Hello everyone,
we would like to share our design with you to get feedback and suggestions for improvements, as well as to identify any potential issues.
With the optimized design, we plan to approach construction companies for quotes. All the architects we contacted have long waiting times, and since we need to apply for funding in spring, that would not be feasible timing-wise.
What do we want to build?
A single-family house with a maximum of 160 m² (approximately 1720 sq ft) according to the living space regulations (with the terrace counted proportionally) in order to qualify for funding.
Development plan / restrictions
Plot size: 645 m² (approximately 0.16 acres)
Slope: yes, slight. The plot is about 28 m (92 feet) long and rises about 1.5 – 2 m (5 – 6.5 feet) from the street (south) upwards.
Site coverage ratio: 0.4
Floor area ratio: 0.8
Building envelope, building line and boundary: The building boundary is 2.5 m (8 feet) from the front and rear (as viewed from the street). Roof overhangs may project up to 1 m (3 feet) beyond the building boundaries, provided the setback requirements of the state building code BW are met. Garages may be built outside the buildable areas.
Border development: Neighbor’s garage to the west on the boundary, see site plan. Both neighbors east and west have already built. On the opposite street side (south) is still a free building plot. North is a field with no planned development.
Number of parking spaces: 2, preferably a double garage.
Number of floors: 2 possible.
Roof shape: free choice.
Style: free choice.
Orientation: southwest (SW).
Maximum height limits: maximum height of 8.5 m (28 feet) measured from the ground floor level to the highest point of the roof structure (for roofs up to 7°, only 7.5 m / 25 feet height allowed).
Other requirements: ground floor height max. 0.5 m (1.6 feet) above street level; mandatory photovoltaic system (BW), mandatory cistern (~6 m³ (1580 gallons)).
Client requirements
Style, roof shape, building type: classic gable roof house, 30° roof pitch, 1.4 m (4.6 feet) knee wall.
Basement, floors: no basement, 1.5 floors.
Number of occupants, age: 3 persons, ages 32, 28, 0.
Space requirements on ground floor (GF) and upper floor (UF):
GF: living-dining-kitchen approx. 45 m² (484 sq ft), office/guest room approx. 10 m² (108 sq ft), utility/technical room approx. 8-10 m² (86-108 sq ft), shower bathroom approx. 4 m² (43 sq ft).
UF (all net floor area): bedroom approx. 14 m² (151 sq ft), bathroom with laundry room approx. 16 m² (172 sq ft), 2 children’s rooms approx. 16 m² (172 sq ft) each.
Office: family use or home office?
Since we currently plan for only one child, the office on the GF should serve as storage and guest room; the second "children’s room" will be used as an office. Approximately 15 guests per year; home office about 3 days per week.
Open or closed architecture: open.
Conservative or modern style: more or less modern.
Open kitchen, kitchen island: yes.
Number of dining seats: normally 4, extendable up to 12.
Fireplace: no.
Music/stereo wall: no.
Balcony, roof terrace: no.
Garage, carport: yes, preferably double garage at least 6 x 7 m (20 x 23 feet).
Utility garden, greenhouse: no.
Additional wishes / special features / daily routine, including reasons for certain choices or exclusions:
House design
Who designed it: Do-it-Yourself.
What do you like most and why?
What do you dislike and why?
Cost estimate by architect/planner: -
Personal budget limit for the house, including fittings: €520,000 (around US $570,000), excluding landscaping, must be reduced by personal labor.
Preferred heating system: not decided yet, no fossil fuels allowed, likely air-to-water heat pump.
If you had to give up something, on which details or expansions could you do without:
What could you not do without:
Why is the design the way it is?
We approached three construction companies, received some good but too large plans, and some standard plans that did not fit at all. Therefore, we studied floor plans intensively and tried to create a design with as few compromises as possible. Because of our wish for a side entrance and the living-dining-kitchen area arranged as an L-shape on the southwest side of the house and the two children’s rooms facing south without dormers or small gables, we couldn’t find 1.5-story designs from prefab house providers that fit.
