Orkney long house - concept drawings

[westbound]

Following up to my introduction post, posting a few sketches of the concept house we'd like to build in Orkney.

 

These drawings are done by myself, so there's no professional input or any construction experience - they're probably quite unrealistic. My wife and I designed this with a view of "this would be our ideal", to be able to start communicating clearly with a surveyor about what we want (to try and make those conversations as clear as possible). We're pragmatically expecting to scale down.

 

A self-build lender suggested we could borrow about £450k for the build, but I think that would push the value of the property to be too high if we were ever to resell (mid 30s). My aim would be to do it for less than £350k, but that would require something of the order of £1,750 per m2 and that's unlikely given the remoteness. I wouldn't be surprised if footprint needs to come down. That said, the concept we've put together is trying to save costs - if you have any suggestions, we're all ears.

 

External view

 

Floor plan sketches

 

Basic thinking going into this design:

 

• Aligned east-west for the sea view to the east, and hills view to the west. Additional windows on south to maximise light in the winter
• Gabled, rectangular box with a long aspect ratio, partly because we like the long house format, but also to keep the roof simple
• 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1 office (I am work from home), 1 mudroom/laundry/store room, 1 snug
• Very large open plan living area (kitchen/lounge) for long winters hiding from the wind
• Major glass feature on east wall for the view in triple-glazed aluminium. Estimated it to be about £32k alone, based on it being roughly 24m2 at about £1,300 per m2
• Bedrooms/bathrooms/office/mechanical room are all single height (2.3m), with the kitchen and lounge being full-height to celebrate the gabled roof and large window wall
• Plumbing in bathrooms is stacked vertically, and bathrooms located on laundry/kitchen side of house to keep plumbing together
• Kitchen is based off a DIY Kitchens modular build (exactly), which I've put together myself in past and is a great cost-saving, delivery issues aside
• Apart from the feature glass wall, all the windows are sized to line up with the ICF blocks, and external doors are lined up with the ICF layout
• Size of building is similar in footprint to neighbouring properties
• Love Passivhaus concepts, but not going for full Passivhaus approach. ICF airtightness/insulation, MVHR, air source heat pump. If budget allowed, the south-facing long axis of house would be perfect for solar
• I work from home, so a larger-than-necessary office (could compromise), and my wife is gorgeous/dreams of having a walk-in closet (could compromise) - representing two things we'd love to have if possible

 

Some aspects to keeping cost down:

 

• Lot of effort in design to try keep the plumbing localised
• Polished concrete floor downstairs rather than hardwood/carpets/etc (bedroom carpets could come later)
• DIY kitchen apart from plumbing and 32A supply
• DIY internal timber cladding to reduce total amount of plastering (labour and labour accommodation costs might offset timber cladding?)
• Built-in shelves/internal doors done by us, I have a CNC
• We'd love to have the functional parts of the house (MVHR ducting, plumbing, electrics) to actually be visible features - e.g. metal conduits visible, rather than concealing them - possible cost savings during fitting stage?
• No skylights, all windows are same size apart from feature wall (and fixed due to MVHR)

We're new to this, so if people have any suggestions, we're flexible in terms of adapting our expectations to make this happen.

 

Where we're at: 

 

Just about to start the planning permission process. Ideally, I'd love to get an estimate via a surveyor/builder in terms of whether they feel this is achievable within our budget (including scaling up DIY if needed) so that we can commit to the larger-than-expected footprint, else we'll have to shrink that down.

 

 

 

Edited Sunday at 13:48 by westbound

[ProDave]

A bit confused on the floor plan.  Which is your main entrance door?  The stairs appear not to be in a normal entrance hall but down a corridor?

 

Why is top floor seemingly only using half the available space?

 

For that style of house, I recommend a gut roof construction hung from an end to end ridge beam.  That gives you unhindered space in the roof space.  Easy to make it a warm roof with air tight detail at ceiling level, meaning even any eaves space is warm and incorporated within the insulated air tight structure.

 

If you need extra headroom e.g for a bathroom create a little gable end in the roof structure for that.

[westbound]

Added a floorplan with labels.

 

• Most commonly used entrance would be on north side - dog walking with a mudroom
• Second entrance (south side) would be the "formal entrance" - not going through a store room with dog cleaning being the main mission
• Top floor is based on lowest part of ceiling being at 1800mm, and vacancies being used for storage (travel bags, detritus from having a young family)
• Top floor only extends half-way on east-west axis to give a ridiculous full-height living space - concept/dream that we'll likely have to compromise on
• Stairs are down a corridor, yes...the (maybe misguided) logic being separating out private areas and public areas, with staircase also being centrally positioned to reduce need for an upstairs hallways
• Fully aware it's not the most efficient use of space - we're still trying to work out the architect/designer/surveyor gambit - slow responses so far, so have been sketching in mean time

Edited Sunday at 14:13 by westbound
Clarifying location of two entrances, and adding point that living area is full-height

[ProDave]

I see one upstairs bedroom is proposed with a balcony overlooking the full height living room.  I feel fairly certain that Scottish regs require all bedrooms to have a means of escape window, and I doubt that includes climbing off a balcony to a downstairs room. So you will probably have to re think that.  A dormer or gable end as I did will solve that.

