Bungalow single-family house 140sqm - floor plan ideas requested

Hello everyone,

after having been actively reading here for some time, I would now like to participate in discussions and also present my concerns myself.

We have acquired a 1,700m² plot of land (28x60m width x depth). The site coverage ratio is 0.2.
By the way, we are a couple in our late 20s who currently do not have children. We want to plan a children’s room and a study (home office).

About the plot:

[*
no slope
[*]Restrictions: up to 2 full floors allowed, site coverage ratio 0.2, roof shape must have a 40% pitch
[*]Location: in the village, no through road, a local road runs parallel to the lower wall (bathroom to guest WC) at about 5 meters distance


About the house:


[*]Desired house type: bungalow
[*]Desired size: 140-145m²
[*]no basement, no upper floor
[*]Double garage with access to the house, if legally possible, this should be the only entrance door and to be built on the boundary

[*]Kitchen: open so the living/dining room seems bigger
[*]To avoid countless doors in the hallway --> entrance to bathroom/bedroom via walk-in closet and a "corner in the hallway"
[*]2 terrace doors from the kitchen (2 wings) and living room (sliding door)
[*]Gas heating (underfloor heating) + solar support for hot water preparation
[*]no (de/central) ventilation system

[*]Masonry: Poroton T10 36.5cm (or T10 42cm?)

[*]Covered terrace

[*]tall and narrow window between kitchen and hallway to make the hallway brighter



House design:


[*]We created the design as laymen.
[*]Coordination with the architect/structural engineer of the construction company will take place in September



What is very important to us:


[*]Access to the house via the garage, since we come into the house 99% by car and do not want to walk to the house in cold/rain
[*]Terrace facing west or south
[*]4 rooms (sleeping, living, child, working)



What is relatively important to us:


[*]Utility room is also HAR (housekeeping room) and should therefore not be too small (min 12m²)
[*]Utility room and kitchen should not be too far from the entrance (garage)
[*]Especially large/wide attic ladder
[*]Bathroom and guest WC each with shower



Open questions:


[*]Do you have general suggestions for the floor plan?

[*]Building material: The construction company uses Poroton T10 36.5cm for exterior walls and 11.5cm for interior walls by default. (no additional insulation in the walls)
[LIST]
[*]We do not want to build a passive house or extremely energy-saving house, so T10 bricks are fine for us, or should one really invest more here? My idea was to increase the wall thickness to 42cm (outside) and 17.5cm (inside), since I find 11.5cm very little for laying cables, sockets, etc.

[*]Poroton T10: One often reads that due to the thin ribs and the low external wall the bricks are not so stable. Is there any truth to that or could we e.g. have problems attaching furniture?

[*]Poroton is said to be not so soundproof... but I increasingly hear that it is rather the doors and windows that are the problem when it comes to noise (or also thermal insulation).


[*]The window between kitchen and hallway is supposed to be 200x30cm and located above the wall cabinets, do you see this as useful or will it rather cause problems?

[*]Is the sole access to the house via the garage possible?

[*]Regarding the bathrooms I am unsure about the floor plan; is it optimal like this?
[*]We would lay tiles in the kitchen area, utility room, bike room and hallway (?), and laminate in the rest – is that okay with underfloor heating?

[*]I find some rooms rather small. The hallway is only 1.33 m wide, so you cannot reduce it any further.

Floor plan


Front view

Apply for an exception for 30-35 degree roof pitch max. Everything else is ugly. Make the attic accessible by stairs as a basement replacement. How do visitors or delivery services get into the house without a real front door with a doorbell? If there is a child, then do they also have to go through the wardrobe to get to the bathroom? Stupid idea.

Only entrance through the garage is not practical.
Where does the postman ring?

I would swap the entrance and the utility room.

What kind of stairs is that to the attic?
40 degrees is a steep roof, why shouldn’t it be used?

I would extend the hallway to the bathroom. You have no storage space in that area, and the hallway offers more privacy. Imagine in 20 years you’re standing in front of the wardrobe in the morning and your child’s current partner disappears into the bathroom.
Then the children’s and study rooms get four straight walls.

I don’t like the open plan room at all.
The kitchen feels cramped.
The path from kitchen to dining is quite long.
TV to sofa distance is too great.
I also don’t like this slanted wall.

Do you really want to extend the roof in front of the garage that far?

Hello everyone,

thank you very much for your feedback. I will try that with the roof, it is an old development plan where 40° was specified, that is a good tip.
If the child has to go through the dressing room to get to the bathroom, then so be it.... this way we just don’t have an extremely long, narrow corridor and save doors.
We want to have the entrance through the garage, of course there is a front door with a doorbell there. The postman will find it and visitors certainly as well. It also worked great for friends.

Why is the entrance there not practical? Surely you have to open one more door if you want to get to the front door and walk 2 meters more, but we don’t have 5 different parcel couriers coming every day now.

Regarding the attic: currently only a larger attic staircase (140x80) is planned. We wanted to have everything on one level and not outsource individual rooms like the bedroom or children’s room. Also, finishing the attic would currently exceed our budget, so we would have to reduce, for example, the ground floor area to 110 m² and then have two floors again. We wanted to keep that as a reserve in case more children etc. are planned.

The corridor was longer before, but then the dressing room seems quite small. Also, the doors don’t fit anymore then, because the corridor wall would be at the middle height of the bathroom door. But I will try a bit more. The argument is certainly valid.

I find the kitchen rather bigger than cramped because of the missing walls. From the center of the kitchen to the dining table it is 4 meters. I don’t find that too far, we currently often eat on the sofa and walk about 7 meters.
Distance from the TV to the couch is approximately 4.0–4.5 meters depending on seating position. This distance is optimal for us with a 55" TV, as we currently have the living room very similarly arranged in our apartment.

I will also make a draft where the utility room and entrance are swapped, but then wall space in the utility room will probably be lost again, which I find important for heating, shelves, control cabinets, washing machine, dryer, but we’ll see how it looks.

Thank you very much for your feedback so far. I am happy to receive further opinions.

One thing you didn’t understand: I don’t want to convert the attic, just maybe put in one Velux, light, socket and boards as flooring, no insulation, nothing. Accessible with a staircase, it gives you a wonderfully convenient storage space for this and that. I can also put two trestles up there and paint something. That’s where our suitcases, Christmas decorations, a cupboard with surplus laundry are, better to have than to need, etc. pp. The general contractor built a small corridor upstairs to the insulated part of the house; for the door, because of the temperature difference between attic and main house, we used a terrace door. Additional cost here around 8000,- including beech wood staircase. K.

Hello Nordlys, that's exactly how we planned it, just with an attic ladder to save space. So the attic is already accessible, you probably didn't quite understand that. However, we had not planned for the hallway. We will see if a permanent staircase could be realized now, of course it's better for the future than such a folding ladder.

PS. The roof is not supposed to extend that far over the garage, it's more of an error in the tool or a lack of knowledge on my part.