Floor plan design single-family house solid wood construction 140 sqm in Lower Saxony

That definitely sounds like an interesting project. The budget will be exciting because solid wood is a rather expensive way to build, and you are at a good 2800 €/sqm including . What I personally miss is a sketch with the property boundaries. At the moment, the garden seems a bit fragmented to me, due to the at the back corner. I find the development plan completely stupid in its specifications, but I guess you have to live with it. The question is whether, for example, with a carport attached to the house, the plot could be used a bit more cleverly

We’ll try to get a sketch, the soil surveyor also needs something for the measuring points. Or is something hand-drawn enough at first, like how we roughly imagine it? The carport could certainly be attached directly to the house – or will there then be problems with the wide roof overhang and the flat roof of the carport? The workshop should definitely lie somewhat “behind” the house so there is still a passage to the garden. With 9 meters total length including the workshop – how much width should I give the whole thing then? 3 meters or more? I’m not allowed less anyway because of the building window – right? It would rather be a DIY-store carport, so you can be a bit more flexible. From the manufacturer, made of the same wood as the main house, it would be quite clearly out of budget :D

You’re not building with like @Holzhäuschen by any chance?

No. I checked, we didn’t even request catalogs there. They sent us a letter in response to our online inquiry and wanted me to tick boxes on a sheet and put it in a return envelope so they could provide me with material – that already made a rather inflexible, not particularly modern impression on us, so we dropped it right away. :D

I could recommend our shell builder to you. He comes from Münster in NRW and builds solid wood and timber frame houses with very modern planning tools. However, he is fully booked until summer 23. I believe he does not have your intended construction method in his program. For my semi-detached house with about 132m², I paid "only" 104,843.85 net with the final invoice from December 2020 (windows and doors not included except 1x skylight).

Or is a hand-drawn sketch enough for now, showing roughly what we have in mind?

Yes. We also just moved stencils around on a piece of cardboard at first. This step is mainly about getting a feel for whether anything is in the way, how far you are from the neighbor's window, how much contiguous garden remains, etc.
Especially since your development plan for the front yard is quite restrictive, you need to pay attention to efficient planning.

The shape of the kitchen and the layout haven’t been finalized yet. There are also ideas with an L-shape and a kitchen island - we’re still unsure how best to solve that.

With a good 3x3m for the kitchen, I definitely don’t see an island. Even a peninsula takes up too much space on the opposite wall. If you keep the kitchen like that, only a U-shape makes sense. Nowadays, people also like to place the oven and dishwasher at counter height, which then takes up quite a bit of linear space in the kitchen. Without a basement, you might also want to include a somewhat larger pantry cabinet.
We filled about 2.90m in width and 4m in length with our U-shape. I wouldn’t really want to have much fewer cabinets now.

I’ll briefly summarize the contributions on the topic of knee wall/finished floor level:

I don’t quite understand the general concerns regarding the knee wall yet. The eaves height is 4m. That’s about 1m knee wall – in such small houses rather even more depending on ceiling height. The drawn 40cm or whatever that was aren’t really necessary, are they?

There seems to be enough difference, however a nice chunk of it is already used up just to get from the street to the house, whereby with the wooden house the height of the foot frame secure against heavy rain is a critical point. By the time we effectively have climbed the more customary reference height of the finished floor upper edge on the ground floor, the little hill climber already has half a dozen beads of sweat on the forehead. The initially mentioned worst case of 40cm knee wall will probably be surpassed, but unfortunately likely only symbolically.

I haven’t read anywhere that the street lies higher or lower at all than the finished floor level? What makes you conclude that?

I don’t conclude that at all. THAT the street (and not the ground floor floor) is decisive here is the crucial point. If the street were higher – so we’d theoretically get height for free – that wouldn’t help much insofar as especially in timber construction the foot frame with its bottom edge (= always at least on finished floor slab level = OKRFB) should lie at least 15 cm above ground level. The choice here is only between mound and moat. The upper edge of the manhole cover is practically the “backwater level” with regard to rain; with a masonry building the whole thing only calculates roughly 15 cm more favorably.

How can I determine the exact heights of the individual reference points here, so that we don’t remain in the dark and can plan precisely? Our plot lies directly on a construction street. There is also a manhole on our plot – I attached a picture. The man will ask the boss tomorrow whether he can borrow the tachymeter to carry out a rough survey. But this is only half helpful, since the district surveyor hasn’t been able to provide us with the geodata of our plot and any reference point for three weeks now, so we can only estimate. We could also ask my father-in-law, who is a survey engineer (but he mainly does other things like oil and fracking).

Getting the conditions of the plot together with the development plan and our house plan seems to be our very first, most important task for now – am I right to see it that way?

Is there anything else we should watch out for/find out/request/measure/handle simultaneously/... so that we can concretely continue planning in the end?

Regarding the picture: I am standing at the intersection visible in the development plan looking at the plot. By our estimate, the manhole in the sand over there to the front left should be on our plot

Yes. We also just started by moving templates around on a piece of cardboard. This step is mainly about getting a feeling for whether anything is in the way, how far it is from the window to the neighbor, how much contiguous garden space remains, etc. Especially because your development plan for the front yard is quite restrictive, you need to pay attention to efficient planning.

We don’t know what the neighbors are doing. Only one in the entire building area has even started. Since most probably prefer a southwest garden rather than a northeast garden, I assume that the surrounding neighbors to the north and south would plan similarly to us? To the east there is the street and to the west the plot is very awkwardly shaped (parcel numbers 18/9 + 17/29 see picture in the first post) - it probably extends further west, because otherwise he would have an insanely long distance of lines to install if he went all the way to the northeast?

With a good 3x3m for the kitchen, I definitely don’t see an island. Even a peninsula takes up too much space on the opposite wall. If you leave the kitchen as it is, only a U-shape makes sense. Nowadays people also like to install ovens and dishwashers at counter height, which really takes up a lot of running meters in the kitchen. Without a basement, you might also want to include a slightly larger pantry cupboard. We filled about 2.90m width and 4m length with our U-shape. I wouldn’t want to have much fewer cupboards now.

I counted through my cupboards what I really need. Half can go :D I don’t need a whole drawer for roasting pans and casserole dishes that I only use a dozen times a year. I imagine rather providing a place for those in the utility room – together with the pantry items that are currently all stored in the kitchen cupboards as well. At least those that aren’t used daily but actually count as “stock.” And drinking glasses... I could supply a whole school with them. I think that would work. Maybe further on in the kitchen planning process we can find a more suitable base dimension to fit one or two more carcasses. But I think I could arrange myself quite well with most results – I’m pretty flexible, even though I cook a lot... :)

I could recommend our shell builder to you. He comes from Münster in NRW and builds solid wood and timber frame with very modern planning tools. However, he is fully booked until summer 23. But I believe your intended construction method is not in his program. For my semi-detached house with about 132m², I paid "only" 104,843.85 net with the final invoice from December 2020 (windows and doors not included except 1x roof window)

I would also like a pre-Corona price like that and an interest rate below 1%... :( But it doesn't help, we have to work with the prices currently being asked.

What is currently being charged for the shell construction of 140 sqm of living space? Are there "usual current benchmarks," e.g., 1,200 euros per sqm for walls, ceilings, roof truss, etc.? We are building in the Hanover region. It would be interesting to know whether our currently calculated price from the manufacturer is above or below that.