ᐅ House Floor Plan with a Separate Apartment – Suggestions for Improvement?
Created on: 31 Aug 2022 12:31
M
MarlenP
Hello everyone,
we plan to build a house with two residential units on a 472m2 (5,079 sq ft) plot of land (Unit 1: 143.39m2 (1,543 sq ft) / Unit 2: 69.57m2 (749 sq ft)).
The second unit is intended for my parents, while the main unit is for my family, which includes my spouse and three children (ages 7, 13, and 17).
Since our plot is relatively small, we want to build a compact house to maximize the garden space.
We are currently in the final planning stage and would appreciate your feedback on our project.
We have a feeling that we might have overlooked some important aspects or not paid enough attention to certain details because our planning focus was mainly on the compactness of the house.
Development Plan / Restrictions
Plot size: 472m2 (5,079 sq ft)
Slope: no
Site coverage ratio: 0.4
Floor area ratio: 0.6
Building envelope, building line, and boundary
Perimeter development: south and east
Number of parking spaces: 2
Number of floors: 2
Roof type: hipped roof
Architectural style:
Orientation: south/west
Maximum heights / limits: 10m (33 ft)
Additional requirements
Client Requirements
Architectural style, roof type, building type: urban villa
Basement, number of storeys: no basement
Number of occupants and ages: Unit 1 – 5 people (ages 43, 38, 17, 13, 7); Unit 2 – 2 people, both over 60
Space needs on ground floor / upper floor:
Office: family use or home office? -
Number of guest stays per year: 2-3 times per year
Open or closed layout: open
Traditional or modern build style: modern
Open kitchen, with or without island: open kitchen, no island
Number of dining seats: 5
Fireplace: no
Music / stereo wall: no
Balcony or roof terrace: no
Garage or carport: garage
Utility garden, greenhouse: no
Other wishes / special features / daily routines, also reasons why certain features are included or excluded
The house should be compact but still feel spacious.
House Design
Planning by:
- planner from a construction company
- architect: by the architect
- do-it-yourself
What do you particularly like? Why? It is a relatively small house with two residential units.
What do you dislike? Why? Maybe some rooms (children’s rooms and the rooms in the secondary unit) are too small?
Price estimate according to architect/planner: approx. 600,000€
Personal budget limit for house including fittings: 650,000€
Preferred heating system: district heating
If you had to give up something, which details or expansions
- could you do without: basically nothing – we have already minimized everything.
- could you not do without: the planned number of rooms
Why did the design end up like it is? For example:
Standard design from the planner?
Which wishes were implemented by the architect? Yes
A mix of many examples from various magazines…
What makes it particularly good or bad in your opinion?
What is the most important/basic question about the floor plan in 130 characters?
We wanted the house to be as compact as possible. Maybe we focused too much on compactness and neglected other important aspects.
What do you like about the house, what do you not like so much, and what would be unacceptable?
we plan to build a house with two residential units on a 472m2 (5,079 sq ft) plot of land (Unit 1: 143.39m2 (1,543 sq ft) / Unit 2: 69.57m2 (749 sq ft)).
The second unit is intended for my parents, while the main unit is for my family, which includes my spouse and three children (ages 7, 13, and 17).
Since our plot is relatively small, we want to build a compact house to maximize the garden space.
We are currently in the final planning stage and would appreciate your feedback on our project.
We have a feeling that we might have overlooked some important aspects or not paid enough attention to certain details because our planning focus was mainly on the compactness of the house.
