ᐅ Single-family house, 2 stories without a basement – floor plan, costs, feasibility?
Created on: 8 Jul 2014 21:13
M
macpet
Hello Forum,
After a long time of debating whether it makes sense to start a thread without owning land yet, I decided to go ahead and open it. You can’t start early enough. And once the right plot is found, the process might move a bit faster.
A brief introduction: We are a family with two children (daughter, 3 years old; son, 3 months old). We currently live in a small terraced house over three floors with a basement plus an attic accessed by a hatch, a single garage, and a parking space. 125 m² (1,345 sq ft) of living space plus 30 m² (323 sq ft) garden, of which 14 m² (151 sq ft) is paved terrace. This home will serve as our contribution towards the new house. We also have a building savings plan. The budget of 450,000 € all in should not be exceeded, but more details are in the cost overview attached.
Now, about our ideas for the new home.
It should be a house with a simple cubic form, no basement.
I will recover the costs of the basement with a larger footprint and a big garage.
The pantry and the utility/heating room are located on the north side, considered the cold side.
The garage is also positioned on the north side, at the corner.
There should be no skylights, but many fixed windows.
The staircase should be accessible without entering the living area so that the children can reach their rooms later without disturbance.
It should be possible to enter the house via the garage without going outside.
The front door will be on the north side.
There should be two children’s bedrooms arranged apart from the bathroom and master bedroom.
Also, the bathroom should be separated from the children’s rooms to minimize noise.
The bathroom should have a bathtub, toilet, bidet, shower, double washbasin, and an infrared cabin.
Everything should be usable without disturbing others, which is why there is just one bathroom and no separate children’s bathroom that might be unused after the kids move out but still needs cleaning. So one person can shower, another can use the toilet, someone else can be in the infrared cabin, and so on.
All combinations are possible and implemented.
Even practical details like toilet placement near a window or enough light for the different tasks have been considered. The infrared cabin, for example, needs no light because it has internal lighting.
The laundry room, where the washer and dryer stand, should be separated from the living and sleeping areas.
There should be a laundry chute connected to the bathroom, so dirty laundry is neatly stored and dries best in the heating room. Many place washer and dryer upstairs, but where to store and dry laundry then?
So, a large heating room that also functions as a drying room.
Short distances for all utility lines were a goal as well, which is why the heating room is located directly under the bathroom.
The open kitchen is designed with a double L-shape, something I haven’t seen before but find very practical on the plan. You can go from the garage to the pantry with groceries, then take the rest into the kitchen and put the first items directly in the fridge. From the kitchen, you can access the terrace again via the open L—either to the herb garden or to the shady side in the afternoon for coffee.
The two legs of the L are about 1.3 m (4.3 ft) apart so that two or three people can cook without getting under each other’s feet but also without having to walk too far.
The hallway on the ground floor is also not too small and can be accessed directly from the front door or garage, so you can change shoes immediately. You don’t have to walk across the stairway path and risk carrying gravel up the wooden stairs.
The upstairs floors will be mostly oak wood, except the bathroom, which will have tiles. Perhaps the walk-in closet will have a carpet?
The basement is tiled except for the living area in the lounge; the kitchen will definitely be tiled.
Visually, I would prefer wood flooring in the entire living area, but practically that’s not feasible, not even with a Berbel extraction hood. The last 12 years have shown this.
It very much depends on cooking habits. If you only eat there or make occasional coffee, then wood flooring in the kitchen would work.
You can invest a lot of time in the floor plan decisions, but I think it’s worth it.
The staircase also requires careful planning and isn’t always easy to position with all the given dimensions.
Lighting shouldn’t be too sparse, and probably some glass doors will be needed.
I have also avoided large sliding doors in the living room because of the cost.
In the last 12 years, we managed well with our 1 m (3.3 ft) wide terrace door. The rest of the equipment is stored in the big garage.
The window arrangement should also create a harmonious exterior look; I’m a fan of symmetry, even if that’s “the art of the unwise.”
I included a central ventilation system initially but ended up going with a decentralized ventilation system.
You can really overthink or make it complicated here as well.
A wooden house without any ventilation system likely wouldn’t work, while with brick construction it might, but that’s a personal feeling.
I welcome any advice here too, just like for any other part of the planning.
A pellet stove should also be installed in the living area with a water connection.
I made it a load-bearing wall because I see the biggest challenge regarding the structural support of the ceiling above. This wall could also be concrete, as it’s an interior wall—possibly with a steel beam extending outward from the wall. Unfortunately, that’s just a gut feeling at this point.
All sockets, network connections, lights, switches, etc. are already planned.
The lighting upstairs is designed with a pull-cord system, so the visible roof structure can be built at the same cost as a standard roof frame. The electrical setup is also more affordable with this solution, and power consumption is manageable. If more lamps are needed later, simply add them to the system. The selection is huge, from spotlights to ring lights.
