ᐅ First Floor Plan for a Single-Family House – Your Ideas Including the Plot
Created on: 11 Jan 2019 21:48
M
MRN2018
Hello everyone,
We are still quite early in the process and hope to summarize everything important for you. We are looking forward to your ideas, especially regarding the best way to position the house including a garage or carport (currently undecided due to cost) on the plot to minimize the space needed for driveway and yard. The house can be freely placed on the property, respecting the standard 3-meter (10 ft) setback. We have already visited a few general contractors and received one proposal so far. We weren’t quite satisfied with it and have made some adjustments ourselves. We have attached a rough sketch of our idea for you. Windows have not yet been considered. So far, the suggestions from the contractors have been limited, especially regarding the basic placement. We would like to enter further discussions with more precise floor plan ideas and hope for some input from you.
Development plan/restrictions
Plot size: 1040 sqm (11,200 sq ft)
Slope: 3 meters (10 ft) rise across the entire plot
Site coverage ratio: 0.4
Floor area ratio: 0.5
Building envelope, building line, and boundaries:
Edge development: garage or carport
Number of parking spaces: 2
Number of floors: 1.5
Roof style: gable roof
Architectural style: modern
Orientation
Maximum height/limits
Other requirements
Homeowners’ requirements
Style, roof shape, building type: gable roof
Basement, floors: with basement and 1.5 - 2 floors (depending on what makes sense)
Number of occupants, ages: 2 adults, 1 baby
Space requirements:
Ground floor: living-dining area, kitchen with pantry, study, guest bathroom, storage under stairs
Upper floor: 2 children’s rooms, bathroom, master bedroom with walk-in closet
Office: family use or home office? Home office
Guest overnight stays per year: not relevant
Open or closed layout: rather open
Traditional or modern construction: modern
Open kitchen, cooking island: cooking island
Number of dining seats: 6
Fireplace: yes
Music/sound system wall: no
Balcony, roof terrace: no
Garage, carport: preference for a double garage with storage room—ideally with direct access to the house. However, due to the shape of the land, this might be difficult. For cost reasons, a carport with adjoining storage room is also conceivable.
Utility garden, greenhouse: both
Other wishes/particulars/daily routine, with explanations for preferences: fireplace as a "divider" between dining and living areas
House design
Origin of the plan: our own and the general contractor’s
What do you like most? Why?
Ground floor: kitchen area is not visible from the living room, separation of living/dining areas by fireplace, relatively spacious living room, guest bathroom shower not directly visible from the door, bright study room, stairway is a half-landing design and not immediately next to the front door.
Upper floor: equally sized children’s rooms, T-shaped bathroom layout, walk-in closet not directly visible from the bedroom door.
What do you dislike? Why?
The hallway is uninspired, and when room doors are open, one can look directly from the front door into the living room. Overall, the floor plan still feels incomplete.
Price estimate according to architect/planner: –
Personal budget limit for the house, including fittings: 350,000
Preferred heating system: air source heat pump
If you have to compromise on details/extra features
- What you can give up:
* Basement (but then a suitable technical room would need to be included on the ground floor. The idea here is to simply attach the garage directly and locate the technical room—including a windbreak area—between the garage and house.)
* Double garage replaced by carport (each with storage room)
- What you cannot give up:
So, we hope we have covered everything and are very excited to hear your thoughts.
Best regards from the Rhön
We are still quite early in the process and hope to summarize everything important for you. We are looking forward to your ideas, especially regarding the best way to position the house including a garage or carport (currently undecided due to cost) on the plot to minimize the space needed for driveway and yard. The house can be freely placed on the property, respecting the standard 3-meter (10 ft) setback. We have already visited a few general contractors and received one proposal so far. We weren’t quite satisfied with it and have made some adjustments ourselves. We have attached a rough sketch of our idea for you. Windows have not yet been considered. So far, the suggestions from the contractors have been limited, especially regarding the basic placement. We would like to enter further discussions with more precise floor plan ideas and hope for some input from you.
