God is in the Details

Roof mounted communal satellite dish?

21 minutes ago, Tennentslager said:

Roof mounted communal satellite dish?

I think if I was building some terraced houses, I might use that as inspiration-fodder..

 

There is another version which is 4 bed and only slightly wider.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Ferdinand

There is no gf wc, so you'd have to replace the utility room if you were building it today

Would that hall give enough space with regards to disabled regs. You need the 800mm clearance between doors plus certain allowance to turn? Same issue for gf wc. May just need tweaking with slightly wider stairs and hall

>Would that hall give enough space with regards to disabled regs

Quite possibly not.

 

I would expect to need a little extra width to fit in the requirements for the latest regs.

 

Compared to traditional terraces, it is a version of the "corridor" terrace using the attic, without the rear leanto, and with very little unused volume.

 

Edited April 16, 2017 by Ferdinand

7 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

>Would that hall give enough space with regards to disabled regs

Quite possibly not.

 

I would expect to need a little extra width to fit in the requirements for the latest regs.

 

Compared to traditional terraces, it is a version of the "corridor" terrace using the attic, without the rear leanto, and with very little unused volume.

 

 

I'm a fan of the rear lean to as it makes a usable space - you could use it here to provide an extension to the kitchen diner and also house the downstairs WC

 

Done with a flat roof and a nice skylight it also stops the carbuncles of uPVC conservatories being added to houses that just don't need them ..!

1 hour ago, PeterW said:

 

I'm a fan of the rear lean to as it makes a usable space - you could use it here to provide an extension to the kitchen diner and also house the downstairs WC

 

Done with a flat roof and a nice skylight it also stops the carbuncles of uPVC conservatories being added to houses that just don't need them ..!

 

As a counter I would say that even a full width leanto will reduce the efficiency of the design ... in terms of amount of structure for the space, and in terms of surface area to volume ratio for thermal efficiency, insulation cost etc. If it is plus half depth (=4m x 5m internal space) you are adding 50% more roof and 25% more wall (both external walls and internal) for the sake of 20% more space. Plus maintaining the upper roof would be more difficult (though there are easy solutions if they think in advance).

 

For efficiency I might be more inclined to add 2 storeys to the extension and treat the whole thing as a slightly larger house (extra 50% depth makes it 1500-1600 sqft - +200sqft on each floor plus perhaps 100sqft in the master suite), which would be more efficient and manageable (no extra separate roof), but that then brings questions of balance between bedroom space and living space into the equation and makes a fundamental difference to the size of the master suite.

 

In this design to find the 3 bed efficiency sweet spot for 2016 and to meet regs, I think I might be able just to make it perhaps 0.4-0.6m wider, which would also really help the 1st Floor. 

 

But then as a developer you would only get 10 houses where here you would get 11, which will impact the required selling price by nearly 10%. That might argue for an extra 1m depth instead if the plan can be organised appropriately.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Ferdinand

29 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

But then as a developer you would only get 10 houses where here you would get 11, which will impact the required selling price by nearly 10%. That might argue for an extra 1m depth instead if the plan can be organised appropriately.

2

I am not sure I understand what you mean here.

 

I live in small a 2 bed terrace.  It is dreadful.  The living room is just a corridor.  I think a terrace needs to be 5m wide, that way the stairs can run across the house, this would separate the living room from the rest of the house.

The same could happen upstairs, separating the master bedroom from the rest.  Ensuite under the stairs if there is a second story.

With terraces, orientation is everything.  Mine is NE (rear) SW (front).

I get no decent sun in the afternoon at the rear (the garden, and f'all grows well there), the front is no good for sitting out on as it is by a road.

There is little opportunity for PV as well.

The really sad thing is that with a bit of thought, the whole development could have been so much better (there is more car parking than housing area).

32 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

I am not sure I understand what you mean here.

 

I live in small a 2 bed terrace.  It is dreadful.  The living room is just a corridor.  I think a terrace needs to be 5m wide, that way the stairs can run across the house, this would separate the living room from the rest of the house.

The same could happen upstairs, separating the master bedroom from the rest.  Ensuite under the stairs if there is a second story.