After considering many other designs, we ultimately drew this one ourselves, which we basically like best and is just acceptable in size. The bay window for the stairs will probably cause extra costs, but we hope to compensate by omitting a flat roof and extending the roof line.
The ground floor ceiling height is an assumption; the stairs are planned for a floor height of 2.83 m (9.3 feet), with 26 cm (10 inches) tread depth and 18 cm (7 inches) riser height.
In addition to comments and suggestions on the floor plan, we also have the following questions:
Thank you very much in advance for your help! I will gladly provide any information available if needed.
Please be kind, this is my first post and
we would like to share our design with you to get feedback and suggestions for improvements, as well as to identify any potential issues.
With the optimized design, we plan to approach construction companies for quotes. All the architects we contacted have long waiting times, and since we need to apply for funding in spring, that would not be feasible timing-wise.
What do we want to build?
A single-family house with a maximum of 160 m² (approximately 1720 sq ft) according to the living space regulations (with the terrace counted proportionally) in order to qualify for funding.
Development plan / restrictions
Plot size: 645 m² (approximately 0.16 acres)
Slope: yes, slight. The plot is about 28 m (92 feet) long and rises about 1.5 – 2 m (5 – 6.5 feet) from the street (south) upwards.
Site coverage ratio: 0.4
Floor area ratio: 0.8
Building envelope, building line and boundary: The building boundary is 2.5 m (8 feet) from the front and rear (as viewed from the street). Roof overhangs may project up to 1 m (3 feet) beyond the building boundaries, provided the setback requirements of the state building code BW are met. Garages may be built outside the buildable areas.
Border development: Neighbor’s garage to the west on the boundary, see site plan. Both neighbors east and west have already built. On the opposite street side (south) is still a free building plot. North is a field with no planned development.
Number of parking spaces: 2, preferably a double garage.
Number of floors: 2 possible.
Roof shape: free choice.
Style: free choice.
Orientation: southwest (SW).
Maximum height limits: maximum height of 8.5 m (28 feet) measured from the ground floor level to the highest point of the roof structure (for roofs up to 7°, only 7.5 m / 25 feet height allowed).
Other requirements: ground floor height max. 0.5 m (1.6 feet) above street level; mandatory photovoltaic system (BW), mandatory cistern (~6 m³ (1580 gallons)).
Client requirements
Style, roof shape, building type: classic gable roof house, 30° roof pitch, 1.4 m (4.6 feet) knee wall.
Basement, floors: no basement, 1.5 floors.
Number of occupants, age: 3 persons, ages 32, 28, 0.
Space requirements on ground floor (GF) and upper floor (UF):
GF: living-dining-kitchen approx. 45 m² (484 sq ft), office/guest room approx. 10 m² (108 sq ft), utility/technical room approx. 8-10 m² (86-108 sq ft), shower bathroom approx. 4 m² (43 sq ft).
UF (all net floor area): bedroom approx. 14 m² (151 sq ft), bathroom with laundry room approx. 16 m² (172 sq ft), 2 children’s rooms approx. 16 m² (172 sq ft) each.
Office: family use or home office?
Since we currently plan for only one child, the office on the GF should serve as storage and guest room; the second "children’s room" will be used as an office. Approximately 15 guests per year; home office about 3 days per week.
Open or closed architecture: open.
Conservative or modern style: more or less modern.
Open kitchen, kitchen island: yes.
Number of dining seats: normally 4, extendable up to 12.
Fireplace: no.
Music/stereo wall: no.
Balcony, roof terrace: no.
Garage, carport: yes, preferably double garage at least 6 x 7 m (20 x 23 feet).
Utility garden, greenhouse: no.
Additional wishes / special features / daily routine, including reasons for certain choices or exclusions:
- The kitchen should not be visible from the sofa (when sitting).
- The living-dining area with kitchen should be the “heart” of the house.
- The shower bathroom and stairs (and if possible the guest room) should not be accessible through the dirt zone at the entrance door.
- Sufficient cloakroom space.