Development Plan / Restrictions
Plot size: 472m2 (5,079 sq ft)
Slope: no
Site coverage ratio: 0.4
Floor area ratio: 0.6
Building envelope, building line, and boundary
Perimeter development: south and east
Number of parking spaces: 2
Number of floors: 2
Roof type: hipped roof
Architectural style:
Orientation: south/west
Maximum heights / limits: 10m (33 ft)
Additional requirements
Client Requirements
Architectural style, roof type, building type: urban villa
Basement, number of storeys: no basement
Number of occupants and ages: Unit 1 – 5 people (ages 43, 38, 17, 13, 7); Unit 2 – 2 people, both over 60
Space needs on ground floor / upper floor:
Office: family use or home office? -
Number of guest stays per year: 2-3 times per year
Open or closed layout: open
Traditional or modern build style: modern
Open kitchen, with or without island: open kitchen, no island
Number of dining seats: 5
Fireplace: no
Music / stereo wall: no
Balcony or roof terrace: no
Garage or carport: garage
Utility garden, greenhouse: no
Other wishes / special features / daily routines, also reasons why certain features are included or excluded
The house should be compact but still feel spacious.
House Design
Planning by:
- planner from a construction company
- architect: by the architect
- do-it-yourself
What do you particularly like? Why? It is a relatively small house with two residential units.
What do you dislike? Why? Maybe some rooms (children’s rooms and the rooms in the secondary unit) are too small?
Price estimate according to architect/planner: approx. 600,000€
Personal budget limit for house including fittings: 650,000€
Preferred heating system: district heating
If you had to give up something, which details or expansions
- could you do without: basically nothing – we have already minimized everything.
- could you not do without: the planned number of rooms
Why did the design end up like it is? For example:
Standard design from the planner?
Which wishes were implemented by the architect? Yes
A mix of many examples from various magazines…
What makes it particularly good or bad in your opinion?
What is the most important/basic question about the floor plan in 130 characters?
We wanted the house to be as compact as possible. Maybe we focused too much on compactness and neglected other important aspects.
What do you like about the house, what do you not like so much, and what would be unacceptable?
K a t j a schrieb:
Finally some useful information.
Okay, here is another suggestion based on the new information. In the main apartment, I installed a half-landing staircase— in my opinion just as good as a straight one. But if that’s absolutely not possible, you can adjust your design here again— that should probably work as well.
[ATTACH alt="madlen-EG.jpg"]74977[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH alt="madlen-OG.jpg"]74976[/ATTACH] Thank you very much for your effort and for this revised drawing taking the new information into account. I have forwarded this drawing to the local utilities for review (I hope that was allowed). Since the utility room was planned behind the guest room and is only accessible through the garage, I am curious to see what the utilities will say about this.
Everything else fits well with the drawing, except that the guest room is positioned in front of the main building and that the living room of the main apartment can only be accessed through the kitchen. Otherwise, I like the layout of the granny flat—it looks spacious—and also the upper floor, where the parents have their own separate area. However, it seems to me that the apartment partition wall on the ground floor has been shifted somewhat westward to the detriment of the main apartment. It would now be very interesting to know the exact sizes of the living/dining areas in both the main apartment and the granny flat.
MarlenP schrieb:
Since the utility room is planned behind the guest room and can only be accessed through the garage, I’m curious what the city utilities will say about this. That’s why it’s just a carport.
MarlenP schrieb:
Everything else matches the drawings so far, except that the guest room is positioned in front of the main building. That’s actually the idea: to move the guest room downstairs and place it under the carport roof, so you only pay for two roofs in total, eliminate the staircase, have your brother stay with your parents, and keep the upper floor entirely for yourselves, etc.
MarlenP schrieb:
and that you can only access the living room of the main apartment through the kitchen. That’s a downside you’d have to accept in this case, yes. Or you can rework your floor plan, as mentioned before. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the most recent version you had.
MarlenP schrieb:
Otherwise, I like the layout of the granny flat—it looks spacious—and also the upper floor, where the parents have their own area. However, it seems the partition wall between the apartments on the ground floor has been shifted slightly westward to the disadvantage of the main apartment. It would now be very interesting to know the sizes of the living/dining areas in the main and the granny flat. Those are all details you can adjust to your liking. If you want more space, make the main apartment bigger—there’s always room to enlarge. In my example, the house (without the extension) is 12.25 meters (40 feet) wide, with the granny flat having an interior width of 5.30 meters (17.4 feet) and the main apartment 5.65 meters (18.5 feet). Adding 30 cm (12 inches) brings you back to the width of option #1, still under the total external width of 12.72 meters (41.8 feet). But the guest room for the granny flat replaces the so-called double garage. For such fine details, your architect would be responsible. We only provide ideas.