With terraces, orientation is everything.  Mine is NE (rear) SW (front).

I get no decent sun in the afternoon at the rear (the garden, and f'all grows well there), the front is no good for sitting out on as it is by a road.

There is little opportunity for PV as well.

The really sad thing is that with a bit of thought, the whole development could have been so much better (there is more car parking than housing area).

 

I was pointing out that by increasing the width from say 5m to 5.5m there would only be room for (eg) 10x5.5m houses on a plot where there would be 11 of the 5m wide houses, and the impact that would have on feasible selling price. Costs would hvae to be recouped across 91% of the number of houses. Probably a consideration for developers.

 

The plan as presented is 4.75m internally wide and 5m if we count one wall. See the width of bedroom 2 at 15.5".

 

Do you think it is an acceptable plan for a terrace? People I have spoken to living there seem to think they are OK. Orientation here is roughly N/S but the estate has no through traffic so kids play in the street.

 

Agree on your other comments, though there is a bit of debate on crosswise stairs since that can commit you to a front door directly into the front room, which has its own questions.

 

I was just hunting around for a dimensioned plan of Kevin McCloud's 3 bedroom terraces at The Triangle, Swindon, as a comparison, and I can't find one anywhere - even in the Planning Permission. I think that technically one can be required now, as most places have "recommended" space standards.

http://pa1.swindon.gov.uk/publicaccess/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=KMKE7GPT0FD00

 

I wonder whether a current issue is that so much attention is paid to the outside of houses that they forget about sweating the detail inside.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Ferdinand

5m or a little more is also a useful (though not particularly generous) dimension for parking spaces - 2 lengthways or potentially one across.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Ferdinand

20 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Do you think it is an acceptable plan for a terrace? People I have spoken to living there seem to think they are OK

Many people have low expectations of housing and think that what is on offer is the best they will get.

 

Can you put the main door into the kitchen?  That does depend on orientation.  My car parking is at the back of the house, so the back door is the main door.  The main door does have a porch, so not too bad, though hardly gets used.

 

The one thing that really annoys us about our old house is that the living room/dining room is a corridor, as it's the only way to get to the kitchen and back door.  Apart from limiting the usability of the space, it also ends up with a track across the carpet where everyone walks. 

 

Personally, I'd rather have smaller rooms and retain a "proper" hall, something that our first house, a Victorian terraced cottage, managed to do quite well.  The rooms were smaller, but more functionally useful, as each had only a single door leading to them, so there was more flexibility in terms of furniture placement.

Our back door is our main door used tbh. The front door though central to the house front elevation is rarely used. Where we park on the drive to one side of the plot it's easier to walk around the back. The whole layout is carp tbh. You have to walk across the dining room to get to the rest of the house, and yep there's a "wear" line!

I would make every third one a "wider" terrace by a metre at 2nd and 3rd floor level and put an access way through to the back of the properties. Done properly this means it only provides access to 3 and there is only one with a shorter garden     

 

This gets bins off the front (my pet hate) and allows for garden access without coming through the house. 

 

As per @JSHarris I would prefer a through hall, or at least swap kitchen and diner over so that there is a hallway then kitchen - no trapesing over a carpet to get front to back. 

How did we end up with terraced houses laid out the way they are?

If we turned them 90°, living room to one side, kitchen the other side, stairs in the middle, would they take up more land area in practice.

 

If, say we are trying to build houses with a 5m by 10m footprint, a garden area that is the same, a road/footpath is 6m wide and a parking area at least 4m by 8m (just guessing at these figures) and the total development area is 100m by 100m (a hectare).

A traditional terrace would take up a total land area of 155m², while the 'turned 90°' would take up 170m², so on a 10,000m² square development, you would get 65 homes or 59 homes respectively.

You would get more 'parking' area with the 'turned 90°' housing, but not enough to get two cars in, and it would probably be wise to put in some alleyway access on the traditional housing, so it would probably even out.

All this does depend on having the ideal site to develop, but as England has 130,27,900 hectares of land, this cartoon development is only 0.000008% of the countries total area and about 0.00008% of the urbanised land area (of in other words, f all)

 

Is 5m enough to put a staircase?  I know that my 3.5m isn't.