Hangman
2021-10-19 12:22:00
- #1
Can you give me an assessment of our planning for the outdoor areas (as the house is currently oriented)?
The following: Backfilling excavation to the left of the house (for the area of the stairs and entrance), partial terracing (as visible in the designs and behind the house).
But: We would also like to keep a part “natural,” meaning we would have a section of shoreline in the garden – namely towards E / NE, if I’m reading the elevation plans correctly and seeing and assessing the property properly.
Is this feasible, or have we overlooked something? These are just our thoughts so far; we haven’t discussed this with the architect yet.
The assessment for the execution of the outdoor areas with the current orientation is: a complete pipe dream! In #83, you can, with some effort, see the contour lines and clearly see that the access path is nonsense. The current terrain at the house entrance door is about 80cm above the left corner of the house. So you still have to backfill about 2.2m just to enter the house. You won’t want to bury your office, so this would create some kind of access embankment with a nice dark pit between the house and the access path. I don’t even want to imagine the view from the office. The west side of the property will also be ruined, and you’re spending 20-30K just for the absolutely worst possible access. A “cost-effective” terrace in the entrance area, which you mentioned in some earlier posts, is also rather pointless because how do you plan to access it? Through the hallway stuffed full of shoes and coats?
If you want to position the house as far left (or down) as possible (which I understand), backfilling won’t work either because you must be at original ground level again at the western property boundary. The more/higher you backfill and the shorter the distance to the boundary, the steeper a slope or the like would be. At the garage driveway, you’ll have at least 60cm of cross slope, and the east terrace will also require massive support.
In summary, with the current plan, you’ll have to model EVERYTHING between the street and the house as well as between the west side and the house. It doesn’t get more elaborate or expensive than that. Keeping it natural is something else entirely.
And because you don’t want or are not allowed to build too high due to the “garage level,” you limit yourself with roof slopes in the attic and thus make the nice view impossible. If you really want to do it all like this, at least hang a webcam on the west corner so you can watch your view, landscape, and sunsets on TV.
I really hate to be the Grinch, but this had to come out. Please think it over again. The cars don’t need to enter the house, and with an elongated building that follows the slope, you can plan so much better and cheaper with two full floors that the extra round will be worthwhile in every respect: financially, functionally, and emotionally.
By the way, I’m very sure this forum will really help if you decide to redesign.