Floor plan design of a semi-detached house for large families

Oh, windows are partly too few or too small for me. Especially in the living room.

Alternative upper floor with starting ground floor:

Even if it doesn’t look like it, all the children’s rooms are approximately the same size at about 14m². I think that’s totally fine for a children’s room. Unfortunately, only 2 still have balcony access. The focus here is on a functional parents’ area while keeping the starting ground floor unchanged.

Alternative with parents’ area on the ground floor and smaller utility room:


The problem here is the missing cloakroom area. It would be possible to plan the pantry as a wardrobe. I’m curious to see what the right architect conjures up here. Nice project!

PS: Windows have been completely neglected for now.

a) All bathrooms/kitchens are planned on top of each other to keep the water installation simple (and ultimately to reduce costs).

I would strongly advise against planning the floor plan based on whether you save 3m of KG pipe in the floor.

The idea behind the shaft was simply the following: The required space is about 2 sqm or so, the costs should be manageable since only the shell construction becomes slightly larger. No additional expensive wall surfaces or similar are incurred. The advantage is maximum maintenance-friendliness with manageable effort. For this reason and so that two rooms do not have connections to the kitchen (smells, kitchen as a passage), the kitchen is also where it is. Besides, you can always see who is coming

What do you want to maintain? Do you have so many earthquakes that you constantly have pipe breaks? I consider the 2 sqm completely wasted and useless. On the contrary, it is a welcome retreat for plenty of spiders, insects, and other crawling creatures.

If the floor plan is to be maintained as is, the parents' bathroom will probably have to be omitted... I find the loss of the separate parents' bathroom tolerable.

Oh, I see that differently! Just imagine if there are 4 girls who all have to go to school early and then only 1 bathroom for everyone on the floor. What a drama!

e) It is quite conceivable for us to combine the dining and living room and omit the partitions/make them purely visual with shelves or the fireplace. Then it also appears larger.

Yes, it is best to plan a large open space from the start, which in my opinion is much better located on the side of the house facing away from the other half. Quickly sketched.
Windows are shown only as examples to demonstrate lighting possibilities.

… a) All bathrooms/kitchens are planned on top of each other to keep the water installation simple (and thus ultimately reduce costs). The idea behind the shaft was simply the following: the space requirement is about 2 sqm or so, the costs should be manageable since only the shell construction becomes slightly larger. No additional expensive wall surfaces or the like are incurred. The advantage is maximum ease of maintenance with manageable effort...

Of course, you save money if you thoughtfully combine drains. That’s why bathrooms are often stacked, but mainly to get the toilet drain centrally and cost-effectively out of the house without many bends. With all other pipes, you don’t save anything where it’s worth creating a corset for a reasonable floor plan. I think a lot of knowledge from parents or other older generations is still in there [emoji6]

Consequently, this shaft doesn’t have to exist either. It’s smart to have a supply shaft for all kinds of pipes. It can be the size of a chimney shaft and be located somewhere centrally near the technical room in the basement. But it has nothing to do with the wastewater since those are routed directly out of the house via the shortest path.

I would plan a living room that all family members can use together. Give it space where children can play and the rest can communicate.

Parents downstairs, good idea.

Children at night in the utility room? You have to explain that to me!