ᐅ My floor plan is (almost) finalized; now I could use your help :-)

Created on: 29 Dec 2014 14:44
C
cheakyboy
Hello everyone,

I’m new to the forum, 28 years old, and from the beautiful Unterfranken region ;-)

I have owned a building plot for about three weeks now, and the house construction is planned to start in the new year. Since we have many skilled tradespeople among our friends and family, we want to do a lot of the work ourselves. After visiting many show homes, we designed the floor plan together with a well-known bricklayer. We have requested quotes from construction companies for the shell of the house and hope to receive prices from the three desired companies by the end of January. (All three companies would also prepare the planning permission / building permit drawings.)

2D floor plan of a house with living room, kitchen, hallway, stairs, terrace, and garage.


2D attic floor plan of a family home with master bedroom, children's rooms, and bathroom


Compact bathroom floor plan with bathtub, washbasin, and toilet in the layout.


3D model of a modern single-family home with garage and pitched roof, exterior view.

Modern 3D house view with pitched roof, large glass fronts, and terrace


Now to my first questions:

1)
We are still considering if it would be more practical to relocate the toilet to the area marked in green and build a small wall about 1 meter (3 feet) long. My heating engineer (who also handles plumbing) said we might encounter problems with the wastewater system, as we would either have to build a step in the floor near the window side to connect to the soil pipe (red point), or we would have to route the pipes through the ceiling to the ground floor, which would result in a support post in the kitchen area. Do you see any option to place the toilet in this position? Or do you have other suggestions for the bathroom layout that we might not have thought of yet?
The bathroom is 3 meters (10 feet) wide and 4 meters (13 feet) long, with a partition wall at 1.25 meters (4 feet). We have a door opening width of 75 cm (30 inches). There will also be a skylight installed on the sloped ceiling. The soil pipe is planned inside the 24 cm (9.5 inches) wall (red point).

2)
Are water supply pipes typically installed inside the walls or on the floor?

3)
In the living room area, we want recessed ceiling spotlights with a dropped ceiling made of drywall panels. This would reduce the room height to about 2.45 meters (8 feet). Alternatively, should we break out the concrete ceiling? Is it possible to build 11 courses of bricks instead of the usual 10.5 to gain some extra room height, and what additional costs should we expect for this increase?

Thank you very much in advance.

Kisska8630 Dec 2014 13:34
Do you already have the structural calculations for this? Then it’s not really possible to just make changes on the fly... 🙄 And where exactly would a steel beam go? What would it support? Or do you mean on the ground floor slab?
C
cheakyboy
30 Dec 2014 15:57
No, I don’t have the structural analysis yet because I don’t have the submission plans 😕

Here in Bavaria, this is how it happens in about 70-80% of cases. The floor plan and submission plan are drawn by the builder or draftsperson, and then submitted to the local authority. After that, the client coordinates all the tradespeople themselves. Even the tradespeople I know say that this has become normal nowadays, and it is rare for them to receive a detailed scope of work from an architect to prepare their quotes. At least, I don’t know anyone who has built with an architect. Unfortunately, I can’t explain why this is so common in our region. 🤨
C
cheakyboy
30 Dec 2014 20:30
Someone told me that the load needs to be transferred downward. But apparently, this claim was nonsense. Some people build with an open roof structure, and they don’t have any supports with this type of roof either, or am I mistaken?
Kisska8630 Dec 2014 20:36
You might be referring to the ring beam, which is cast on top to support the roof structure. But it is simply poured where the walls are already in place, not the other way around. So, I would continue exploring the idea with this bedroom solution. 😉
C
cheakyboy
31 Dec 2014 12:27
Thanks again for the idea about the bedroom, my wife is really pleased with it.
Happy New Year to everyone.
C
cheakyboy
9 Jan 2015 16:42
I just had another appointment with the shell builder and asked again about the support structure because I wasn’t completely sure. It was about the knee wall, which might have to be fully built from masonry in my case. It’s probably borderline if you only build four knee wall supports as is usually done. He will talk to the structural engineer again on Monday, but he said that usually his gut feeling is right.