Floor plans

[K78]

I have to reduce the width of my design by over a meter. This hasn’t caused many issues with the first floor as it is open plan, but it has caused me a major head ache on the lower level. 

 

This is the solution I have come up with. If anyone thinks I could improve anything, or if there is a major flaw. Advice and comments are welcomed. 

 

Thanks 

[Mr Punter]

There does not seem to be any storage space. Also the bathrooms look tight and I can't work out where the landing is. What is the room top right?  When you say 1 metre reduction in width, is that side-to-side or top-to-bottom on your plan?

[K78]

The reduction was from top to bottom in the pic. Footprint is now 12.5m x 6m. 

 

Storage is under stairs and the stairs lead up to the living area. 

 

The room to the top right is a 4th bedroom/office. 

 

I agree about the bathroom being tight. Originally I had a dressing room and larger en-suite off the master bedroom, and the family bathroom was bigger than it is now. 

 

1.6m reduction makes a huge difference. 

 

This gives a bit more space in the bathroom.

 

Edited July 29, 2019 by K78

[Ferdinand]

Hard to comment without North and a needs statement.

 

But it feels that everything has been crunched from top to bottom, and I think you need to reorientate some elements across it. The plan feels like a collapsed soufflé, and is too squashed imo.

 

Try putting your two main bedrooms right across each end, and see what happens. I think you want as many of your doors as poss to be in top to bottom walls on the plan. Too much space on your tight dimension is occupied by door swing and walkthrough areas, which knocks out most of a top to bottom slice of your plan each time; you do not have the space for that 8n that dimension.

 

Make people see the long dimension when they are moving around when possible.

 

A crossways or dogleg or out and back staircase may also help.

 

A plan of @ProDave‘s static caravan might help at this point.

 

F

Edited July 29, 2019 by Ferdinand

[ProDave]

15 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

A plan of @ProDave‘s static caravan might help at this point.

 

F

I am not sure how.  My static caravan gets 2 bedrooms, a living / dining / kitchen, a shower room and a WC into 28 square metres and just a shade over 3 metres wide.  but you can't copy that for a house layout as it would no way meet building regs for a house, it is all too small, tiny doorways, tiny rooms.

 

But this house is 6 metres wide.  That is about the width of the "standard" semi detached house. so you should be able to get a reasonable layout.

 

My only suggestion is that collection of 3 doors (bathroom, left and centre bedrooms)  Rotate the orientations of the doors by 45 degrees, so instead of taking a square of one room, it takes a little triangle off each of the 3 rooms.

 

Put a turn at the end of the stairs so the landing (hall?) does not need to have a square of landing at one end. 

[Ferdinand]

13 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I am not sure how.  My static caravan gets 2 bedrooms, a living / dining / kitchen, a shower room and a WC into 28 square metres and just a shade over 3 metres wide.  but you can't copy that for a house layout as it would no way meet building regs for a house, it is all too small, tiny doorways, tiny rooms.

 

But this house is 6 metres wide.  That is about the width of the "standard" semi detached house. so you should be able to get a reasonable layout.

 

My only suggestion is that collection of 3 doors (bathroom, left and centre bedrooms)  Rotate the orientations of the doors by 45 degrees, so instead of taking a square of one room, it takes a little triangle off each of the 3 rooms.

 

I meant how orientating spaces across the narrow dimension makes it feel a better shape ... like putting obtangular tiles across rather than along a narrow bathroom helps the perception of width.

 

tbh I had not noticed quite how big the dimensions were. But 6m is still tight for 2 comfortable rooms, so I think the thoughts are a reasonable comment.

 

Are some of those elements eg doors, beds, bath, drawn bigger than is the case?

Edited July 29, 2019 by Ferdinand

[K78]

I’m stumbling along with live home 3D. I hope beds, doors etc are to scale. 

 

I’ll take @ProDaves advice and rotate the doors 45 degrees. 

 

The large windows in the lounge face SE. 

[PeterW]

Flip the floor over - puts all the water and waste at one end. Upstairs toilet won’t pass Part M either looking at the size. 

 

I think you are pushing it to get 4 bedrooms in downstairs with that layout how about a rethink where the stairs are in the middle of the two sets of full height windows ..? The stairs won’t have anywhere near enough headroom with that wall layout anyway - you can recon that you need 10 steps showing in a well from above with a standard pitch. 

