I have a problem understanding the why and wherefore – because maybe you don’t even explain why it has to be so complicated?!
It becomes complicated due to the combination of boundary conditions:
- §34 with existing buildings that are all one and a half stories and were much more expensive than my budget
- my budget of only 200,000 (only for the house, excluding kitchen and furniture)
- we want to build now even though we will only “need” the house in 10 years because in 10 years it might be completely unaffordable. I am currently saving just under 2,000 euros per month and am perhaps just barely offsetting the ongoing inflation in the real estate market
- rental within the family is planned, and if it gets too tight with the schoolchild/teenager, the timing also fits to move in ourselves
- renting the whole house is quite expensive for my cousin despite the family discount, so I would like to have the subsidy through an additional small holiday/annex apartment, hence the division
- the ground floor is intended for the utility room for the care and technology of the holiday/annex apartment and for part of the building technology/heating/ventilation plus space in the attic
- because some of the technology is to go into the attic (and storage space as well), the staircase must be in the middle due to the low building height of the house
- because the staircase has to be in the middle, it is always somewhat sideways on the ground floor
These points are meant to help with understanding, I do not want to stifle alternative suggestions, quite the opposite
I also have a problem understanding – assuming it is a good and comprehensible sensible plan – why parking spaces are distributed so strangely on the property.
A parking space directly at the house would be nice if neither a garage nor a carport fits the budget. The other three are on the busier street that runs across the bottom of the plan. I could most easily do without that part of the garden on the south end. Where would the parking spaces be better located?
Why should the house be built at all? Do you want an investment? Do you want a holiday apartment and to be entrepreneurs, or do you want a home for yourselves (whoever that is)? One builds the house according to that.
First, we want to rent to my cousin and once it becomes too cramped for him (or a bit later) we (my partner and I) want to move in ourselves. Currently, we are both constantly traveling for work. We do not want to wait any longer with building because of the continually rising prices.
An example from the web, quickly found at Scanhaus Marlow where I can see at a glance that it is possible to separate the ground floor and upper floor with few means if one accepts compromises in living quality and size.
But first the question is: what do you basically want?
Thanks for the example.
It can indeed be divided. I have redrawn it so that each floor has one residential unit.
Very good is here that the ground floor children’s/workroom is large enough to put in a double bed if one is willing to compromise. In this example, unfortunately, the ground floor children’s room has no direct access to the rest of the ground floor apartment but only via the “public” staircase. But if you move your door into the wall toward the living room as I have drawn, then it fits. However, a prefab house provider once rejected that for me because the walls running longitudinally under the ridge were load-bearing walls.
You have to create space for a shower on the ground floor (if you want/need to keep the utility room because otherwise there is nowhere for the building technology). To do so, the kitchen could be made smaller and a mini-bathroom and an extra window could be installed there, I have also drawn this in.
The question remains where the second building technology should go. The utility room is enough for one set of heating and ventilation. If you don’t have special doubled devices, then the second set of heating/hot water/ventilation must go somewhere. The attic is difficult to impossible because it is usually too low in prefab houses and because the folding attic stair is too narrow and steep to get the technology into the attic. With money, there would certainly be a solution.
And if you want to accommodate a kitchen with living-dining area upstairs and halve the bathroom while keeping the bathroom window, then upstairs you have only one window in kitchen+dining+living area. With money, of course, that can be solved by a roof window.
That is also the crux. I once got a prefab house provider to calculate what it costs to divide a one and a half story house into two levels and we ended up far above my budget. (with bungalows it is cheaper)
I do not want to criticize the suggestion in principle.
It just seems expensive in this concrete case to separate the two floors into separate apartments. For that, this house, like most other prefab houses, seems much too optimized for exactly one use. My partner and I have already looked at some show houses. And many floor plans. When trying to split a small one and a half story prefab house, we always came across something that was very expensive with each provider, no matter how willing we were to compromise. But one should never give up hope, this example already looks distinctly more promising than most other designs I have tried to split. Thanks again.