Two-block house design - comments please!

[beebee]

Hi all, hoping to get some advice/input on our house plans. Bit of background - we have a site in Ireland (flat, 1.12 acres, road on south boundary, nice view visible from first floor height) and are in early stages of design. We spent over a year waiting for an architect but the estimated build cost for their design was 350k above our clearly stated budget. We eventually parted ways as they did not believe it was possible to build a house for our budget.

 

 

 

I know I'm probably sounding like a nightmare client already, but neighbours of ours are in the final stages of a build that will come in at 100k UNDER our budget. They designed their own house, had an engineer do the plans and then used a local (1km away) timber frame company. We will be using the same engineer and TF company as them and working from the same list of recommended trades. 

 

 

 

On their encouragement and after a few meetings with the engineer and TF company owner, we've decided to do the same thing. I did some basic sketches and sent them to the engineer who sent back the drawings below. I have sent back a new sketch with some changes including adding a door between the kitchen and KDL, changing window sizes, moving veluxes upstairs etc.

 

I plan to PM the job myself - I have no experience at all but I'm not working this year so have plenty of time. We live about a 5 min drive from the site. 

 

All opinions and input welcome! 

 

 

[ProDave]

If you want minimum price per square metre (and wile we are at it, minimum heat loss per square metre) that design is NOT it.  On such a large site, I cannot imagine it is the site making you build to that inefficient shape.

 

If you wanted cheaper build cost, I am surprised your ex architect did not mention this to you?

 

P.S we only tried to have dealings with an architect once and his estimated build cost was twice what it finally cost us, for almost the same house.

[nod]

I agree with Dave 

Architects over budget everything 

Anyone trying to keep to a budget should steer clear of TF A convenient but expensive way to build 

[beebee]

Hi ProDave, thanks for your input! The architect's design was completely different, it involved a cantilevered monopitch roof and a multitude of acute angled walls! We essentially started from scratch after ending the contract. I'm not looking for the absolute minimum price per square metre, the basic reason behind the design is to have most of the rooms downstairs (we have 3 small children and some disabled family members) and to give every room a south facing window (with a brise soleil/overhang). The obvious solution is to plonk the bedroom block on top of the living block but I'd like to see how costings come out for a design similar to this one first before sacrificing the single storey plan. 

[Kelvin]

That’s a poor design both for efficiency and layout. Google some timber frame companies and have a look at their designs for ideas. The simplest most efficient to build are squares/rectangles either 1.5 or two storey. 

Edited November 27, 2022 by Kelvin

[Adsibob]

35 minutes ago, beebee said:

I'm not working this year so have plenty of time.

This year. But what about next year?

[beebee]

I can see what you mean about inefficiency, the idea behind two blocks is to have a kid block and a main/adult block, with the possibility of being able to split the house in future for our older parents/an adult child and their family. We have 3 kids so initially we would be in the bigger room downstairs, the younger two would share and the older child have their own room, then when they are all older we would move into the guest room upstairs and give each child their own room.

[beebee]

On 27/11/2022 at 21:21, Adsibob said:

This year. But what about next year?

We have a six month overlap where we both will have to work but then my partner will be taking time off. At the risk of overconfidence the neighbours took 6 months from breaking ground to moving in, I'm hoping a year is enough! We have outline planning so it's just the house design to go through. Planning rules here mean that the planners must give you a decision within 8 weeks.

[Kelvin]

The  planning ‘rules’ here are also 8 weeks, still took 13! Two things you need with self-building is patience and a sense of humour. I have neither it turns out 😂 

Edited November 30, 2022 by Kelvin

[Iceverge]

Fáilte from another in the Emerald Isle. 

 

We had a budget of €300k but had the site already. We had a builders finish quote of €216k.

 

We spent every remaining last cent on everything else and I still did a year of work on it during covid. 

 

That design is bananas. Miles of external wall which are expensive to build and heat with a bit of thought you can have a much squarer design that works well. 

