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
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
...these are problems.
Planning a shower in the guest toilet is simply a matter of cost, as it is difficult to afford a third bathroom upstairs or to have space for it. Anyone who has trouble running naked through their own house just has bad luck. I don’t see how this discussion is supposed to help the original poster.
Unfortunately, I’m not very familiar with air-to-water heat pumps. We have geothermal heating. Our unit is about as loud as a refrigerator—maybe a little louder. When the door is closed, we can’t hear it from other rooms. It’s just like when you close the kitchen door and don’t hear the fridge anymore. Whether that is the case with air-to-water heat pumps, I don’t know.
In my opinion, what is much more important than the “wall to wall” issue are the doors. Sound usually passes through those rather than the walls. These aren’t hermetically sealed fire doors, after all.
Ultimately, the toilet flushing is probably louder than the air-to-water heat pump, so I would always choose option 2.
Additionally, I would probably separate the living room even more from the hallway and extend the wall with a narrower opening (a 1m (3 ft 3 in) door without a door leaf).
What else catches my eye: the pantry has to go—Yvonne already said that—that’s crazy. Also, I would leave the staircase open; the hallway already feels too cramped. The wardrobe should be smaller—maybe use the space under the stairs if there is no basement. Make the kitchen a little narrower so that you don’t constantly bump into edges and corners in the hallway and to give more space at the dining table.
Planning a shower in the guest toilet is simply a matter of cost, as it is difficult to afford a third bathroom upstairs or to have space for it. Anyone who has trouble running naked through their own house just has bad luck. I don’t see how this discussion is supposed to help the original poster.
Unfortunately, I’m not very familiar with air-to-water heat pumps. We have geothermal heating. Our unit is about as loud as a refrigerator—maybe a little louder. When the door is closed, we can’t hear it from other rooms. It’s just like when you close the kitchen door and don’t hear the fridge anymore. Whether that is the case with air-to-water heat pumps, I don’t know.
In my opinion, what is much more important than the “wall to wall” issue are the doors. Sound usually passes through those rather than the walls. These aren’t hermetically sealed fire doors, after all.
Ultimately, the toilet flushing is probably louder than the air-to-water heat pump, so I would always choose option 2.
Additionally, I would probably separate the living room even more from the hallway and extend the wall with a narrower opening (a 1m (3 ft 3 in) door without a door leaf).
What else catches my eye: the pantry has to go—Yvonne already said that—that’s crazy. Also, I would leave the staircase open; the hallway already feels too cramped. The wardrobe should be smaller—maybe use the space under the stairs if there is no basement. Make the kitchen a little narrower so that you don’t constantly bump into edges and corners in the hallway and to give more space at the dining table.
kaho674 schrieb:
If you have trouble running naked through your own house, that's just unfortunate. We had discussed, among other things, the stairwell open to the living room at @Zaba12 and the experience with visiting teenagers who walk through there. If I recall correctly, the majority opinion was that from the perspective of a mother in a housecoat on the sofa, more privacy would be preferable. Wouldn’t that be a similar scenario for someone running around naked, too?
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I don’t really understand the issues... I can just get my clothes before showering and take them into the bathroom with me, or if I know I’m going to come home really dirty, I simply leave some clothes in the bathroom before I go out... what’s the problem?… but maybe I’m just used to it differently—as a “basement kid,” my wardrobe was always on a different floor than the bathroom anyway.
11ant schrieb:
We previously discussed, among other things, the open staircase to the living room with @Zaba12, specifically the walk-through by visiting teenagers. I believe the majority opinion was that, from the perspective of a mother in her house clothes relaxing on the sofa, more privacy would be preferable. As a nude runner, this would be a similar scenario, wouldn’t it?You must have been an elephant in a previous life. That discussion is already two years old :-pYosan schrieb:
I somehow don’t understand the issues... [...] ...but maybe I’m just used to it differently since, as a “basement kid,” my wardrobe was always on a different floor than the bathroom Of course, when building a house, one is allowed to have a nostalgic motive, remembering their childhood in the basement. On the other hand, I assume that when building your own home, the goal is to create a well-planned living situation, which is why I point out shortcomings noted in the plans.
Zaba12 schrieb:
You must have been an elephant in a previous life. This discussion is already 2 years old At most a year and a half, I’ve only been here for two years. And, you guessed right: my nickname refers to my tendency to remember things.
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11ant schrieb:
That would be a similar setup for a streaker, wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t see it that way. First of all, it’s the teenagers who are allowed to run naked downstairs.
Besides that, the rush to the shower usually happens early. If strangers are running through my house, there are probably more serious issues than a potential streaker problem. 😀
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