So, we have now received a response from the utility company, and they agree with the placement of the technical room according to Katja’s drawing. However, there might be additional costs for longer piping.
Here is the full response:
We can offer you the following option: The multi-utility house entry (MSH – shown in green) will be installed on the rear wall of the gas room in the technical room (please follow the manufacturer’s instructions during installation), and the conduits for the supply media will be routed to the right, exiting under the carport. Alternatively, these could also be routed entirely beneath the gas room. Please also pay attention to the permissible bending radii of the pipes during installation so that we can pull our supply lines through! The supply media are shown schematically in red here.
Since the connection room is unfortunately not dimensioned in the sketch, I cannot say much about the installation of a heat pump.
I would like to point out again the VDE-AR 4100 regulation, which requires the connection to be made by the shortest route. The connection room is located quite far back on the property. Therefore, it may be that the lengths included in the offer for the supply media are not sufficient, and the installation cost per meter of supply line will be somewhat higher.
We also spoke again with the construction company. They were willing to compromise and informed us that we can still make changes to the planning. However, each additional square meter will be charged a flat rate of €2,000. And if a new building permit / planning permission needs to be applied for, they would charge us an additional approximately €1,500 for the extra effort.
Now the question is, what do we do? Completely redesign again or modify the existing floor plan? We would prefer the second option. You will probably prefer the first one :-).
We still have an additional buffer of around €25,000 to €30,000 available, which we had not yet included in the calculations.
Here is the full response:
We can offer you the following option: The multi-utility house entry (MSH – shown in green) will be installed on the rear wall of the gas room in the technical room (please follow the manufacturer’s instructions during installation), and the conduits for the supply media will be routed to the right, exiting under the carport. Alternatively, these could also be routed entirely beneath the gas room. Please also pay attention to the permissible bending radii of the pipes during installation so that we can pull our supply lines through! The supply media are shown schematically in red here.
Since the connection room is unfortunately not dimensioned in the sketch, I cannot say much about the installation of a heat pump.
I would like to point out again the VDE-AR 4100 regulation, which requires the connection to be made by the shortest route. The connection room is located quite far back on the property. Therefore, it may be that the lengths included in the offer for the supply media are not sufficient, and the installation cost per meter of supply line will be somewhat higher.
We also spoke again with the construction company. They were willing to compromise and informed us that we can still make changes to the planning. However, each additional square meter will be charged a flat rate of €2,000. And if a new building permit / planning permission needs to be applied for, they would charge us an additional approximately €1,500 for the extra effort.
Now the question is, what do we do? Completely redesign again or modify the existing floor plan? We would prefer the second option. You will probably prefer the first one :-).
We still have an additional buffer of around €25,000 to €30,000 available, which we had not yet included in the calculations.
MarlenP schrieb:
So, the question is, what do we do? Completely redesign from scratch or modify the existing floor plan. We would prefer the second option.Honestly? I would have thought that by now you have already asked yourselves that exact question and made a decision. You have received plenty of input from us regarding designs for both options.
I’m not sure either, but for fans of such intricate topics like this, here are two similar threads:
https://www.hausbau-forum.de/threads/grundriss-2-familienhaus-mit-staffelgeschoss-zu-kompakt.42256/
https://www.hausbau-forum.de/threads/eckgrundstueck-mit-einliegerwohnung.48277/
https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/
https://www.hausbau-forum.de/threads/grundriss-2-familienhaus-mit-staffelgeschoss-zu-kompakt.42256/
https://www.hausbau-forum.de/threads/eckgrundstueck-mit-einliegerwohnung.48277/
https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/
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