ᐅ District Office – Preliminary Inquiry Regarding Eave Height and Knee Wall Height Increase

Hello everyone,

Our building authority is forwarding our requests in advance to the district office for clarification. We want to increase the knee wall height by 25 cm from 50 cm (20 inches) to 75 cm (30 inches) and raise the eave heights from 3.5 m (11.5 feet) on the uphill side to 4 m (13 feet) and from 6 m (20 feet) on the downhill side to 6.5 m (21 feet). This is because we want to create more living space in the attic. We also want to set the roof pitch from about 30° to 35°.

Can you help me with this and provide reasons that I can send to the district office to possibly get their approval?

Attached are cross-section drawings and pictures of the surrounding houses.

Our current text is:

The planned house would fit well into the neighboring buildings in terms of the proposed height and would not appear out of place in the townscape. The current house to be demolished is 11 m (36 feet) high; the new semi-detached houses would be 10.75 m (35 feet) high. The development plan dates back to 1977, and construction methods have changed since then regarding roof structure thickness, due to improved insulation values and rafter size, increasing from about 16 cm (6 inches) to 35–40 cm (14–16 inches) today. To optimally use the attic space as living area and gain more living space, the knee wall should be raised by 25 cm (10 inches) and built with a roof pitch of 35°. This way, the attic floor would not count as a full storey, i.e., it would be less than 2/3 of the floor area of the story below.

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