Development plan/restrictions
Plot size: 1040 sqm (11,200 sq ft)
Slope: 3 meters (10 ft) rise across the entire plot
Site coverage ratio: 0.4
Floor area ratio: 0.5
Building envelope, building line, and boundaries:
Edge development: garage or carport
Number of parking spaces: 2
Number of floors: 1.5
Roof style: gable roof
Architectural style: modern
Orientation
Maximum height/limits
Other requirements
Homeowners’ requirements
Style, roof shape, building type: gable roof
Basement, floors: with basement and 1.5 - 2 floors (depending on what makes sense)
Number of occupants, ages: 2 adults, 1 baby
Space requirements:
Ground floor: living-dining area, kitchen with pantry, study, guest bathroom, storage under stairs
Upper floor: 2 children’s rooms, bathroom, master bedroom with walk-in closet
Office: family use or home office? Home office
Guest overnight stays per year: not relevant
Open or closed layout: rather open
Traditional or modern construction: modern
Open kitchen, cooking island: cooking island
Number of dining seats: 6
Fireplace: yes
Music/sound system wall: no
Balcony, roof terrace: no
Garage, carport: preference for a double garage with storage room—ideally with direct access to the house. However, due to the shape of the land, this might be difficult. For cost reasons, a carport with adjoining storage room is also conceivable.
Utility garden, greenhouse: both
Other wishes/particulars/daily routine, with explanations for preferences: fireplace as a "divider" between dining and living areas
House design
Origin of the plan: our own and the general contractor’s
What do you like most? Why?
Ground floor: kitchen area is not visible from the living room, separation of living/dining areas by fireplace, relatively spacious living room, guest bathroom shower not directly visible from the door, bright study room, stairway is a half-landing design and not immediately next to the front door.
Upper floor: equally sized children’s rooms, T-shaped bathroom layout, walk-in closet not directly visible from the bedroom door.
What do you dislike? Why?
The hallway is uninspired, and when room doors are open, one can look directly from the front door into the living room. Overall, the floor plan still feels incomplete.
Price estimate according to architect/planner: –
Personal budget limit for the house, including fittings: 350,000
Preferred heating system: air source heat pump
If you have to compromise on details/extra features
- What you can give up:
* Basement (but then a suitable technical room would need to be included on the ground floor. The idea here is to simply attach the garage directly and locate the technical room—including a windbreak area—between the garage and house.)
* Double garage replaced by carport (each with storage room)
- What you cannot give up:
So, we hope we have covered everything and are very excited to hear your thoughts.
Best regards from the Rhön
boxandroof schrieb:
I don’t usually write here, but the proposal is very close to our house, including the north arrow.
There will probably be suggestions regarding the extension.
We built it as attached: room sizes almost identical. House 0.5m (20 inches) longer. Washing machine/dryer hidden behind the shower in the bathroom. Two kids’ rooms facing west. Pantry under the stairs. One additional 12m² (130 sq ft) room upstairs in the attic. Just under 150m² (1,615 sq ft) according to DIN standards.
At first, we didn’t want a bathtub either but decided to include one in the end.Thank you for the helpful reply.
The floor plan already looks very good.
I also like the arrangement of the tool shed next to the carport and behind the utility room (where light is not really needed anyway).
Where is the technical room located? And out of interest, what room do you have in the attic space?
Are you already living in the house? If so, would you do anything differently in hindsight?
halmi schrieb:
Without addressing everything, if you are confident about the decisions, then it’s fine.
The pantry doesn’t work like that. Leave out that room and instead add two additional tall cabinets in the kitchen at that spot. I would remove the downstairs shower, as no one really uses it, and convert the current cloakroom into a storage room.
The walk-in closet is actually too small as it is. I would remove the wall there to increase the overall usable floor area.I had already mentioned the walk-in closet and now agree with you.
If two women are living in the house, having a second shower definitely makes sense.
Escroda schrieb:
He probably isn’t familiar with your plot yet.
And where is your suggestion for this? I think the planning sequence is still not correct. First, finalize the floor plan, then determine the best placement on the plot. See here:
Yes, the idea with the extension doesn’t make much sense as it is.
My suggestion would be to place the garage further east, closer to the driveway entrance. Behind it, shifted slightly to the right, the house. Then the yard behind the garage, which would also provide some protection to the main entrance through the garage.
Alternatively, I quite like the sketch from post 16.
face26 schrieb:
That makes any further discussion unnecessary. On one hand, you say there is still room to increase the budget, disregarding it; on the other hand, you want to build efficiently and think that solid regional construction is cheaper, yet you almost completely ignore the slope of the land (which affects both efficiency and costs).
How is this supposed to work? Planning proceeds cheerfully, and after two weeks, 25 posts, and 15 pages you have a design, then you calculate and realize, oops, you are 100,000 too expensive.
Honestly, I think you are getting lost in this right now.
You should set the budget very early on, compare it with the required room program, include the plot of land (keyword: slope), and then roughly estimate if it’s feasible. Why unnecessary? And no, we are not getting lost.
Just because I have a budget X available does not mean I want to use it fully.
I think we have described quite clearly what kind of house we need. There are now several ways to realize it – and this should be as cost-effective as possible.