- Washing machine & dryer in the bathroom on the upper floor, as laundry accumulates there, but separated from the children’s rooms by the hallway.
- Gable or dormer facing southeast (street side) due to the view.
- No dormers or more costly architectural features due to cost reasons.
- Terrace mainly on the southwest side to catch evening sun. It will later be covered with a pergola. A 3 m (10 feet) lift-and-slide door would be ideal.
- Ground floor ceiling height at least 2.5 m (8.2 feet), upper floor 2.4 m (7.9 feet) is acceptable.
House design
Who designed it: Do-it-Yourself.
What do you like most and why?
- Spacious living-dining-kitchen area with kitchen not visible from the living room.
- Light-flooded living spaces.
- Possibility to later separate the living room with, for example, glass elements.
- Space available for furniture placement in living room.
- Modern feel due to open staircase.
- Staircase accessible from living area (natural access to bathroom or bedroom).
- Visual axis from entrance to garden through window behind the stairs, without having a view of the entrance door from the rooms.
- Implementation of basic wishes (number of rooms, orientation, functionality, etc.).
- Minimal actual hallway area on ground floor.
What do you dislike and why?
- No separation from upper floor possible.
- Head clearance to the first landing of the stairs is critical.
- Overhang in front of left children’s room is wasted space.
- No window in the shower bathroom on the ground floor.
- Dirt corridor & relevant rooms are separated.
- If a second child comes, there is little storage space.
- With about 155 m² (1668 sq ft), relatively large (and therefore expensive).
- Exterior appearance, but we have not focused on this as a priority so far.
- Southwest terrace has a possible sliding door that is too small (currently 1.5 m / 5 feet), so this door is planned 3 m (10 feet) slightly to the south instead.
- No pantry; we would consider a small cupboard and fridge-freezer in the technical room if space permits.
- Very long driveway.
- Unfortunately relatively close to neighbor’s plot on the southwest side.
Cost estimate by architect/planner: -
Personal budget limit for the house, including fittings: €520,000 (around US $570,000), excluding landscaping, must be reduced by personal labor.
Preferred heating system: not decided yet, no fossil fuels allowed, likely air-to-water heat pump.
If you had to give up something, on which details or expansions could you do without:
- Large guest/work/storage room.
- Shower on ground floor.
What could you not do without:
- Laundry room on upper floor.
- Side entrance to the house.
- Generous living-dining-kitchen area.
Why is the design the way it is?
We approached three construction companies, received some good but too large plans, and some standard plans that did not fit at all. Therefore, we studied floor plans intensively and tried to create a design with as few compromises as possible. Because of our wish for a side entrance and the living-dining-kitchen area arranged as an L-shape on the southwest side of the house and the two children’s rooms facing south without dormers or small gables, we couldn’t find 1.5-story designs from prefab house providers that fit.
After considering many other designs, we ultimately drew this one ourselves, which we basically like best and is just acceptable in size. The bay window for the stairs will probably cause extra costs, but we hope to compensate by omitting a flat roof and extending the roof line.
The ground floor ceiling height is an assumption; the stairs are planned for a floor height of 2.83 m (9.3 feet), with 26 cm (10 inches) tread depth and 18 cm (7 inches) riser height.
In addition to comments and suggestions on the floor plan, we also have the following questions:
- Is the size of the living area including the stairs structurally feasible without issues?
- How complicated and expensive would ventilation for the shower bathroom on the ground floor be?
- Is the head clearance for the staircase sufficient?
- Are knee wall windows, as planned in the children’s room, worthwhile? We see advantages in improved lighting for a small seating area and ventilation possibilities via a tilt window.
Thank you very much in advance for your help! I will gladly provide any information available if needed.
Please be kind, this is my first post and
Arauki11 schrieb:
... not least because of the pleasant color.Could I kindly ask you for a picture again? Unfortunately, I forgot in which thread you posted your facade—otherwise, I would have checked it again...
Thank you very much in advance
K a t j a schrieb:
Aren't you carrying the stones inside the house then? Not if they are larger than your shoe sole.