 

You also have your kitchen island and breakfast bar with their back to the window - you could rotate that all 90 degrees. 

 

 

[K78]

35 minutes ago, PeterW said:

Flip the floor over - puts all the water and waste at one end. Upstairs toilet won’t pass Part M either looking at the size. 

 

I think you are pushing it to get 4 bedrooms in downstairs with that layout how about a rethink where the stairs are in the middle of the two sets of full height windows ..? The stairs won’t have anywhere near enough headroom with that wall layout anyway - you can recon that you need 10 steps showing in a well from above with a standard pitch. 

 

You also have your kitchen island and breakfast bar with their back to the window - you could rotate that all 90 degrees. 

 

 

 

It definitely makes sense to flip the layout downstairs ?

 

This is the original plan.

 

I think it’s best I sleep on it, and start again with downstairs tomorrow. I’ve let it give me a headache today. 

[ProDave]

What was the reason for reducing the size?

[K78]

34 minutes ago, ProDave said:

What was the reason for reducing the size?

 

2m wide retaining wall. 

 

It was a shear drop in the plans. Was not financially feasible and the neighbour I bought it off was a pain in the backside. Started crying as soon as I stated excavation. I don’t know what he was expecting.

[ToughButterCup]

Part M Regs - care with space in the bathroom.... looks more than 'cosy ' to me

[Mr Punter]

10 hours ago, K78 said:

2m wide retaining wall.

 

Get an engineer to look at this again.  You could use piles, king posts or sheet piling, none of which require 2 metres.

[K78]

4 hours ago, Mr Punter said:

 

Get an engineer to look at this again.  You could use piles, king posts or sheet piling, none of which require 2 metres.

 

Wall is finished. It’s 4m high and 14m wide. 

 

I wasted a small fortune with idiot engineers and their cheap liability insurance. If I can avoid using a SE ever again I will. 

 

Kingpost was a good example. 13m columns 2m apart and £5k for the design. 

[K78]

12 hours ago, AnonymousBosch said:

Part M Regs - care with space in the bathroom.... looks more than 'cosy ' to me

 

Ferdinand mentioned the same. I increased the size and sent it across to the architect I used initially to see what he thinks. 

[the_r_sole]

.

Edited September 26, 2019 by the_r_sole

[Ferdinand]

On 29/07/2019 at 20:03, PeterW said:

Flip the floor over - puts all the water and waste at one end.

 

Yes, but once you have flipped (rather than just moved bathrooms etc) you need to revisit the relationship of all yuor spaces to the outside wrt sun and views and what you do where at each time of the day.

Edited August 4, 2019 by Ferdinand

[Ferdinand]

@K78 Let's play giraffes, and I'll stick my neck out. Been musing on this over breakfast. Am intending to provoke, though not assail. It is really helpful that you posted the 3d view.

 

I think there are a few things with the underlying approach.

 

1 - You are mourning the 20% of your floorspace which has been stolen, and trying to fit what was there into a smaller space. You are, so to speak, trying to put a 1000 piece jigsaw onto a table designed to hold a 750 piece one. So it ends up feeling cramped. You need to be creative with what you have now.

2 - The design (whoever did it) is taking a conventional bedroom floor and putting it below. Even - by the look of it - to the extent of retaining windows that are designed to stop people falling out. At ground level that is irrelevant, other than for the need for toughened glass at low level.

3 - The ground floor is not integrated with the outside. Even in the original version, the only exit to the garden is through bedrooms. WTF?

4 - Crucially, this turns the upstairs into an isolated viewing gallery on stilts. There needs to be a flow from upstairs -> downstairs -> outside, and back again. That is a key aspect of your bedroom floor design. The flow needs to belong to the whole house not just the people with those bedrooms, unless you have an alternative.

5 - As it is on the Ground Floor, Mother Nature has gifted every room a free balcony. Use them rather than shutting them out. 
6 - There is a huge problem with light downstairs - eg the hall has no external windows in either version except those on the stairs. This risks the bedroom floor feeling like a dungeon or a space you got to once a day to hibernate. Avoid, unless this is your intention. Someone could come back saying they met the Minotaur.

