ᐅ Is it possible to have windows in a guest bathroom or guest room adjacent to a garage?

Tassimat schrieb:

How can the entire floor plan depend on the guest bathroom window?

I don’t understand that either. A great design works just fine with a guest bathroom without a window. But you could also argue that it’s not such a great design if you have to shift the house and reduce the garage just to get a standard solution.

BauFamily schrieb:

In the past, houses were almost exclusively built with raised basements, weren’t they?

In the past...

Tolentino schrieb:

“people just don’t do that nowadays”

That wouldn’t be a sufficient argument for me.
In the past, a lot of things were still done in the basement, which people planning to build nowadays often don’t know anymore: furniture repairs done on the wooden bench, drying laundry—sometimes for hours. Seasonal swaps of many items, such as clothing and furniture. Nothing was just thrown away. People often spent the whole day down there. Flowers weren’t discarded but brought into the bright basement.
Then coal was delivered through a window like that. And sometime after the coal stove era, people realized that times had changed and those steps at the front door and at the back leading to the garden were simply a nuisance, and the basement was superfluous since it was mostly just storage space. 😎
And for a separate apartment or living area, you need more than just a basement window.

Just a different question: the 2.50 m (8 ft 2 in) in your drawing—is that the finished ceiling height or the rough construction height? If it’s the latter, quite a bit of headroom could be lost, which would make installing such a window difficult...

@BauFamily .....so where is the design now??? Ideally, it should come complete right from the start with the questionnaire filled out AND real furniture dimensions.

Here in the city, you can still often see raised basements in the old coffee mill houses. Visually, I really like a terrace built a bit higher up, and yes, the basements get a bit more natural light as well. But for new builds, I wouldn’t have chosen it, simply because I imagine it would be inconvenient for everyday life in many situations: Keeping a closer eye on small children so they don’t fall down the garden stairs every few days because they run outside too fast? Carrying groceries up a few steps to the front door (yes, I admit, I’m lazy when it comes to that)? Having two sets of stairs leading outside on the ground floor when you’re older? And possibly a more cramped upper floor just for a slightly brighter basement? Personally, it wouldn’t be worth it to me.

Regarding the window in the guest bathroom, I completely understand that—not only because otherwise it’s as dark as a rental apartment, but also for obvious reasons, you want to be able to open a window there from time to time. Whether it’s possible dimension-wise, your builder or architect will surely be able to tell you. Our guest bathroom is located in the same spot as yours, but we moved the garage further back because I find those narrow “arrow slit” windows visually unpleasant, and at 1.58m (5 ft 2 in), I probably wouldn’t be able to reach high anyway 🙂 So, in your situation, I would either try to place another room there (cloakroom, pantry, infrequently used office) or move the garage. I don’t know your site plan, but if it applies to you as well: If we had simply shifted our house one meter (3 ft) west, away from the neighbor’s property line, and then chosen the mentioned “air gap” between house and garage, we would have saved ourselves a party wall, quite a bit of cost, and disputes with the neighbors over cracks. My in-laws built their house like that, and I don’t know why it’s criticized here; I saw it more as an advantage: a wind-protected, shaded entrance; space for strollers, bicycles, shoes, flower decorations, and so on.

Tarnari schrieb:

Just a different question: The 2.50m (8 ft 2 in) shown in your drawing, is that the finished ceiling height or the structural height? If it’s the latter, quite a bit of ceiling height will be lost, making such a window difficult to implement...

I also believe the height of the intermediate ceilings hasn’t been properly considered yet. Looking at the sketch, there is exactly 20cm (8 inches) between the top edge of the basement window and the main floor level. This means the basement window, which is 40cm (16 inches) high, starts right at the underside of the basement ceiling. Consequently, if you want to be able to look out of the window, the basement ceiling height must be correspondingly low.

And that’s exactly how houses from the 1960s were built: with much too low basement ceiling heights. I live in a renovated house like this. My basement windows look exactly like those in the sketch. The basement room height is 2.03m (6 ft 8 in). I really like my house and basement, but I would never plan a new build like that!

Oh, and from the roughly 40cm (16 inches) high window opening, you also have to subtract the window frame. I pragmatically used standard windows that can be opened, leaving less than half of that for the glass pane. It certainly could have been done better, but at this point it doesn’t matter. I don’t need daylight there.

BauFamily schrieb:

An alternative would be to build an “air gap” between the house and the garage, in order to fit windows along the entire right side of the house. However, this gap is often discouraged here on the forum.

What a coincidence, I naturally have such an air gap at my house. But at the same time, there are no windows on the ground floor on that side. The view of a garage wall would be terrible anyway.

JuliaMünchen schrieb:

and then had chosen the mentioned "air corridor" between the house and garage,

What is an air corridor? Can someone explain it to me?