 

Out house took 19 month to move in with a builder. 

[Iceverge]

@beebeeQuick sums here, hope you don't mind. 

 

You have a surface area at the moment of about 1000m2, very roughly double ours. 

 

At part L backstop you will have an average U-Value of 0.27 and ball parking from our own build you will use 10,000 kWh of electricity per year on heating. @22c per unit and an air source heat pump with a coefficient of performance of 3 that will be about €730 per year in heating costs. 

 

If you were to increase to passivhouse levels of insulation which in, you case would be an average U value of about 0.12-0.13 including windows you could half that bill.  Bear in mind to reach those levels you'd need to be well below 0.1 on the walls, floor and roof to get those overall levels of insulation. 

 

 

 

Now take an alternative scenario.  I realise (too late of course!) that out house for 2 adults + 2 kiddos at 186m2 is probably too large. There's a lot of space taken up storing stuff that could easily be put in a shed. A house at €1500-2000/m2 is a very expensive storage area. Time over again I would. 

 

1. Bore a well. 

2. Install a 40ft high cube container adjacent. 

3. Bring out Electricity supply to the container and set up a water supply here.

 

Then the container could be used for storage during the build and if clad suitably used for a dry secure storage area once we'd have moved in.  30m2 of storage would cost at most €150/m2 which in turn could chop €40,0000 off the size and budget of the house. 

 

With a bit of rationalisation of the design you could get down to 200m2 then quite easily.

 

Make it a dormer or a story and a half and you'd lightly be down to about 600m2 of external surface area. A little work on the airtightness and insulation and windows and you'd be looking at a heating bill of probably €300/year and 60% of the cost of the structure. 

 

Mind you I do like bedrooms on the ground floor. I miss the proximity of our previous 60m2 rental cottage. Bed to breakfast table time was probably about 5 seconds!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[beebee]

Thanks for the input - @Iceverge great to hear from someone in Ireland, I'm sure you have a lot of advice for me! Thanks for your calculations as well, appreciate it. 

 

I do know that the design is bananas, I do like it though. My preferred style of house is a modern/Nordic longhouse. However, I also like saving money so I'll have a go at rationalising the design. A single-storey L-shape house seems to be the most common new house design here which is what led me to the above design. 

 

I'm very open to new designs or ideas if anyone fancies a go! We're pretty locked in to the timber frame, hopefully passive-ish standard (certainly passive standard of insulation and airtightness), will have MVHR and likely ASHP if needed for regulations. I'm in a county that is annoyingly strict on passive houses having a full backup heating system.

 

Interesting on the container idea - I have a 12m long garage in my current house that I was planning to use for storage but maybe a better idea to have something onsite. 

[Kelvin]

It’s a 1.5 storey Longhouse we’re building. How we added extra space was extend the flat roofed porch to the full length of the main house and increase the depth by 1m. This created a 16m x 4m single storey extension to the main house giving us a study, family room, utility room, plant room and entrance hallway. The study and family room could easily be two bedrooms for a different family setup. The family room is big so plenty of scope to have an en-suite in here or change the whole layout. 

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> The  planning ‘rules’ here are also 8 weeks, still took 13! 

 

My next door neighbour has an open-and-shut case (according to an informal chat I had with the planners). The neighbours put their application in in February and they're still waiting for a response. That's East Suffolk for you.

 

I like your two-block design a lot  In fact, I have a design something like that myself - but the planners don't like it much: 'too modern'.

 

Alan

[Iceverge]

2 hours ago, beebee said:

Thanks for the input - @Iceverge great to hear from someone in Ireland, I'm sure you have a lot of advice for me! Thanks for your calculations as well, appreciate it. 

 

I do know that the design is bananas, I do like it though. My preferred style of house is a modern/Nordic longhouse. However, I also like saving money so I'll have a go at rationalising the design. A single-storey L-shape house seems to be the most common new house design here which is what led me to the above design. 