[westbound]

Thanks, will have a think about the window upstairs.

 

I've said we have a preference for ICF but not committed if it's impractical.

 

With that in mind, assuming we did do ICF for the main walls, any suggestions on how to handle the feature glass wall? Something like a custom made SIP that gets made off-site, then assemble it and the windows at the same time on-site?

[Jenki]

Resale values especially remote islands will be hard to justify. 

House prices are a lot lower.  Our build was on a tight budget, and we have achieved a great performing house. If we had used contractors I'm sure the build costs would have  exceeded market value. 

 

I understand the double height ceiling concept but with this brings the issues as @ProDave mentions and also complexity with steel, wind bracing etc. these complexities will cost considerably more due to location.  

We built all on the ground floor so made the house bigger (longer ) than necessary,this was due to future planning, no stairs etc for our older age, I'm only leaving this house in a box, or because I cant remember my name. 

Structurally the engineers were much happier using trusses. If we would have wanted cut roof and steels I'm convinced there would have been even more reinforcement on the walls( we used around 1.8kM of rebar), also we would have had to use cast in anchors for the wall plates these were ridiculous cost. Our build was 13m long, 2 bed simple design.

We could have shrunk that if we went for rooms in the roof. I blogged my build on here look for #thewindyroost. Good luck 

 

[ProDave]

Cut roof does not mean steels.  Ours used Kerto beams for the ridge, less bulky that Glulam for a given strength.

 

 

That also shows the "gable end" type of dormer we used.

[ProDave]

Re the big gable end glass wall.  That is where you will probably need steels.  But all can be avoided if you compromise a little.

 

This is our "gable end glass" wall in our sun room.

 

 

By breaking it down into 2 windows with a central support, that supports the ridge beam and it is all done in timber.

[ETC]

You’ll need to separate the kitchen from the rest of the house - especially the staircase.

[Jenki]

3 minutes ago, westbound said:

 

With that in mind, assuming we did do ICF for the main walls, any suggestions on how to handle the feature glass wall? Something like a custom made SIP that gets made off-site, then assemble it and the windows at the same time on-site?

This will end up with the structural engineer..one reason we changed from timber to ICF, was the engineer reinforcing the timber frame due to location. He doubled up all the OSB, made some internal walls structural to support the external walls and added proprietary Sheer walls in each gable which were around £1k each, and seemed impossible to get hold of.

I'm sure you will end up with a steel portal frame, the detailing to eliminate cold bridging will be essential.

 

[joe90]

@ProDave I love the “cat ramp” (I presume. ) could be a little more elegant tho 🤷‍♂️

[ProDave]

That was a temporary ramp to keep the cat happy.  I later added a platform outside the flap, and then a step lower down.  The cat loved it. and BCO at completion thought it was a nice touch and commented on it.

 

Sadly I don't have a picture of it yet.

 

 

[westbound]

1 hour ago, Jenki said:

I understand the double height ceiling concept but with this brings the issues as @ProDave mentions and also complexity with steel, wind bracing etc. these complexities will cost considerably more due to location.  

 

We could have shrunk that if we went for rooms in the roof. I blogged my build on here look for #thewindyroost. Good luck 

 

 

Yeah, I really wouldn't be surprised if double-height goes, we're still very much in dream land around concepts. 

 

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

By breaking it down into 2 windows with a central support, that supports the ridge beam and it is all done in timber.

 

Central support makes a lot of sense, great shout. Not even a compromise, nice feature.

[Jenki]

45 minutes ago, westbound said:

 

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

By breaking it down into 2 windows with a central support, that supports the ridge beam and it is all done in timber.

 

Central support makes a lot of sense, great shout. Not even a compromise, nice feature.

I would look at having that open gable split with the master bedroom looking out of that and possibly a balcony. You could probably shrink the length of the house that way. 

Don't underestimate the solar gain from such an expanse of glass, and losses in winter 

[westbound]

Surveyor currently on holiday, so tinkering with plans based on some of the feedback here.

• Overall footprint reduced to 8.3m x 17.2m
• Fire-door added between kitchen and stairs, and all bedrooms have an exit that doesn't go via kitchen
• Still need to get to grips with Scottish building regs on fire exit windows in bedrooms - skylight is an option for top windowless room
• Sounds like the balcony might work if the sliding door is fire rated
• Added an indication that window feature can have central support, awaiting proper design
• Overall internal footprint is about 160m3, for a two-adult-two-kids scenario, plus guest room