We have been living with our gravel for 11 years now; it has pros and cons. The biggest long-term advantage is that nothing stains or develops mold. Rainwater also drains away on its own.
ypg schrieb:
We have now lived with our gravel for 11 years; it has both advantages and disadvantages. Do you also have 8/16 gravel? Light-colored like from @Arauki11 or the usual "mixed gray"?
Is gravel considered a sealed surface by particle size if, as you described, it is permeable?
Arauki11 schrieb:
We like it, not least because of the pleasant color.Now I really want to see a picture. 🙂K a t j a schrieb:
Well, now I want to see a picture too. 🙂That won’t be a problem, here’s a quick one.... Thank you all very much for your contributions. I will try to respond little by little.
1. We designed the plan shown in #19 ourselves, which is why, as @Arauki11 pointed out, some walls don’t line up exactly—after all, we are amateurs. According to one of the builders, this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem in solid construction, and the load-bearing walls apparently don’t have to be fully aligned. However, I’m open to being corrected on that. It has also been noted that the utility room appears large but actually isn’t that big, yet we thought we’d use the available storage space and could always add a drywall partition later. We discarded the stack of the washing machine & dryer in the later plan that started this thread (it’s difficult to stack the appliances due to the roof slope), but we didn’t revise the earlier plan accordingly. @wiltshire’s point about the utility room only being accessible through the bathroom is valid. Looking at it this way, I would reconsider and reposition the utility room. It fit well under the roof slope, especially considering the current plan does not include a bathtub (please, no discussion about that yet—I’ve already seen the general opinion in other threads, but we currently have bigger issues to resolve).
2. House positioning
We discussed the positioning all day today. It’s definitely decided that the garage/carport will be located near the street. We also realized that placing the house at the far north of the plot is not ideal. Many thanks here to @K a t j a for the sketch and inspiration and to @ypg as well. We didn’t like that the south-facing garden and terrace were too open to the street. A distance of 12-15 meters (40-50 feet) sounds a lot, but standing on the plot it feels different (though admittedly, that is a minor complaint). We just can’t warm up to a primarily north-facing terrace so far. Our idea is to plan the house as far east as possible and keep it narrow north-south to make the main part of the terrace on the west side, possibly extending around the corner to the north for hot days. This naturally raises the question of the exact garage position—placing it beside the house pushes the house more west, putting it in front risks overlapping the house somewhat but places the house more centrally and reduces the contiguous garden area. We still need to visualize this more and will experiment with different layouts. We no longer consider the suggestion to place the house towards the south as far-fetched as we initially thought. I also like the idea of adding more spots in the garden as proposed. Raising the house by 2-3 steps, as suggested by @Arauki11 in #21, is probably not allowed due to the development plan, otherwise that would be a good option for more privacy.
3. Gable orientation
One reason for the chosen gable orientation was the view and openness. We see the benefits of the rotated ridge; for the children’s rooms a west orientation would also be sufficient in my opinion. Would a dormer on the south-facing child’s room be completely unreasonable?
1. We designed the plan shown in #19 ourselves, which is why, as @Arauki11 pointed out, some walls don’t line up exactly—after all, we are amateurs. According to one of the builders, this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem in solid construction, and the load-bearing walls apparently don’t have to be fully aligned. However, I’m open to being corrected on that. It has also been noted that the utility room appears large but actually isn’t that big, yet we thought we’d use the available storage space and could always add a drywall partition later. We discarded the stack of the washing machine & dryer in the later plan that started this thread (it’s difficult to stack the appliances due to the roof slope), but we didn’t revise the earlier plan accordingly. @wiltshire’s point about the utility room only being accessible through the bathroom is valid. Looking at it this way, I would reconsider and reposition the utility room. It fit well under the roof slope, especially considering the current plan does not include a bathtub (please, no discussion about that yet—I’ve already seen the general opinion in other threads, but we currently have bigger issues to resolve).
wiltshire schrieb:I have already tried this several times since I read that advice, but I failed.