The only drawback is that the lamps require occasional dusting.
I could go on about the placement of trash bins, pellets, and so on. I’ve been working on the plans for a while now and hope you notice something I might have missed.
Please share your opinions openly. After all, you only build once, and it’s impossible to do everything perfectly. But if you don’t mess up the major points, you can at least sleep well. Decisions like building without a basement can’t be undone, so everyone needs to decide for themselves.
This is my first post, and I hope it will be enriched for a long time and something useful will come out of it.
Some of my colleagues have built over the last five years using various construction methods, and I’ve witnessed the price increases with a heavy heart. However, exhibitors at trade fairs have repeatedly encouraged me that construction prices will return to a normal level.
It’s nice if you can do some tasks yourself, even simple ones. Labor is the costly part of today’s houses.
Thanks in advance for your replies, critiques, and opinions.
So now I have described the situation a bit and will try to upload some pictures and tables to get many opinions. I will add more images gradually, but this is the start.
After a long time of debating whether it makes sense to start a thread without owning land yet, I decided to go ahead and open it. You can’t start early enough. And once the right plot is found, the process might move a bit faster.
A brief introduction: We are a family with two children (daughter, 3 years old; son, 3 months old). We currently live in a small terraced house over three floors with a basement plus an attic accessed by a hatch, a single garage, and a parking space. 125 m² (1,345 sq ft) of living space plus 30 m² (323 sq ft) garden, of which 14 m² (151 sq ft) is paved terrace. This home will serve as our contribution towards the new house. We also have a building savings plan. The budget of 450,000 € all in should not be exceeded, but more details are in the cost overview attached.
Now, about our ideas for the new home.
It should be a house with a simple cubic form, no basement.
I will recover the costs of the basement with a larger footprint and a big garage.
The pantry and the utility/heating room are located on the north side, considered the cold side.
The garage is also positioned on the north side, at the corner.
There should be no skylights, but many fixed windows.
The staircase should be accessible without entering the living area so that the children can reach their rooms later without disturbance.
It should be possible to enter the house via the garage without going outside.
The front door will be on the north side.
There should be two children’s bedrooms arranged apart from the bathroom and master bedroom.
Also, the bathroom should be separated from the children’s rooms to minimize noise.
The bathroom should have a bathtub, toilet, bidet, shower, double washbasin, and an infrared cabin.
Everything should be usable without disturbing others, which is why there is just one bathroom and no separate children’s bathroom that might be unused after the kids move out but still needs cleaning. So one person can shower, another can use the toilet, someone else can be in the infrared cabin, and so on.
All combinations are possible and implemented.
Even practical details like toilet placement near a window or enough light for the different tasks have been considered. The infrared cabin, for example, needs no light because it has internal lighting.
The laundry room, where the washer and dryer stand, should be separated from the living and sleeping areas.
There should be a laundry chute connected to the bathroom, so dirty laundry is neatly stored and dries best in the heating room. Many place washer and dryer upstairs, but where to store and dry laundry then?
So, a large heating room that also functions as a drying room.
Short distances for all utility lines were a goal as well, which is why the heating room is located directly under the bathroom.
The open kitchen is designed with a double L-shape, something I haven’t seen before but find very practical on the plan. You can go from the garage to the pantry with groceries, then take the rest into the kitchen and put the first items directly in the fridge. From the kitchen, you can access the terrace again via the open L—either to the herb garden or to the shady side in the afternoon for coffee.
The two legs of the L are about 1.3 m (4.3 ft) apart so that two or three people can cook without getting under each other’s feet but also without having to walk too far.
The hallway on the ground floor is also not too small and can be accessed directly from the front door or garage, so you can change shoes immediately. You don’t have to walk across the stairway path and risk carrying gravel up the wooden stairs.
The upstairs floors will be mostly oak wood, except the bathroom, which will have tiles. Perhaps the walk-in closet will have a carpet?
The basement is tiled except for the living area in the lounge; the kitchen will definitely be tiled.
Visually, I would prefer wood flooring in the entire living area, but practically that’s not feasible, not even with a Berbel extraction hood. The last 12 years have shown this.
It very much depends on cooking habits. If you only eat there or make occasional coffee, then wood flooring in the kitchen would work.
You can invest a lot of time in the floor plan decisions, but I think it’s worth it.
The staircase also requires careful planning and isn’t always easy to position with all the given dimensions.
Lighting shouldn’t be too sparse, and probably some glass doors will be needed.
I have also avoided large sliding doors in the living room because of the cost.
In the last 12 years, we managed well with our 1 m (3.3 ft) wide terrace door. The rest of the equipment is stored in the big garage.
The window arrangement should also create a harmonious exterior look; I’m a fan of symmetry, even if that’s “the art of the unwise.”