 

IMO you need to be thinking about light and space and how you will live here, rather than about how to fit things into the walls you have been given. So

 

1 - The walls keep the weather out, and should not keep your family life inside. Since you have the glorious position of a garden outside your bedrooms, think of the garden fence not the house wall as the far side of the bedrooms. Useful when your floorspace has just been shrunk.

2 - Do something with those windows - you had patio doors in the original version in bedrooms. Get them back, and also use some lower level windows. If you put them low enough for seats, then the rooms feel bigger.

3 - Do something about circulation to outside without forcing people through the most private rooms.

4 - Work out what you really need. The original plan had 7 spaces in about 80 sqm. Now you have 6 spaces in 65 sqm, plus you lose a further 10sqm+ to space for opening and walking around doors. Not efficient.

5 - Address the light and circulation to stop it feeling like a dark, dead end. 

6 - There are many ways to address this. I would make it more open plan, and open up the middle space (where LH space is master suite, and RH space is 2 further beds which are possible small doubles - 11 ft 6 x 9ft.) with patio doors at one side, and big stair windows at the other. I think a void near the stairs somehow would help.  I think my best suggestion would be an open well, round staircase - which would be a talking feature. Ideally I would like a full height stair window, even if translucent, but budget may dictate a dog leg stair. But get light down there, somehow.

7 - I would also remove that middle wall upstairs, but that is not the core of this debate.

8 - Such a space as 6 would sort out your top -> ground -> garden flow. That would be a suitable indoors / outdoors 3 storey social space.

9 - I would treat the space as the office / study area, and perhaps use it (or somewhere else) for an informal sleeping area, either via a sleeping alcove or sleeping platform (even above the desk). That gives you back all your facilities by stacking the space. Such a platform could also be up under the roof somewhere.

10 - Your family bathroom would also slot in there. If beds were upstairs I would say go 3 ensuites and no bath, but this may form the loo for people in from the garden.

11 - Assuming you have worked it through, trust your feeling that a proposal is right when you think it is.

 

Two plans below. First is the space you lose to doors. Second is one possible idea. Consider carefully how big things actually need to be.

 

Ferdinand

 

 

 

Edited August 4, 2019 by Ferdinand

[K78]

Thanks for the very detailed reply @Ferdinand. It is appreciated.

 

The two gardens that the bedrooms open onto are small and private. There is a retaining wall at the front of my plot so they’re not really linked. The main garden is on the upper level.

 

I agree about downstairs being dark. I was intending to use floor lighting, but it is a concern. 

 

The wall upstairs was removed straight away. It is totally open other than the cloakroom. I was struggling with the layout downstairs and used the attached floor plan as a guide. 

 

I needed to take a break from this as it got to the point where I was getting stressed and agitated with it. I’ll be sitting down tonight and taking your points on board. 

[Ferdinand]

Agreed. Taking enough time to soak in your ideas is the most important step, especially when you have such tight constraints.

 

That is partly why I am throwing out a lot of opinions. There may be ... perhaps ... something useful amongst the dross.

 

You can do a lot even with a small space, such as constrain it with a window so that you only see the interesting bit and your mind fills in the rest, or eg put in a window that hides the top of your fence from view from say .3 to 1.5m and put a raised bed outside at .3m height so it is like having a huge windowsill full of plants, with the fence 1m or 2m away painted green.

 

ATB

[Iceverge]

Right, I'll throw my hat in the ring. Its remarkable the things you achieve while your spawn is up at the witching hour sprouting new fangs. 

 

I've made a couple of assumptions. External walls 350mm, internal 100mm. All beds in the drawings are 1550x2000 (queen size). I didn't get around to drawing in any storage but I hope the locations I've left will be obvious. 

 

I hope you don't mind me changing the upstairs. 

 

I've included an extra room here that could be used as an office or sitting room. Failing that, as an extra bedroom should you ever find yourself too old or too drunk, or indeed too old and too drunk to tackle the stairs. 

 

Try as I could I wasn't able to fit a bath tub into the family bathroom downstairs at least not in a horizontal orientation. I've included a shower in the upstairs W/C for use with the aforementioned bedroom and as it's opposite the stairs should prove a welcome fallback just in case all lower ones are occupied. 

