First sketch of new house project

[Crofter]

This is very rough. I realised after I had downloaded and cropped the pictures that I'd not left enough space for a door at the bottom of the staircase into bed 1. Oops.

 

Basic outline: 9x7m footprint, with an asymmetric pitched roof. Roof will be corrugated steel, slate blue. Walls will be mostly cream or off-white corrugated steel (I like the stuff, OK) and the front section will be larch, board on board.

Some rooms upstairs, with some vaulted space at the front.

 

Not shown, there will be an extensive car port out the back, with most utility room functions housed there in a small separate building. This will have PV panels as its roof.

 

I've only shown a few windows on the front elevation. There will of course be other windows, tbd.

 

For context, the site is a fairly steep east facing slope. The east/front (larch clad) elevation has the sea view. There is a neighbour close by on the south side. Site will have to be dug back in to the hill a bit, so the car port will go in that sheltered area at the back of the house.

 

Any feedback welcome!

 

 

[Crofter]

For some reason the floor plans have come out at different scales- the length (L-R as viewed) should be the same on both, but the upstairs is more like 9x5m and the downstairs in 9x7m.

[Conor]

Nice.

 

Couple practicle suggestions. You'll want the stairs separated from the kitchen somehow.

 

Where's the front door? At the stairs I presume? You'll need a second door as can't have means of escape through the kitchen. Again, come back to the issue of the kitchen not being closed off to the rest of the house.

 

Hate the idea of a toilet in a kitchen... Swap with the cupboard and have the door coming off them under the stairs.

[IanR]

10 hours ago, Crofter said:

For some reason the floor plans have come out at different scales-

 

Looking at the shape of the stairs you have perspective on, so the ground floor, that is further away from the view point, appears smaller. Change to Orthographic.

[MikeSharp01]

Bed 1 downstairs indicates that you want to be ready for older age - if so do the CBD / WC swap make the WC a bit bigger, make it a wet room and Jack & Jill it with the Bedroom.

[Crofter]

4 hours ago, Conor said:

Nice.

 

Couple practicle suggestions. You'll want the stairs separated from the kitchen somehow.

Is this a hard and fast rule? A fire safety thing maybe? Or is it more about cooking smells etc?

 

4 hours ago, Conor said:

 

Where's the front door?

In practise, you'd come and go from the back door, at the kitchen. But it would be easy enough to have a patio door in the front of the house too. In fact I've indicated that in the sketch.

 

4 hours ago, Conor said:

You'll need a second door as can't have means of escape through the kitchen.

Good spot. So we'll need that patio door.

 

4 hours ago, Conor said:

Hate the idea of a toilet in a kitchen... Swap with the cupboard and have the door coming off them under the stairs.

The WC needs to retain the option of becoming a jack and Jill with the downstairs bedroom, and will also need to have the option of adding a shower. I think that whole space (under the stairs, between the bedroom and kitchen) has lots of room for optimisation.

 

AFAIK there's no actual rule against using the WC opening off the kitchen. It doesn't really bother us personally, we're used to living in a small space (we've spent the last 4yrs living on a boat so this house is going to feel palatial).

 

Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it 👍

 

 

[Crofter]

1 hour ago, MikeSharp01 said:

Bed 1 downstairs indicates that you want to be ready for older age - if so do the CBD / WC swap make the WC a bit bigger, make it a wet room and Jack & Jill it with the Bedroom.

I thought it was a BR rule that you must have a downstairs bedroom, plus a non en-suite downstairs WC. I'm a bit rusty on all these requirements though, and will need to refamiliarise myself with them. 

 

But yes this is likely to be where we end up in our dotage, although that's a pretty long way away (we're still in our early/mid 40s).

 

I expect that we may end up making the house a little bigger, this is very much an exercise in minimum viable product design. The master bedroom at the top of the stairs is, as drawn, only 3.1 x 4.3m, with partial coombed ceiling. The other bedrooms aren't even that big. Both the WC and upstairs bath/shower room are pretty pokey.

 

I have used a 450mm external wall thickness for now so it's possible that I can slim that down a little when I start getting in to the details of the buildup and u values.

[Crofter]

4 hours ago, IanR said:

 

Looking at the shape of the stairs you have perspective on, so the ground floor, that is further away from the view point, appears smaller. Change to Orthographic.

Thanks! Forgot about that. 

I had a play around with OnShape before I managed to get SketchUp to run, and I've thing I liked about it was the dimensions automatically appear on your drawings. So I might use that for floorplans.