ᐅ Positioning the Shower Bathroom – Layout Decision Support

Hello everyone, my name is Markus, I’m new here ;-)

My wife and I are currently planning a single-family house, and we’re stuck on a small detail in the design. Maybe someone here can help us!

We are building without a basement, so the utility room (with an internal air-to-water heat pump) will be on the ground floor.

Since we also want to have a home office on the ground floor located on the sunny side, the basic layout of the rooms is basically decided: the living/dining area faces the garden to the southwest, the office is in the southern corner of the house, and the utility room is in the “dark” northern corner. Sorry that the floor plan is not oriented to north. For reference: the front door is northeast. And please ignore the windows, they are just placeholders.

We now have two options for arranging the utility room and the guest bathroom on the floor plan:

Option 1: Utility room followed by guest bathroom followed by living room

Advantage: the guest bathroom acts as a sound buffer between the living area and the utility room
Disadvantage: you might hear noise from the bathroom directly in the living area...

Option 2: Bathroom adjacent to the utility room:

Advantage: the bathroom is nicely separated from the “living area”
Disadvantage: the utility room is now directly adjacent to the living area.

My question: Does anyone have experience with a utility room that shares a wall directly with the living room? Should I expect disturbing noise, or am I overestimating the noise level generated by the heat pump?

My personal favorite is definitely option 2, especially since the access to the utility room leads straight through the hallway, which is a big advantage when carrying bulky items in or out. For this reason, option 1 also includes an exterior door to the utility room – otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to get the heat pump in or out in one piece if needed ;-)

If anyone has a completely different suggestion, I’m open to that as well!

Thanks in advance and have a great afternoon,

Markus

Air-to-water heat pumps are definitely not whisper-quiet. If you prefer the toilet next to the stairs, I would recommend reinforcing the wall for better sound insulation. What material is the interior wall currently planned to be made of?

DerMarkus schrieb:
If anyone has a completely different suggestion, I am of course open to it!

Yes – if you have freedom in choosing the heating system, I suggest looking into slinky ground collectors online. They are generally somewhat better than air-to-water heat pumps, but the noise issue in the utility room remains the same.
Alternatively, there are also monoblock air-to-water heat pumps without an indoor unit. We have one of those, and it is not audible indoors even at full load.

boxandroof schrieb:

Alternatively, there are also monoblock air-to-water heat pumps without an indoor unit. We have the latter, which are not audible indoors even at full load.

Question out of interest and to avoid misunderstandings: do you really run the heating circuit through the exterior wall?

Obstlerbaum schrieb:
Question out of interest and to avoid misunderstandings: do you really run the heating circuit through the exterior wall?

Yes. Water.

Just remove the pantry. It spoils all the options as it is planned. Sorry, but that’s simply not acceptable. For everything else, proper details and measurements are required – instructions can be found in the forum!