 

As per @Ferdinand suggestion I've endeavoured to extend 3 of the bedrooms into the garden with large doors. And the 45 degree doors seem to have freed up some space @ProDave

 

 

 

GROUND FLOOR

 

FIRST FLOOR

SOUTH ELEVATION

EAST +WEST ELEVATIONS

 

 

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

Just an "off the wall" thought, from someone who's built in a very similar situation (close to a high retaining wall that tended to restrict space).

 

How about making the retaining wall the rear wall of the house?

 

Not hard to do, really much the same as part of a basement.  This would give you back some width, which would free up some of the design constraints, and may well not add any additional cost, as you're paying for the retaining wall anyway.

 

We have a corridor ~1.8m wide between the rear wall of the house and the retaining wall, and it's really lost space.  I've put our ASHP in there, plus the water treatment plant shed (which isn't something most would have) but other than that the space is really wasted.  I've often wondered why I didn't think to just make the retaining wall the rear wall of the house.  For whatever reason it just didn't occur to me to do this when I was struggling with getting enough width to build the house.

[K78]

12 hours ago, Iceverge said:

Right, I'll throw my hat in the ring. Its remarkable the things you achieve while your spawn is up at the witching hour sprouting new fangs. 

 

I've made a couple of assumptions. External walls 350mm, internal 100mm. All beds in the drawings are 1550x2000 (queen size). I didn't get around to drawing in any storage but I hope the locations I've left will be obvious. 

 

I hope you don't mind me changing the upstairs. 

 

I've included an extra room here that could be used as an office or sitting room. Failing that, as an extra bedroom should you ever find yourself too old or too drunk, or indeed too old and too drunk to tackle the stairs. 

 

Try as I could I wasn't able to fit a bath tub into the family bathroom downstairs at least not in a horizontal orientation. I've included a shower in the upstairs W/C for use with the aforementioned bedroom and as it's opposite the stairs should prove a welcome fallback just in case all lower ones are occupied. 

 

As per @Ferdinand suggestion I've endeavoured to extend 3 of the bedrooms into the garden with large doors. And the 45 degree doors seem to have freed up some space @ProDave

 

 

 

GROUND FLOOR

 

FIRST FLOOR

SOUTH ELEVATION

EAST +WEST ELEVATIONS

 

 

 

 

Thanks. It is really appreciated.

 

Layout works really well. 

[K78]

7 hours ago, JSHarris said:

Just an "off the wall" thought, from someone who's built in a very similar situation (close to a high retaining wall that tended to restrict space).

 

How about making the retaining wall the rear wall of the house?

 

Not hard to do, really much the same as part of a basement.  This would give you back some width, which would free up some of the design constraints, and may well not add any additional cost, as you're paying for the retaining wall anyway.

 

We have a corridor ~1.8m wide between the rear wall of the house and the retaining wall, and it's really lost space.  I've put our ASHP in there, plus the water treatment plant shed (which isn't something most would have) but other than that the space is really wasted.  I've often wondered why I didn't think to just make the retaining wall the rear wall of the house.  For whatever reason it just didn't occur to me to do this when I was struggling with getting enough width to build the house.

 

BCO made it clear from day one he would prefer them to be separate. My initial se design was a one piece slab and wall. I figured why build the wall twice. 

[Jeremy Harris]

4 minutes ago, K78 said:

 

BCO made it clear from day one he would prefer them to be separate. My initial se design was a one piece slab and wall. I figured why build the wall twice. 

 

 

Can the BCO dictate the design like this?  I'd have pushed back on this, as the BCO cannot tell you what you can and cannot build, all he/she can do is ensure that the BRs are complied with.  There are lots of houses built partially, or even wholly, earth-sheltered, and they have all been able to comply with BRs OK.

 

As you say, having one structure that performs both functions, and which frees up some useful space in the process, does seem to be a bit of a no-brainer, especially as your already a bit pushed for space in that direction.  There are several well-proven ways to build a structure like this, too, especially as, in your case, it doesn't look to be more than a single storey wall that's needed.  Grand Designs had one earth sheltered house that was two stories high with three walls that were effectively retaining walls, the one built in and old quarry in Cumbria.