135 sqm single-family house with gable roof floor plan evaluation / improvement suggestions

1. When it comes to floor plan planning, really sit down and determine what is actually needed in the house

Exactly!
A good floor plan starts by putting down the colored pencil and picking up the pen. Only when the list “adds up” correctly should you start drawing.

2. Look at what the plot dictates! A house should always be planned in relation to the plot. Some things are set by the development plan, some by the plot (slope, for example).

That’s right!
Plots are 3D, even if the terrain edge does not always have a wild wave. Planning hypothetically and falsely as if on a flat slab plot can become surprisingly expensive.

The missing windows to the east are an agreement with the neighbor so that neither side can have possible views into the other's property.

The dumb faces of both parties don't get any smarter just because they agree not to look at each other.

I don’t understand the fundamental criticism of self-drawn floor plans. After all, at least from my deluded perspective, I haven’t found a floor plan that fits better or uses the space more sensibly.

I also like to criticize ready-made floor plans.
Often, however, for other reasons.
With every floor plan I ask myself three questions:
1. Do the rooms work?
2. Do the paths work?
3. Would something probably annoy me in everyday life?

If the primary difference from the “normal family” 2E2K (which most catalog floor plans are designed for) is that the second adult and with them the two children are missing, that actually doesn’t change the quality of the floor plans. They have been positively “tested” for functioning rooms and paths (which also means there are no fatty areas to liposuction, so if it doesn’t fit into the buildable area, you have to look for other models). In everyday life, these floor plans only regularly become annoying if, for example, you change the running direction of the stairs and constantly walk into the dirt zone.

My favorite example is the excessively used floor-to-ceiling windows.

These often come with the thought that the minimum window area will still fit if you “downgrade” the surplus floor-to-ceiling windows to sill-height windows.

What do you think, from which knee wall height do the roof slope windows become too high?

Read my “linked” external post above. You can find it by searching with quotation marks or more conveniently nowadays with the signature.

The alternative would be to make the knee wall lower so that the roof windows come to eye level.

.

Actually, where possible, I would omit 2 full floors, since I don't find it so attractive myself and it could look like an alien in the surroundings. (rural, all houses have gable roofs or bungalows with very low roofs)

Then build with a dwarf wall instead of a knee wall.

Regardless of the planned construction method, I can really only recommend going to a model house park. There you can see various houses with different knee walls and window designs and see how windows have been well or less well implemented with different knee wall heights. And whether you like it.

In model house parks, there are often mediocre knee walls for the “building law” reason, not to show visitors from two-thirds of federal states examples that would only still be single-story in three-quarters of federal states. Therefore, one of the most memorized answers from salespeople is how much a 20 cm knee wall height increase would cost.

I don’t understand the fundamental criticism of self-drawn floor plans.

There isn’t any, and it’s nowhere to be found in this thread either.

After all, at least from my imagined perspective, I didn’t find a floor plan that fits better or uses the space more efficiently.

There are plenty of house designs, also with the appropriate roof orientation, that work better on almost the same footprint. For example, there is the V5 from Viebrockhaus, the standard houses from Town & Country and Scanhaus, and a few others.
If you convince yourself that it "only fits like this", the neighbor has a say or you want to give up important house elements just because of neighboring buildings, think that maximizing a knee wall height to 160 cm is the be-all and end-all and that you thereby gain something without actually having calculated or planned properly, and then put a roof shape on because it “looks more aesthetic,” then you shouldn’t be surprised not to find anything comparable.
Then of course there is the fact that you apparently don’t know anything about house construction but think you can build it yourself?!
If you talk about cost savings and in 2023 come with a lower living room or exposed concrete, in 2025 with 3-meter ceiling height, expensive roof windows, an open visible roof truss, costly built-in closets under the stairs, a heated carport instead of storage space inside the house, it sounds exciting but is not to be taken seriously.

It seems to me as if you read or see something and think you want to have it but don’t check at all whether it fits into a house concept: 160 cm knee wall, that can be done, but then the house must offer options how to get light inside. Roof windows are extra windows, not main windows. Does one have to put a positive spin on them in a bathroom? The emperor on the throne also likes to look outside. For unwanted views, frosted glass foil or a simple blind serves. You can also tell that to the neighbor. Many do something like that on the ground floor with bushes. You apparently don’t need that since the plot is full of trees.
The topic “good neighborliness” can also be solved differently than promises not to build windows on the neighbor’s side. A house should work!

Visible roof truss… only works with interior walls that extend far into the ridge. Then the room becomes taller than wide – that is definitely not aesthetic.
Then a chimney does not fit the topic of saving either. It doesn’t just stand around stupidly downstairs; it also has a chimney upwards where you imagine windows.
Regarding the utility room (HAR), one doesn’t even think: more than half of the room cannot be used or furnished. You do not wash or dry laundry there either?!

Your 3-meter ceiling height of course requires a staircase that reaches there. Your current 3.29 (meters) does not even manage comfortably over 2.50. You need at least 4.20 or something similar. You have drawn a load-bearing wall going through the staircase. You can see that. That is what the tool is for, but you ignore the element.
Having a tool does not make one a planner, let alone a good or knowledgeable one. Just because you have an (expensive) camera doesn’t mean you can take pictures. It also doesn’t help to read the 10 basic rules on a double-page spread in a magazine and follow them. Either you’ve got it or you haven’t. Some intuitively, others professionally.

You also jump between concepts: sometimes it’s a house for a single person, then again it should be enough for a family. A small family doesn’t even need that shower in the ground floor, so why do you?

Because of the cardinal directions: trust me,

so you only have diffuse light anyway

Such statements combined or argumentatively contradict each other and, in my opinion, you use them wrongly.
“A ‘only anyway’”: one tries to include that in planning so that the house fits harmoniously with the surroundings. You also don’t need to place a projector in front of a window because there's only diffuse light anyway.

Suggestions

There are none because again the basic requirements for suggestions are missing. Without a site plan or plot (which by the way one should be able to draw from memory including measurements with pencil oneself, then data protection is also fine) you cannot recognize here at all that any of your thoughts are justified, since many of your mentioned thoughts are simply not justified.

There is no such thing and it is not mentioned anywhere in this thread either.

For me, yes - actually always, whenever someone makes the effort of an individual design, which however is yawningly unoriginal and nowhere stands out from the field of tried-and-tested catalog designs that are not convincing to him. A work that nowhere praises its master is at most that of a journeyman and consequently a waste of time out of pure vanity, finding the other zero-eight-fifteens not good enough for himself. If only one could do it just as well, but it doesn't look that way here at all. An individual design that does not justify its craftsmanship is nothing. It could have been - then with a "guarantee of success" - also taken from the shelf. With a plot like or a plot-house concept combination like , there is also music in 2E2K, but with the countless average houses one already falls asleep as a reader when turning the page. One asks: "What possessed the thread starter?" and finds no answer.

2E2K music

Oh, enigmatically phrased contemporary and friend of clear ambiguity – what does that mean?

Oh mysteriously phrased contemporary and friend of clear ambiguity - what does that mean?

Two adults, two children .. with music :D

Two adults, two children .. with music :D

Abbreviations are for me the xenonyms of today’s time. My wife, as a child in the 70s, did not understand why the RAF was reported on so badly in Germany. For her as an Englishwoman, that was the Royal Air Force. The idea that these terrorists were supposed to be in Germany did not occur to her.