I included a central ventilation system initially but ended up going with a decentralized ventilation system.
You can really overthink or make it complicated here as well.
A wooden house without any ventilation system likely wouldn’t work, while with brick construction it might, but that’s a personal feeling.
I welcome any advice here too, just like for any other part of the planning.
A pellet stove should also be installed in the living area with a water connection.
I made it a load-bearing wall because I see the biggest challenge regarding the structural support of the ceiling above. This wall could also be concrete, as it’s an interior wall—possibly with a steel beam extending outward from the wall. Unfortunately, that’s just a gut feeling at this point.
All sockets, network connections, lights, switches, etc. are already planned.
The lighting upstairs is designed with a pull-cord system, so the visible roof structure can be built at the same cost as a standard roof frame. The electrical setup is also more affordable with this solution, and power consumption is manageable. If more lamps are needed later, simply add them to the system. The selection is huge, from spotlights to ring lights.
The only drawback is that the lamps require occasional dusting.
I could go on about the placement of trash bins, pellets, and so on. I’ve been working on the plans for a while now and hope you notice something I might have missed.
Please share your opinions openly. After all, you only build once, and it’s impossible to do everything perfectly. But if you don’t mess up the major points, you can at least sleep well. Decisions like building without a basement can’t be undone, so everyone needs to decide for themselves.
This is my first post, and I hope it will be enriched for a long time and something useful will come out of it.
Some of my colleagues have built over the last five years using various construction methods, and I’ve witnessed the price increases with a heavy heart. However, exhibitors at trade fairs have repeatedly encouraged me that construction prices will return to a normal level.
It’s nice if you can do some tasks yourself, even simple ones. Labor is the costly part of today’s houses.
Thanks in advance for your replies, critiques, and opinions.
So now I have described the situation a bit and will try to upload some pictures and tables to get many opinions. I will add more images gradually, but this is the start.
Bauherren2014 schrieb:
...
Regarding the planning: I completely understand you. We also spent a lot of time beforehand figuring out what we want and what we don’t. But with the very detailed floor plan you already have, I feel like you’re going much too far into specifics while some basic elements are still missing. Many people then make the mistake of getting stuck on what they have put down on paper (or on the computer) and refuse to allow new or possibly better ideas.I see it exactly the same way!
macpet schrieb:
.....
We currently own our home, so it’s not quite as urgent for us as it is for some others who are building. And if we don’t find a suitable place, we’ll stay where we are and do some renovations here to make room for the children and parents.
I don’t really see the time issue as a problem. Some people paint, others spend their whole lives building model railways, others get frustrated about everything and everyone, and so on. Everyone has time, and what they do with it doesn’t really matter. Everything is finite, and if it doesn’t help, it can’t hurt either.
If the outcome is that I should go to an architect, then at least they will have a rough idea of what we want and need to accommodate. When investing nearly half a million euros, you can’t invest too much time upfront. That’s my personal feeling, though. How long do people sometimes think about which car to buy, and that investment doesn’t even compare.If I calculate 1,000 hours across one year, that’s about 20 hours per week.
One person’s hobby or another’s, but honestly: 20 hours a week on a hobby is quite a significant amount of time, which I would, politely put, call fanatical. I can’t judge what might have been neglected during that time, but you can already see from certain details (for example, lamp positioning—I bet you already know the article number of the lamps) that... the balance between planning and the actual situation is off.
I was also a bit puzzled by some statements in the initial thread; they seem to leave no room for other opinions, even though, for example, I would casually mention a wardrobe for storing laundry, and the utility room is not suitable for drying clothes.
But would you even allow further discussion at this stage? I mean, the awkward staircase in the entrance area, the now missing drying room for clothes, the dimensions of your house that are barely going to fit on a typical lot about 20 meters (65 feet) wide, the vestibule leading to the dressing room, and so on, all indicate small issues that could affect the entire plan.
Would you accept professional opinions on your well-intentioned ideas from various trades?
I find it hard to believe that you would just drop the house construction, since your planning is very concrete... And the idea of “upfront work”... Upfront work by a layperson is probably not advisable when building a house.
Hello YPG,
thank you for your words. So 20 hours a week means 3 hours every day. When my wife was pregnant with our second child, I used to put her and our then 2-year-old daughter to bed around 8-9 p.m. The wife was exhausted after a long day, and we had the time from 4 to 8 p.m. for ourselves. Afterwards, I used the time to work on the design. Whether something was neglected, I would have to ask my wife.
I also cannot judge fanaticism, as I have not opened the design except for the forum during the last three months. So, it is currently finalized. I would describe myself as goal-oriented, although we are far from the goal. The goal of this phase was simply to finish the first design by the birth. Getting price quotes without having a design is rather unwise.
