Floor plan single-family house 2 full floors ~180m² living area - 760m² plot

The underlying problem of the floor plan lies in the following cocktail of causes:

1) the floor plan is genetically a long floor plan by design, but pressed into the proportions of a nearly square floor plan; this results, among other things, in a donut hole / hurricane eye, "filled" by the pantry or storage room, around which the hallway has to wrap;

2) due to the corner location of the house entrance, the first bend of the hallway is created, so that it has a total of two bend points;

3) the unfavorable entrance location is continued in the position and orientation of the staircase.

I understand your diagnosis as meaning that, in your opinion, either a "elongated" house shape or a floor plan adapted to the proportions without a pantry in the middle should be used, and that the location of the house entrance and consequently the staircase is suboptimal from your point of view.

Or how else could this be read constructively?

I think you misunderstood or I expressed myself unclearly. The niche should be planned so that the cooling unit is of course not inside the storage room, but accessible in the kitchen area while "disappearing" into the wall. Regards

Nevertheless, it is the case that by centralizing the storage room, you make it very warm… which is not desirable in the storage room.

Does the plan work the way we imagine it? We are concerned that the kitchen/dining/living area feels too cramped. We want an open/generous living feeling with bright rooms in the living area. A few opinions/assessments of the plan would be nice :)

Yes, the plan works with a few limitations that you have to assess yourself and some of which have already been mentioned.

[*]The dining area is a bit tighter than optimal when fully occupied. But honestly: Is it really that bad to squeeze past each other on these occasions? It works fine in restaurants, and you have nice evenings. [*]The dining table always somehow gets in the way on the way to the garden and living room; that would bother me more than the "tightness." [*]The pantry in the donuthole of the house is a quirky idea that at least somehow uses the darkest corner in the square floor plan. At the same time, the arrangement will probably result in a rather warm room, which does not correspond to the basic idea of a pantry. [*]I find the placement of the outdoor part of the heat pump directly in front of the living room and below a bedroom potentially acoustically unfavorable. [*]The kitchen has rather little workspace and feels small (the fact that the dressing room seems to be the size of the kitchen amuses me in terms of priorities, but it is not a real problem).

I think the idea of the setback is good, but in my view, it has too many disadvantages, especially regarding garden access. Separation from the living area can certainly also be achieved with a nice narrow shelf - this breaks the "tunnel feeling." To still integrate a covered terrace, you can include a surrounding roof from the garage to the kitchen on the house. Of course, pay attention to the loss of light in the dark season. This is not a real problem if the low winter sun reaches the house.

I think you get that feeling through the large window areas. Nevertheless, the dining/kitchen area is indeed not generous but sufficient.

I think so too – but that is lost again as soon as you sit with your back to the window (living room). If TV is so much more important – so be it.

On the ground floor, we also consciously wanted the living area "around the corner," and not in line with kitchen and dining, which in the houses we have visited usually gave the feeling of standing in a tunnel.

The goal is achieved with the arrangement.

No, a sliding door would not resolve the bottleneck. Without a sliding door, the doors would only be openable if no one is sitting.

An outward-opening folding wall would be an alternative and at the same time a complete waste given the lack of practical accessibility. What I, like , did not understand is the choice of a square floor plan and the acceptance of the inherent principal disadvantages.

I understand your diagnosis to mean that in your opinion either an "elongated" house shape or a floor plan adapted to the proportions without a pantry in the middle should be used, and that the location of the front door and the associated staircase is suboptimal from your point of view.

At that time I did not yet know that the pantry is an "import" from a friend's house floor plan, which you apparently find clever (although I assume that this detail came about for them in the way I had suspected here). Two relatively better staircase locations would be the ones from @Würfel in post #36 or as in the previous ground floor in the opening post. Yes, I recommend a decision for either an elongated floor plan with an elongated layout or a compact floor plan with a compact layout, instead of this unfavorable hybrid combination. In both cases, two things are the worst choices, namely corner access and a location of the staircase under the eaves with an alignment parallel to the eaves. A good staircase location would be eaves-side, but oriented with entrance and exit towards a hallway (depending on the floor plan proportions either at the center point or the central axis). A favorable entrance location could be gable-side, near the middle – the two greatest freedoms you gain by emancipating the front door from the garage door and by relinquishing a garage-house side door. Gather all your courage to walk from the garage door to the front door five, six or even seven meters past hungry saber-toothed tigers through the monsoon, and a chance of a nice floor plan will richly reward you for it!

The pantry in the "donut hole" of the house is a quirky idea that at least uses the darkest corner of the square floor plan somehow. At the same time, the arrangement will rather result in a fairly warm room, which does not correspond to the basic idea of a pantry.

Bonus points would then be earned by taking a few more millikalories to the pantry and giving it a (preferably residual) location on a (at least in terms of the residential part) outer wall.

What I did not understand, similar to @11ant, is the choice of a square floor plan and the acceptance of the principal disadvantages that come with it.

Oh, I do understand that: the principal disadvantages are not recognized at all because if friends like it, "it can't be bad." Their house is just serving as a role model, merely scaled down to their own circumstances.

Again, thank you very much for your unfiltered opinion!

What I did not understand similarly to @11ant is the choice of a square floor plan and the acceptance of the principle disadvantages that come with it.

To be honest, we did not consciously decide on a "square" or against an elongated floor plan.

Now, after a few days of reflection, one has to say that the plan has probably become a monstrosity from our preconceived planning ideas, combined with the desired room program + utopian ideas about usability in old age as well as separable living units.

The planner of the home builder initially presented us with 2 plans, which with 8x11m are probably to be seen as "long floor plans." Here, the entrance was also each time centered on the gable side with the stair location either straight in the middle or as in the suggestion by . In retrospect, we probably "twisted" the planner and imposed our "plan" on her.

I find the arrangement of the outdoor part of the heat pump directly in front of the living room and below a bedroom potentially acoustically unfavorable.

Where would you rather see it? We don’t want that thing in front of the house by the street; actually, I don’t want to see it at all – which is why we had planned the placement behind the garage.

I like the idea of the setback, but from my point of view, it has too many disadvantages, especially because of garden accessibility.

We have already "distanced" ourselves from the setback, as nice as we also find it visually.

Yes, I recommend a decision for either an elongated floor plan with an elongated floor plan layout or a compact floor plan with a compact floor plan layout.

What can I understand as a "compact floor plan"? Would you perhaps have an example for this?

Take all your courage together, to walk from the garage door to the front door five, six, or even seven meters long past hungry sabre-toothed tigers through the monsoon, and a chance at a nice floor plan will richly reward you for it!

This statement amused me a lot, thank you for that. However, we would still find this detail nice if we could just close the garage behind us and go directly into the house from there.

Would the attached floor plans be "better" candidates in your eyes? (would still have to possibly rotate/mirror or adjust to our orientation) I just looked around this internet again..

9x12 - garage passage at the stairs?

[IMG alt="Hanse - Villa 178 Floorplan 1"]https://cdn.fertighaus.de/images/hanse_villa178_floorplan1.fill-512x455.jpg?t=6557a183[/IMG]

9.34x11.22 - rotate+mirror - garage access via utility room/wardrobe
[IMG alt="https://cdn.fertighaus.de/images/wolfsystem_werner_floorplan1.fill-512x455.png?t=ef529ee5"]https://cdn.fertighaus.de/images/wolfsystem_werner_floorplan1.fill-512x455.png?t=ef529ee5[/IMG]

8.75x12 - mirror, garage passage hallway


no dimensions found, passage via "utility room"

Regards

Floor plan 2 works well IMHO