If, based on our planning and ideas, we get quotes and the house ends up costing 150,000 EUR more, we will decide for ourselves whether it is worth it or not.
Therefore, please only consider the plot and floor plan.
face26 schrieb:
Just as an example, simply leaving out the basement and adding a few more square meters upstairs might be possible on an ideal plot and save money, but with a slope, the gradient needs to be somehow compensated without a basement. A 1m (3 feet) difference over 10m (33 feet) of house length already makes a difference.
And your idea to use the excavated material for fill might work in some cases, but you also have neighbors and plot boundaries. A few meters of natural stone retaining wall at the boundary and the earthworks could easily cost a five-digit sum.
The general contractor who just throws out a floor plan without considering the plot... I don’t know if that would be the person I trust.
To me, right now, that’s like using a cannon to kill sparrows. If I knew everything, I wouldn’t ask my questions in a forum. That is exactly what my question is about – what makes sense and what does not.
Due to the slope, the basement could be partially embedded, saving excavation work and, for example, providing daylight to the hobby room. Maybe that makes more sense than enlarging the plot area and skipping the basement on a sloped lot.
B
boxandroof13 Jan 2019 20:48Yes, we have been living in the house for 6 months.
We wouldn’t change much in the floor plan, although after reading this thread, we might add a bit more space to the living room (currently 35m² (377 sq ft)) as a luxury, but it’s not strictly necessary.
The dimensions are 9.24 x 11.49 meters (30.3 x 37.7 feet) plus the gable. Thick walls. Ground floor hallway is 1.6 meters (5.2 feet) wide.
A windbreak or more storage space at the entrance could be considered. A stroller and so on fit in the utility room, but our technical equipment is compact. I still think the orientation to the sun is well done, which was important to us. You can always go bigger, but all rooms are sufficiently sized and not too small. The position of the extension is determined by our plot/building area, so it’s not in the classic position next to the carport.
Please clarify the budget and the other questions here, then I’ll be happy to get further involved.
We wouldn’t change much in the floor plan, although after reading this thread, we might add a bit more space to the living room (currently 35m² (377 sq ft)) as a luxury, but it’s not strictly necessary.
The dimensions are 9.24 x 11.49 meters (30.3 x 37.7 feet) plus the gable. Thick walls. Ground floor hallway is 1.6 meters (5.2 feet) wide.
A windbreak or more storage space at the entrance could be considered. A stroller and so on fit in the utility room, but our technical equipment is compact. I still think the orientation to the sun is well done, which was important to us. You can always go bigger, but all rooms are sufficiently sized and not too small. The position of the extension is determined by our plot/building area, so it’s not in the classic position next to the carport.
Please clarify the budget and the other questions here, then I’ll be happy to get further involved.
MRN2018 schrieb:
Why unnecessary? And no, we’re not burning ourselves.
Just because I have a budget X available doesn’t mean I want to fully use that budget.
I think we have described quite precisely what kind of house we need. There are several ways to realize this – and this realization should be as cost-effective as possible.
If, based on our planning and ideas, we get offers and the house ends up costing 150,000 EUR more, we will decide for ourselves if it’s worth it or not.
So please just consider the plot and the floor plan.I’ve already tried to explain why.
You’re putting the cart before the horse. This is currently the wrong phase to do that. The market is so crazy right now that no sensible planner will invest much time for you without knowing your budget.
It may seem superficial, but nothing useful will come out of it.
Do you realize how much time an architect spends on creating a design? Only to later hear “Oh, it’s 150,000€ too expensive... let’s start over?” No, they rightfully ask about the budget in the first meeting, and then they work backwards. Deduct 10% from your maximum budget as a buffer; it will be more expensive anyway.
MRN2018 schrieb:
If I knew everything, I wouldn’t ask my questions in a forum. My question is exactly about what makes sense and what doesn’t.
Because of the sloped site, you could partially build the basement into the hill, saving excavation costs and getting daylight in the hobby room, for example. Maybe that makes more sense than enlarging the plot area on a slope and foregoing a basement.No, you absolutely don’t have to know everything. That’s why take the advice and inform yourself. Read what people write here in the forum and take a lot of it to heart. The people here are all way ahead of you, some are already finished or have been doing this for years. And if several people here tell you there’s something wrong with your approach, I would think about it. Right now, it seems like you’re ignoring the objections because you want to continue the floor plan discussion no matter what. If you want to do that, you can, but I don’t think it’s productive.
You will also quickly notice that the experienced “floor plan users” here in the forum (I’m not one of them) will quickly lose interest because they don’t want to work on a floor plan that might be discarded anyway.
And they don’t even get paid for this – only fame and glory.
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