Plans for south facing plot … would appreciate your wisdom

[davelank]

Following a very long gap, I've come back to to seek the wisdom of BuildHub members. 

 

After a very protracted process we gained planning permission to demolish a barn and replace with a 4 bed house on the outskirts of a village.  We are now in the process of applying for PP again with a revised design including an outbuilding and a revision of the house to reduce the size to 225sq m given building cost increases and the need to rearrange the room layout.  We were originally looking to have an independent entrance & car parking to the east (between the house and outbuilding) but this was not possible so now have shared parking with neighbouring property to the west (ours currently).

 

You will see on the site plan the location of the road (1m drop from road to house ground level) to the north and a small stream to the south which constrain the site and impact on the space available and location of rooms, windows etc. 

 

The views are to the south and west and there are tall trees not far away on the south side reducing the likelihood of overheating in the spring & autumn.

 

We are looking to create a kitchen / dining / living area where we expect to spend the bulk of the day but have downstairs space for separate living room (evening room mainly) & playroom / office. We were looking to have a big enough downstairs room for a double bed and ensuite for later life but we don’t have room for this so are looking to put a lift in.

 

We have plenty of space upstairs and would certainly aim to put a hot water cylinder up there and MVHR in the loft space.  Downstairs we are reasonably happy with the room sizes but it would be nice to have a slightly bigger utility room and we don’t currently have a space allocated for plant which is a problem.

 

A concern is overheating and an option is to have some sort of brise soleil on ground floor windows and overhang for the master bedroom with the gable roof. We will look to have openable windows that allow cross flow of breeze where possible.

 

We’re not aiming for passive, but are looking to create a house with good air-tightness, well insulated, air source HP, MVHR, solar PV (probably battery storage) etc.

 

This is the first stab at a room layout with the revised plan but currently flexible within the constraints of the site plan, view etc.  Would welcome any thoughts, comments, ideas you have.

Plans for BH 20Mar24.pdf

[Iceverge]

Nice sensible plans. Glad to see it, everyone should do 2 sets of planning permission. It really knocks the nonsense out of the the design. We did 3!!

 

1 hour ago, davelank said:

not far away on the south side reducing the likelihood of overheating

 

Hard to count on this. Its often in Spring and winter our south facing rooms get hottest with the low sun angle. 

 

3 hours ago, davelank said:

hot water cylinder up there and MVHR in the loft space.

 

I would put the UVC as near to the kitchen tap as possible. Ensure the MVHR is easily accessible for servicing filters and vibrationally isolated from the first floor ceiling. 

 

3 hours ago, davelank said:

We were looking to have a big enough downstairs room for a double bed and ensuite for later life but we don’t have room for this so are looking to put a lift in.

 

Great idea, just make sure the downstairs W/C+ shower is accessible and It'll be ok. Or else move the sitting room upstairs and an ensuite bedroom downstairs. 

3 hours ago, davelank said:

We’re not aiming for passive

 

TBH with the form factor you're pretty close. I would bump the walls to 450mm rather than 350mm. It'll allow a 250mm wide cavity or a Twin wall timber frame and block skin. 

 

 

I have a couple of ideas with the plan. 

 

Flip the southern  rooms East West. This would allow morning sunlight into the kitchen for breakfast and the master ensuite for showering. 

 

For the ground floor dining area make proper walls at the corners. It'll save a lot of thermal bridging at the corners and avoid the cost of steels. 

 

No need for a second upstairs ensuite. That would make a total of 4 bathrooms. They're expensive rooms. 3 is fine for a 4 bed house IMO. 

 

These changes would group all the wetrooms in the North east of the house making plumbing simple and cheaper with fast hot water deliver times. 

 

Get rid of the Velux's in the bedroom.  Too much of a faff with blinds etc. Consider French doors rather than sliders. Much cheaper and better air sealed. 

 

 

 

Over all though it's a very nice house. Do you have any proposed elevations?

 

 

 

[ProDave]

The only thing that struck me was the boot room is a very long way from an entrance door, but no obvious place to relocate it.

[Russdl]

Planning for a lift in the future is a great idea IMHO (we’ve done that 😉) but I think the plan needs developing. 
 

Currently the lift would occupy the coat room (so where do the coats go if a lift is installed?) and would require a wall upstairs to be removed, plus the upstairs window may be an issue with the lift track, at the least it would be obstructed and bedroom 4 would be compromised. 
 

Our layout has the (future) lift going straight up into the master bedroom - the joist are already prepared for such an eventuality- which is plenty big enough and has an en-suite thus minimising disruption and destruction when/if the time comes. 
 

I’d also agree on getting the kitchen over to the east and south for all day sun and the lounge over to the west for the sundowners when the days graft is complete.

[Bramco]

13 hours ago, davelank said:

A concern is overheating and an option is to have some sort of brise soleil on ground floor windows and overhang for the master bedroom with the gable roof. We will look to have openable windows that allow cross flow of breeze where possible.

 

Overhangs are great - in the summer months, the sun is too high to give much solar gain and in the winter months you get the solar gain.  Add external blinds and you can control the solar gain. We've found that with the blinds level, then they start to stop the sunlight at around the now, the spring equinox and start to let it in again at the autumn equinox. See attached image. All the south facing rooms on the front have external blinds.  More photos here -> https://lhc.net/projects/ashcroft-creating-a-low-energy-family-home/

Personally, I'd try to future proof by having a master bedroom + en-suite downstairs and forget the lift idea.

 

[Bozza]

@davelank have a look at my profile pic.  We face south.  The 3x windows ground floor are livingroom.  The 3x windows above are a bedroom.  These rooms overheat.  Reduce glazing on your south elevation,  and you can add a solar tint to help.

 

 

[LnP]

On 21/03/2024 at 07:43, Bramco said:

Add external blinds and you can control the solar gain. We've found that with the blinds level, then they start to stop the sunlight at around the now, the spring equinox and start to let it in again at the autumn equinox. See attached image. All the south facing rooms on the front have external blinds.  More photos here -> https://lhc.net/projects/ashcroft-creating-a-low-energy-family-home/
 

 

 

@Bramco would you mind sharing what blinds you chose, what were the criteria in your selection, what other ones you considered etc?

Thanks

[Bramco]

@LnP We used Hallmark blinds -> https://www.hallmarkblinds.co.uk/ . There are other members that have used them as well.

 

I think they are manufactured in eastern Europe, Poland?  It's about 3 years ago now that we were looking, so things may have changed a bit but back then, there didn't seem to be many (UK) suppliers. External blinds are common on the continent but here, they seem to be only used on commercial premises. Some of the companies we identified had UK websites but didn't seem to have any suppliers.

 

Our criteria were size, we've got some pretty big apertures we needed to cover and price. I don't think there's a great deal of difference between different makes when it comes down to the slats etc. They all seem to use Somfy for the controllers. 

 

Ours are all on sliding doors, so if you want to, you can open the door a bit to get some through breeze in the summer, although the downstairs overhangs on our build mean that in the summer, the sun doesn't shine into the rooms if we have the blinds up.

 

Hope that helps

 

Simon