ᐅ Single-family house with a pitched roof, without a basement – feedback welcome

Maria16 schrieb:
Well then...

First of all: furnish the floor plan. To scale. This will probably be interesting in the kitchen and living area on the ground floor. The kitchen might be difficult to furnish properly due to the distances.

What is the utility room (HAR) intended for if the heating system is going to be in the attic? Could the recess into the kitchen possibly be omitted?

Where will the wardrobe for 5, possibly 6 people go?
What do you expect from the door between the garage and the kitchen? I imagine it as quite a dirt trap, and you would first have to go through the dining area with dirty shoes to get rid of shoes and jackets.

Is there supposed to be an additional bathroom in the upper floor? With 6 people, I would rather skip the walk-in closet and plan a kids’ bathroom instead.

Child’s room 3 is clearly smaller than the others, especially since the entrance area is basically lost — you can’t really place anything there. This would become obvious if you had already planned some furniture. Also, the walk-in closet will have less usable storage space due to the awkward window position — or is that supposed to be a patio door to a roof terrace?

I find the sizes of the children’s rooms too unbalanced. A hallway width of about 1.1 m (3.6 ft) is quite narrow.

Why do you want to separate the toilet that much? Also try furnishing the bathroom. It looks large, but where would the bathtub, a double washbasin, and additionally a cabinet or shelf for the belongings of 5–6 people fit (in case you decide against a second bathroom)?
How is the drainage supposed to work?

Drainage of the laundry room and bathroom will be via a soil pipe shaft in the utility room (HAR). That’s why these rooms are located above each other.

derpikniker schrieb:
The whole structure will be a warm roof with a concrete intermediate ceiling. So, the static load calculations should work out. It’s not yet 100% certain that the heating system will be installed under the roof. That is rather suboptimal with a trench collector. I’ll probably have to spend some more nights thinking this through.

Structurally, it will work out either way, as a static calculation of the ceiling will be performed. The ceiling will just be comparatively expensive, because if you install the heating system including the water tank there, the load will significantly exceed the live loads of a standard ceiling in a single-family home. Therefore, the ceiling will likely need to be thicker and reinforced much more strongly.

derpikniker schrieb:

2. There’s plenty of space under the stairs.

You’re talking about the space in the living room under the stairs – at least that’s what the picture shows. Yes, that space can be used well for storage, and there is a door installed there. I was referring to the storage space in the hallway. There, you have to crawl on the floor and there is no room.

HAR: If the local utility company has been there, that space will be full. But you want to convert the attic for the heating system anyway.

Here is a bit of rearranging for more usable floor space. I would narrow the hallway to 1.60 m (5 feet 3 inches) and move the doors of the two small rooms forward. That would ease the situation inside a little.
Also, position the doors so that there is maximum space between them for a coat rack. The front door and the bathroom door are very rarely open at the same time. They can easily be placed opposite each other.

Shift the kitchen door slightly toward the "garage storage room" so a full-length cabinet can fit behind it. The small corner of kitchen space lost this way doesn’t really matter. Possibly consider opening the door in the other direction.

Is that supposed to be a pantry? Then you regularly have car exhaust fumes inside. Bon appétit, I’d say.

Overall, the design remains a bit of a disaster. Why anyone would try to design this themselves instead of consulting a professional is beyond me.
Where, for example, do you put all the dishes for a large dinner? Tablecloths, napkins, coasters, vases, candlesticks, cutlery cases, and similar items?
- Kitchen, kitchen, and more kitchen?
Ultimately, you have living room items in the kitchen, and kitchen items in the garage. Or is all of that supposed to go under the stairs? Oh wait, shoes and coats are already there!
Yippee. A life under the stairs.

We decided to plan everything ourselves after receiving a few proposals from general contractors that were even worse.
We also received a version from an architect, which was no better than ours.
That’s why we wanted to give it a try here.

I still don’t find the access route from the garage to the storage room and kitchen very practical. How do you enter the house with children?

The kitchen is wide, which means a lot of walking. The dining area is very narrow. I quite like the idea of having a bench.

The living room is designed for 5-6 people but doesn’t include any cabinets for toys, books, crafts, etc. This doesn’t work.

The storage space under the stairs is not that large either.

Having the utility connections and the wardrobe in the same room takes some getting used to.

For the children’s bedrooms, it’s not just about size but also about how furniture can be arranged. In children's rooms 1 and 2, consider moving the windows so that cabinets and shelves can be placed along the entire length of one wall. I prefer wide windows with a sill height over narrow, floor-to-ceiling windows in the children's rooms.

Are you planning to include an attic floor even though it’s officially not allowed? What will you do if there is an inspection?

Okay, so I'm not satisfied with the architect.

Having the heating system in the attic is still acceptable, but laundry, no way! Do you really want to run up to the attic every time? With three children, you'll be up there all the time.

How reliable is the attic conversion? Is it financially feasible right from the start?