Planning for a single-family house

I find the guest toilet next to the entrance door too small, and it also has no door :) Depending on the building technology, the utility room can be too small because you have a dead corner here.
In the hallway, you won't be able to fit a wardrobe or shoe cabinet.
Generally, there is little wall space for shelves in the living area.

Upstairs is an absolutely standard floor plan... so okay.

It will definitely be quite tight without a basement. There isn’t much storage space with a room size upstairs of 15 sqm. But it can work if you’re not the "collector" type. :)

Yes, that’s true. I have already noticed it too, but at the moment, I don’t know how to improve it sensibly without having to accept major losses in the other rooms. Do you have any suggestions?

I had considered the "dead corner" in the utility room for the washing machine or heating system, so it would at least be somewhat utilized. I had also thought about rotating the toilet by 90 degrees and then placing the door on the long side, if there is enough space.

In any case, I would be grateful for suggestions on how I can improve it further.

I have no idea exactly what you expect. Since you apparently have dealt enough with the costs, you probably contacted a construction company. Hopefully, they have employed "real" architects and will probably be able to solve your problem. I certainly cannot. And I also guess no one here in the forum will be able to, because almost all relevant information is missing. Location of the plot, or of the house.

Upstairs you don’t have many options; the space is simply tight. I estimate you have a 1m knee wall.
In the basement you have the problem that the footprint of the house is too small. I think you have allocated too much space for the kitchen and dining area. I would put the utility room left behind the stairs... entrance from above. Then the kitchen and dining room on the right side... below next to the entrance a guest WC and then kitchen and dining table. The living room would then be top left.

But I assume the side entrance door has to be on the right? Then it could be checked whether it is possible to mirror the floor plan.

Depending on the heating technology you want to have installed, you need space, and not too little. A small gas condensing boiler with 150l water tank takes hardly any space, but if you have 300l or more, it gets tight in your utility room.
Have you thought about where you will store laundry or place a drying rack? That would fit well in the utility room. There you definitely have to ensure good exhaust ventilation, otherwise your house will get moldy.

I can only advise you to let the architect have another go. If your construction company doesn’t have one at all, and they only fiddle around with PC floor plans, I would change the provider.

I mean some things should have caught the architect’s attention. Our architect spent almost 15 hours in total with us on our floor plans, we mentally walked through everything, placed strollers and fictitious furniture, and that’s how the perfect floor plan came out for us. My mother-in-law and my mother also had some complaints, but they don’t have to live in it. It is always individual what one finds good and what not, so no forum will help you with the floor plan. Something like that can only come about in conversation with a good architect... my opinion on that.

Hello,

Yes, that's true. I’ve noticed it too, but at the moment I don’t know how to improve it sensibly without having to accept major losses in the other rooms. Do you have a suggestion?

The "jack of all trades" doesn’t exist for you either; if you have to stay within the budget/building envelope, it means making compromises :confused:

I currently have time/desire to do a little drawing. The ground floor could look like the attached, if it is to remain usable and have clear architecture. I made the utility room larger, not so much because of the technology – I assume that with your budget there is no elaborate technology involved and it is certainly enough for a gas condensing boiler or air-to-water heat pump with a storage tank – but because of the justified objection regarding the utility room that you can place the drying rack in winter. I would connect the access to the right of the utility room with a prefabricated garage 3 x 9 including a rear storage room; the T 90 door is cheaper than a side entrance door and in my opinion more sensibly usable.

You should have the staircase to the upper floor made as a concrete staircase; this way you gain a pantry for the kitchen. I would set the sliding door running in front of the wall into the wall, so you gain space – both in the kitchen and in the adjoining dining room. Dining room and living room remain visually spacious – by eliminating the wall. I would also change the window front to the garden, planning more windows.

Your upper floor will still change on the right side of the stairs, a small open space will be created and with it the parents’ bedroom becomes a bit smaller. I would also make the square hallway more linear – the children’s rooms don’t have to be ballrooms given the size of the house; kids are more outside than inside anyway, and when they get older they prefer being among themselves and so not necessarily in their children’s rooms ;) Besides, the boiler room must be reasonably accessible.

What I don’t quite understand is why you are doing the planning yourself? If you find a builder/general contractor/architect, they make the plans for you anyway and usually in the end there is a completely different plan than the one originally conceived in your head ....

Kind regards

We also designed our floor plan ourselves. I think you put more thought into it when designing it yourself and can already virtually furnish it. You simply don't have that time on site with the architect or seller. Adjustments to your own desired floor plan can still be made there.

Especially women (maybe except building experts) are known to have the problem of being able to imagine objects in 3D. The 3D view helped my wife a lot there.

I am sure that such a do-it-yourself planning program is a nice toy, I myself have done a lot of drawing with SketchUp from Google. But it NEVER replaces the architect. In the end, saving money there is simply the wrong place.
An architect must take as much time as the client needs, because only when the client is satisfied does he get his money. Lack of time is no excuse.

What you can do is to make such a draft and take it to the architect. I would say 90% of the self-designed plans are discarded and then properly rebuilt. The architect then already has an idea of what you envision. After all, an architect has learned the craft and simply sees things that a layman just cannot see. Everything is certainly doable or buildable, but whether it is also economical, what you put together on the PC, no private builder can assess. Routing, statics, staircase calculations, sensible pathways, number of windows, and so on.

Hello everyone,

even though I had actually already gone a bit beyond the construction description, I just stumbled upon one point again while reading.

The wall structure of the exterior walls is described as follows:

- approx. 1.0 to 1.5 cm plaster thickness, interior plaster (gypsum plaster)
- 17.5 cm masonry (Poroton) (according to static requirements)
- 2 x 6.0 cm thermal insulation (according to requirements of the thermal protection calculation according to [Energieeinsparverordnung 2009])
- approx. 2.0 cm finger joint cavity brickwork with a thickness of approx. 11.5 cm (dependent on manufacturer)

As an addition, we have planned an insulation package in the offer. This is described as follows:

- 100mm perimeter insulation under the sole
- 140mm mineral insulation in the wall
- 240mm mineral insulation in the roof

At the moment I am surprised by the 2.0 cm finger joint cavity (i.e. air layer) in the exterior wall. I know that this is permissible. I have also understood that the air layer can be omitted if cavity insulation is used.

Now the question arises whether this makes sense. With 140mm mineral insulation in the wall, according to my understanding, the air layer would be omitted. Is that correct? That would then correspond to cavity insulation without an air layer. Is that also correct?

I am simply interested in whether this is acceptable and that I have not overlooked anything.

Thanks and regards Matthias