establish the desired scale of 1:48, set the grid at the desired snap spacing (usually 1/8" or 1/16") , establish all the likely layers, save as a template for all the pages to be drawn, then get to work creating the actual drawing of the house.

I've managed to open the A1 page and draw the title block.  As per usual, I created the title block with slightly more than a half inch of space outside on the top and bottom to leave 22", less an inch for the title block leaves 21" of drawing space in height.   Then I allowed half an inch of space on the right edge and a little over an inch on the left to allow for binding, thus leaving a drawing space of 31 1/5" in width.  The problem arises when trying to set the scale! These drawing space dimensions should equate to 84 feet in height by 126 feet in width.  Try as I might, I am unable to adjust the scale to get this amount of distance.  The maximum height and width I can get within the borders is approximately 45'-9" feet high by 67' wide.  It is critically important to establish the correct scale on the drawing so it fits within the allocated boundaries set by the title block and so it prints at the appropriate scale so building trades practitioners can perform approximate scaling of dimensions directly off the printed drawings using a simple tape measure (with 1/4" increments) or a scale ruler with 1/4": 1'-0" designation.

I've been stuck in this rut for a couple of days now!  Please help!  Many thanks in advance! :)
 

Basicly you have to draw your drawing template with borders and title block in 1:1 scale first and then scale the whole thing up 48 times. There is no paper space method in LibreCAD. Then you can make the actual drawing in real world values within it. For printing the drawing is scaled down again to 1:48 in Print Preview mode.

I once have made a template for letter size. I now have made a template for A1 out of it.
It may not answer all your questions but may give you some clues:

arch_inch_1_48_letter.dxf
arch_inch_1_48_a1.dxf