Full floors in the timber-framed house with a 53-degree roof pitch.

Good day,

we are currently considering building a half-timbered house, 9 x 11 m, 53-degree roof pitch, no bay windows etc. in Niedersachsen.

The development plan allows only 1 full floor. Is it even possible to comply with this under the above conditions, or do we automatically have more than 1 full floor due to the steep roof pitch?

I would be very happy to hear about any experiences.

Best regards

That has less to do with experience and more with trigonometry.

The gable side of a rectangular floor plan with a 53° roof pitch without knee wall, dormer, or roof window must not be longer than 10m. If the shorter side is the gable side in your case, it fits.

we are currently considering building a half-timbered house, 9 x 11 m, 53 degree roof pitch, no bay windows etc. in Lower Saxony.

I am wondering about that: in Lower Saxony, but not with a Frisian gable, then 53° looks unusual. Why exactly fifty-three? - that sounds like a very specific (detailed) plan, from which one could therefore also draw more than just these few key points for assessment.

If for you the shorter side is the gable side, it fits.

I rely on experience there – namely that your statements typically apply. Intuitively, I would have said that the basics are somewhat tight, i.e., I would prefer more details.

First of all, thank you very much for the answers!

Yes, the entrance is supposed to be on the gable side and the length would only be 9m. However, it apparently would already be a very tight matter if it just fits without a knee wall. At least a small one would be very practical in terms of usable space.

Regarding the 53 degrees, I can say that we found a provider where this roof pitch is built as standard. Everything from 40 to 55 degrees is possible, however. The show house from the provider that we looked at also had a 53-degree roof pitch, measured 9x10m (a bit too small for us), and was developed up to the attic.

We really liked the provider as well as the show house. We were blown away by the appearance and of course wish that it would be possible to build like that for us as well. However, we still remember that the provider said that the show house as it stands there counted as 2 full stories.

Now the question arose for us as to why this is the case. Unfortunately, we can no longer remember the knee wall and at the moment our contact person there is on vacation and the question was burning a hole in our pocket.

My guess now is that it had a knee wall and that’s why there are 2 full stories. If that makes sense.

Are you Jessy?

Normally, the homeowners adapt to the consumers and offer single-story houses, provided [Satteldach] or similar. With [Fachwerk], there is probably no two-story house either, or no one wants to build one. Therefore, I think that the house with 53 degrees is already intended for single-story.

You wrote "no bay windows etcetera" - I referred the etcetera also to no Frisian gables, because otherwise, in my opinion, the risk of a full story would certainly be given. If you would have liked the model house only with such, consider that without it, roof pitches >50° look quite different. And with a knee wall, it would really be too much (not only visually, but also because of the full story direction). You can confidently name the provider and the location of the model house here, then we can take a look ourselves.