 

I'm very open to new designs or ideas if anyone fancies a go! We're pretty locked in to the timber frame, hopefully passive-ish standard (certainly passive standard of insulation and airtightness), will have MVHR and likely ASHP if needed for regulations. I'm in a county that is annoyingly strict on passive houses having a full backup heating system.

 

Interesting on the container idea - I have a 12m long garage in my current house that I was planning to use for storage but maybe a better idea to have something onsite. 

 

 

The enforcement of the building regs is quite hit and miss.

 

We are all electric here. Just a plug-in rad. Time over again I'd probably put in UFH just so I could bank the heat like @TerryE on overnight electricity.  It depends on your engineer but if you just "haven't gotten round" to getting the ASHP installed they may still be willing to sign off the house. It depends on the individual. 

 

If you log into HebHomes they have a selection of nice longhouse designs but I'm unsure if they deal with Ireland. Might be useful for ideas however.

 

The design in nice to be fair but I would worry it'll be expensive to build and run. Also a round trip of 60m odd to the fridge from the master bedroom might become tiresome. 

[Kelvin]

Heb will build them anywhere. They even have one in the Caribbean I believe. It’s what we’re building. A LH702PD which we’ve modified a bit. 

[dpmiller]

@beebee you might have a chat with Shaun at www.irish-house-plans.ie. He's a bleedin good designer and might well be able to assist rationalising things a bit, not hard to pay either.

[Conor]

Agree with all of the above, not a great design in terms of practicality, cost and efficiency. But loads of room on the roof for PV panels!! You could make things substantially better by moving the utility, plant, pantry and play room north of the kitchen / living area and two of the bedrooms to the north of the other ones. This would make each wing more square and the footprint smaller. You'd also need to move the stairs as they are currently jointing two rooms which might be an issues from a BCAR perspective.

 

Or, you could go for a conventional two story and put a lift in. Propably work out cheaper.

 

Get the design over to a sensible headed architect. I recommend Ronan at FMK eco homes.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Conor

[Iceverge]

 

A reduction to 227m2. I did away with the upper level. 

 

I've tried to keep all the existing rooms, upped the external walls to 500mm. Light to arrive in the north side via sky lights. I haven't drawn them. Please query if anything in the picture doesn't make sense. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Iceverge]

 

 

Here's the rough work if you like anything ( or can see it ) I'll post it up. 

[Kelvin]

These are great designs. I was really keen to do similar but our plot doesn’t cater to this kind of design. This is what we considered: (238m²)

 

 

Edited December 3, 2022 by Kelvin

[Conor]

The two separate (linked) blocks looks great but adds huge amounts of cost and hampers practicality and efficiency 

 

What are the constraints of your plot and can you come up with a virtual box of the biggest building foot print you can have? I think the first drawing you posted could be tweaked a bit and be practical and more affordable but still interesting.

[beebee]

Wow, thank you so much, those are extremely helpful! 

 

There aren't really constraints to the plot - it's a flat agricultural field, 1.1 acres, 65x65m approx, houses to the east, open fields to north and west, road to south, excellent view of sea from upstairs to the south. Entrance needs to be at the south-east corner for sight lines. 

 

@Kelvin - what were the elevations like for this design? Is it a pitch roof? Room-in-roof? I would love to get a room upstairs to be able to see the view, even if it's an office.

[Kelvin]

Room in roof so 1.5 storey. This is an example roof window layout. 
 

We have large top hung Velux windows in our Longhouse design for the view across the valley. 

 

 

Edited December 5, 2022 by Kelvin

[Iceverge]

Can you log onto your local council website and have a gander at the recent planning applications. 

 

In Cork all of them are on there since 2011, I don't know about other counties. 

 

Find a similar sites and have a look for applications sent back for revision for being too tall. It should give you a good idea of the ridge height you're allowed. 

 

Broadly single story ~ 6m 

Story and a half ~ 7m

Two story ~8 m ridge heights is the code they use in Cork. 

 

Either way, even with 6m you can have a room upstairs.