Draft floor plan single-family house for 2

Hello everyone,

we are still in the early stages of house planning and have now completed the first draft to the extent possible and would like to present it here for discussion before we meet with a friend who is an architect in two weeks.

We would be pleased if you could share your thoughts with us and if you still see potential to reduce the house construction costs.

Many thanks in advance and best regards!

Basics:
- It is to be a solid wood house or, where affordable, a double log house.
- The house is to be built at the edge of the forest (there is forest to the north of the house)
- The floor plans are oriented to the north.
- Terrace and carport are not yet drawn in. The terrace is to be built on the southwest corner of the house (see terrace door); the double carport east of the house.

Development plan/restrictions
Size of the plot: 1,200 m²
Slope: yes, gently sloping to the south
Floor area ratio: 0.4
Site occupancy index: 0.8

Building window, building line and boundary: The given external dimensions are not a problem.
Border development: ?
Number of parking spaces: A double carport east of the house is planned because the access road east of the building leads north.
Number of floors: ground floor + upper floor
Roof shape: gable roof
Orientation: perfectly south-facing
Maximum heights/limits: none relevant
Further specifications: none

Client requirements
Style, roof shape, building type: log house, gable roof, kneewall house, open roof structure
Basement, floors: ground floor + upper floor, no basement
Number of people, age: 2 people, late 30s, no children planned
Room requirements ground floor, upper floor
Office: family use or home office? Home office, yes.
Overnight guests per year: several young families visiting annually
Open or closed architecture: open!
Conservative or modern construction: log house, practical, no frills.
Open kitchen, cooking island: yes
Number of dining places: standard 6 => up to 10
Fireplace: yes
Music/stereo wall: no
Balcony, roof terrace: no
Garage, carport: double carport east of the house.
Utility garden, greenhouse: yes
Further wishes/special features/daily routine: living on the ground floor, sports + sleeping on the upper floor (because no basement). Possibly a second TV corner on the upper floor.

House design
Who created the plan:
- Do-it-yourself by us

What do you particularly like? We are basically very satisfied with the ground floor => because it is open
What do you not like?: We have been tinkering with the upper floor the whole time. We want 2 bedrooms on the upper floor + bathroom + an open area for sports/reading/TV as a kind of gallery into which the evening light from the west shines. If children are added later or the house is sold, the open area on the upper floor should be convertible into another bedroom.

Price estimate according to architect/planner: none yet

Personal price limit for the house, including equipment: 250,000 €

Favored heating technology: wood stove in the living room with water pockets, which feeds more than 80% of the heat into the buffer tank and thus heats underfloor heating and domestic hot water. In the transitional period/summer, domestic hot water should be heated by photovoltaic with heating rods or solar thermal.

If you have to forego something, on which details/extensions
- can you do without: none?
- cannot be dispensed with: open ground floor, wooden ceilings, open roof structure

What we have problems with:
- Kneewall height of approx. 1.9 meters and the associated narrow windows facing south on the upper floor.
- Probably the price of the whole building

Hmm .. why is the knee wall limited to 190 cm? The top edge of the windows would then be at a maximum of about 160 to 170 cm... which I think is a really stupid height.

Bedroom, none of the bedrooms allow for a 300 cm wardrobe (in case of 2 children or so). The windows are right next to the partition wall, there should be at least 65 cm distance to the wall so that a wardrobe could be placed there. 279 cm raw depth of the rooms is borderline. You have to count on a bed with frame to be 210 cm long. The chimney shaft in the one bedroom right at the entrance is also not so nice.

Staircase on the upper floor approx. 206 cm wide, you must not forget that the stairwell also has to be secured with a railing, which then costs hallway width.

Load-bearing walls are missing on the ground floor. I think the house can’t be built like this with only 12 cm thick walls.

It helps tremendously to get a good sense of space if you realistically furnish the rooms, including on the upper floor.

Maybe the site plan with the building window drawn in would be quite useful after all.

Regarding the house shape.. open roof truss, so in the upper floor rooms each open to the top? Will that work in the bedrooms? I can imagine it in the open area.

- The WC is a bit narrow at 1.1 m for the arrangement of the washbasin - 2.79 is difficult to furnish for a double bed - If someone really watches TV there, they disturb those sleeping - The nicest room is the bathroom on the upper floor - a pity actually. - The corridor on the upper floor is borderline narrow

I just had to nod quite often ... these are really helpful hints, thank you.