However, the approach suggested by @11ant to plan the upper floor first and then the ground floor is definitely better than just rotating the staircase.
wiltshire schrieb:I am happy to try that!
To meet the many requirements downstairs (generous living space, working, technical room or utility room) I would consider movable walls and how different layouts might ideally serve each requirement at different times. This would also make much better use of the hallway area. If the idea seems too crazy to you, just experiment with the layouts anyway. It frees your mind and creates room for new ideas. Sometimes, something very obvious comes out that you hadn’t considered before.
ypg schrieb:All the designs shown here come from us. I emailed you the larger plan from the architect, which I have not shared here as it was too big.
And I have to ask: is it always the same designer/architect or are there different ones involved?
ypg schrieb:The plan is for a central gable and the roof extended further down in the northeast, because a lower knee wall of 1.4m (4 ft 7 in) in the utility room would add significant storage space. At the same time, a larger roof overhang towards the street below would provide a possibility to cover the entrance area, which is the idea. The piping for the utility room is not simple yet—in the design from #20 the pipes run right above the technical room. But since the positioning of the utility room will be reconsidered, this is just something to keep in mind when relocating it.
I would be interested in the roof design. How will the roof be finished over the utility room? Will there be an asymmetry with the gable? Or will the roof slope be extended further down in the northeast?
ypg schrieb:The cloakroom space is indeed limited. I would probably replace the 1.80 x 0.40 x 1.80m unit with a Pax wardrobe of about 1m (100 cm x 60 cm x 236 cm) and place the previously planned unit near the stairs in the hallway if it’s wide enough for that. Still not a lot of cloakroom space, but sufficient for everyday use, with some seasonal rotation.
I would be bothered by the lack of a cloakroom. The existing 1.80 x 0.40 x 1.80m (6 ft x 1 ft 4 in x 6 ft) probably won’t be enough for a three-person household for all seasonal clothing? Although the guest room is also mentioned as storage. If you actually become a family of four, things could get tight.
ypg schrieb:I attached an adjusted plan I made in Paint. Did I understand the wall changes correctly?
I would swap the living area with the kitchen in this plan. Remove the partition wall and possibly extend the internal wall in the living area a bit.
ypg schrieb:Is that in width or length? A table for 12 people probably won’t fit because of the partition wall in the living room. The width is about 4.2m (13 ft 9 in) from the exterior wall to the kitchen island.
The dining area is very compact. It could get cramped.
2. House positioning
We discussed the positioning all day today. It’s definitely decided that the garage/carport will be located near the street. We also realized that placing the house at the far north of the plot is not ideal. Many thanks here to @K a t j a for the sketch and inspiration and to @ypg as well. We didn’t like that the south-facing garden and terrace were too open to the street. A distance of 12-15 meters (40-50 feet) sounds a lot, but standing on the plot it feels different (though admittedly, that is a minor complaint). We just can’t warm up to a primarily north-facing terrace so far. Our idea is to plan the house as far east as possible and keep it narrow north-south to make the main part of the terrace on the west side, possibly extending around the corner to the north for hot days. This naturally raises the question of the exact garage position—placing it beside the house pushes the house more west, putting it in front risks overlapping the house somewhat but places the house more centrally and reduces the contiguous garden area. We still need to visualize this more and will experiment with different layouts. We no longer consider the suggestion to place the house towards the south as far-fetched as we initially thought. I also like the idea of adding more spots in the garden as proposed. Raising the house by 2-3 steps, as suggested by @Arauki11 in #21, is probably not allowed due to the development plan, otherwise that would be a good option for more privacy.
Mone_04 schrieb:
Ground floor floor height max. 0.5 m (1 ft 8 in) above street level
3. Gable orientation
One reason for the chosen gable orientation was the view and openness. We see the benefits of the rotated ridge; for the children’s rooms a west orientation would also be sufficient in my opinion. Would a dormer on the south-facing child’s room be completely unreasonable?
Arauki11 schrieb:That really looks good! Thanks for the inspiration with the gravel—this is also a good option for a shorter driveway.
That shouldn’t be a problem, quickly thrown together here...
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