The boiler room cannot be used as a drying room? Why not? A decentralized ventilation system on exhaust, each garment on a hanger (which we have been doing for 12 years already), and off you go. The boiler room is certainly warmer than our current one. I don't understand the comment regarding the stairs.
The vestibule to the walk-in closet is the passage that goes through a sliding door to the bathroom (this might be hard to see). Thus, one can get to the bedroom or the closet without having to go through the hallway.
The 20 meters would not work, which is why I wrote approximately 730 sqm (27x27 or 25x30, etc.).
"Would you at all allow a professional opinion on your honest thoughts about one or the other trade?"
So one person writes too little, and I probably write too much about the thoughts and background.
Now I am waiting for the .etc.
thank you for your words. So 20 hours a week means 3 hours every day. When my wife was pregnant with our second child, I used to put her and our then 2-year-old daughter to bed around 8-9 p.m. The wife was exhausted after a long day, and we had the time from 4 to 8 p.m. for ourselves. Afterwards, I used the time to work on the design. Whether something was neglected, I would have to ask my wife.
I also cannot judge fanaticism, as I have not opened the design except for the forum during the last three months. So, it is currently finalized. I would describe myself as goal-oriented, although we are far from the goal. The goal of this phase was simply to finish the first design by the birth. Getting price quotes without having a design is rather unwise.
The boiler room cannot be used as a drying room? Why not? A decentralized ventilation system on exhaust, each garment on a hanger (which we have been doing for 12 years already), and off you go. The boiler room is certainly warmer than our current one. I don't understand the comment regarding the stairs.
The vestibule to the walk-in closet is the passage that goes through a sliding door to the bathroom (this might be hard to see). Thus, one can get to the bedroom or the closet without having to go through the hallway.
The 20 meters would not work, which is why I wrote approximately 730 sqm (27x27 or 25x30, etc.).
"Would you at all allow a professional opinion on your honest thoughts about one or the other trade?"
So one person writes too little, and I probably write too much about the thoughts and background.
Now I am waiting for the .etc.
OK, I think you need a reality check. Send your design and your comments on it (see the first post in this thread) to 2 to 5 building companies of your choice. Since your design doesn’t follow the typical house models that are usually (and unfortunately) built, you should focus on companies that explicitly also build custom designs from clients. Hold consultation meetings and ask for cost estimates. An accuracy of +/- 10,000 EUR is sufficient for now.
macpet schrieb:
...
I also can’t judge fanaticism,... Well, to each their own.
I’m relieved that you mentioned the "first draft"... So you are expecting many, many more to come.
The goal should be to secure a plot of land and then start accordingly.
macpet schrieb:
The boiler room can’t be used as a drying room? Why not? Decentralized exhaust ventilation system, each piece of clothing on a hanger (we’ve been doing this for 12 years now) and off you go. The boiler room is definitely warmer than ours currently.Dust is actually bad for the heating system! Just because you have always handled it this way doesn’t mean it’s correct.
macpet schrieb:
I can’t make sense of the comment about the stairs.Regarding the stairs: you probably have it that way now and don’t want it any other way... still, Wanderdüne already mentioned the reason. But you also have to read carefully and consider the advice... always trying to justify everything and arguing against advice won’t get you anywhere at the moment.
Regarding your plot of land: elsewhere you wrote about approximately 125 - 400 per sqm (square meter). Why are you planning a) with a value of 120 €? b) assuming you will get a plot of arbitrary size? In our area, plots or parcels of land are somehow already in a grid of about 20 meters (65 feet) in width... so why are you planning an above-average plot size?
@klblb’s suggestion looks good to me.
B
Bauexperte10 Jul 2014 16:43Hello,
Regards, Bauexperte
macpet schrieb:The prices you hear at trade fairs are material costs only. Additional expenses like some labor costs and profit margin still need to be added; if I were you, I’d estimate closer to €4,000 rather than €3,000. It’s different if you choose an externally mounted chimney flue made of stainless steel; then a budget of about €2,500 would be more appropriate.
Chimney flue from ground floor: €4,500. At trade fairs, I’ve repeatedly been quoted around €2,700–2,800. I’m budgeting €3,000 to be on the safe side.
macpet schrieb:I don’t quite understand that calculation... but to be fair, I’m not the sharpest; these days I’d say I’m more of a light blonde.
If I add the extra percentage for the chimney to all other items, I end up well below €400,000 for the house.
macpet schrieb:Also depending on the calculated heat demand, I would say. Personally, I’m not very enthusiastic about either option, but that’s a matter of preference.
The heating system will either be a gas heater with pellet stove support or a heat pump with baskets, depending on the plot location.
macpet schrieb:I’m still not sure what exactly an “infrared cabin” is... You Bavarians often use terms that the average person from the Rhine region might not understand.
What about the infrared cabin? The cabin already exists and is supposed to be placed in the bathroom so you can shower immediately after using the infrared session.
Regards, Bauexperte