[*]The knee wall is currently 1.90 meters high because we thought it would save costs. However, it is no problem to increase it to 2.20.
[*]We will check the footprint for wardrobes.
[*]We consciously planned the hallway to be quite narrow because it is just dead/lost traffic space and you can easily pass each other on one meter. We admittedly overlooked the space requirement of the stair railing.
[*]We will also check the shell depth of 2.80 again. We might still widen the house a bit.
[*]The chimney shaft in the bedroom does not bother us. It's a good privacy screen ;)
[*]Please keep in mind that this is a log house made of massive wooden beams. This allows for larger spans than with stone buildings. For structural support, there is a small wooden post at the kitchen island.
[*]Also, the nearly 10 cm wide interior walls made of solid wood are absolutely sufficient to support the house.
[*]We will furnish the rooms with furniture.
[*]Regarding the WC with a width of 1.10 meters: Our current guest WC is 78 cm wide, so we thought 1.10 would be huge! The wall can be quickly moved, thank you.

I'll start somewhere completely different:

We are basically very satisfied with the ground floor

I also generally like the ground floor. I would – if at all – maybe make the office a technical/storage room, since there is a niche for built-in wardrobes as a cloakroom in the entrance area. Divide the current storage room into a utility room and office.

I wouldn’t design the office to be too sunny, as warmth or sun is not pleasant for steady work. Pull the kitchen island a bit further into the L-shape so that a comfortable distance between the work areas is present (right now it looks somewhat too far).


But:

Number of people, age: 2 people, late 30s, no children planned

Guests per year: young families visiting several times a year

Other wishes/special features/daily routine: living on the ground floor, sports + sleeping upstairs (because no basement). possibly a second TV corner upstairs.

We want 2 bedrooms upstairs + bathroom + an open area for sports/reading/TV as a kind of gallery where in the evening the light shines in from the west. If children do arrive or the house is sold, the open area upstairs should be convertible into another bedroom.

With this information, I would plan very differently.

Either:

Private rooms upstairs and an appropriate guest room with shower-WC downstairs. This requires a larger floor area on the ground floor and somewhat less upstairs.

Or:

Bedroom downstairs with bathroom and other rooms including guest and bathroom upstairs.

This also requires a larger floor area on the ground floor and somewhat less upstairs.

Basically, it doesn’t matter what it is called, but with info like late 30s, two people, space for guests and sports, in my opinion, something else makes no sense.


If we take the first option, then you can still use the guest rooms on the ground floor yourselves in old age. Possibly guest and office can also be combined.

Upstairs you can plan bedrooms with dressing rooms in the east, stairs with hallway, storage (or fitness) and bathroom in the middle, leave open in the west for (fitness equipment and) TV living/evening (room for two more rooms when converting).

But I rather think that this is more a wish for unconventional living and/or the space upstairs is too much and just needs to be named, but in everyday life the second living area will hardly be used.

Hmm .. why is the knee wall limited to 190 cm? The top edge of the windows would then be at max. about 160 to 170... which I think is a really bad height.

Certainly, nowadays with a multi-person family and small plots it is intentional to get as much space as possible on a small footprint and therefore makes sense to have the knee wall at the highest possible level, but not necessarily if one needs more floor area on the ground floor than upstairs.

I think here the planning is ultimately wrong: a house for 2 people in middle age does not cover the requirements of a house for a (young) family. Surely one can take some things into account (e.g., for a change of needs, among other things in case of sale), but cannot meet every situation.

Therefore, I would do without a big knee wall, rather set the roof lower and either “wall off” the low knee wall or use it as storage rooms.

Also, for the room arrangements or window locations upstairs, you don’t need a high knee wall here if you plan the bedrooms facing east and west, with the staircase area with storage rooms under the slopes in the middle.

Roughly, we have here about 86 sqm on the ground floor, the same again upstairs, making a living area for 2 people of 170 sqm.

At the same time, a cost-conscious house is talked about. That contradicts itself.

The argument to get everything nice and spacious, you can also get with 40 sqm less for 2 people ... and 130 sqm is still enough for a small family. And there is now a steadily growing target group when selling: 2 people!


We ourselves have 86 sqm on the ground floor, upstairs due to staggered shed roofs only about ~50 sqm. It is spacious, we have a second utility room upstairs, a room on the ground floor which currently serves as office/guest and later can serve as a bedroom. If a sale arises, this room can also serve as a child/teen room and the parents have their area upstairs like we do.

Regarding the house shape .. open roof truss, so in the upstairs rooms open to the roof? Will that work in the bedrooms? I can imagine it in the open area.

That can look spacious and at the same time uncomfortable! We had it open to the roof in our terraced house with a knee wall of about 2 meters, at the highest point of the room we had 3.40 m: in the office room it was nice to have, in the large bedroom it did not create coziness. Nevertheless, I would always make it depend on the individual case, as it strongly depends on layout, height and roof pitch and the use of the room.


Regards Yvonne

Yvonne has once again put into words well what I have also been thinking about. For example, I stumble over

Schlafgäste pro Jahr: Mehrmals jährlich junge Familien zu Besuch

and then the 2 bedrooms upstairs.. is one of them supposed to be the guest room? Young families, I imagine, consist of 2 adults and 1 to 2 children. Or are the bedrooms for you because you sleep separately and the guests sleep in the large multipurpose room?