Critique this rough floorplan
We are in beginning stages of choosing an architect/project manager, but we have some wishes on how we want the floor plan to be.
Being amateurs, I’m sure there are mistakes. Please critique.
Our goals, wants and needs:
– make the house as small as possible, ut with enough room for everything we need/want
For example, we want a study, though that is not common practice here. We took that good practice from USA and like it a lot.
– open space L-shaped living+dining+kitchen, where dining room table is an 8 seater, but can be extended for up to 12. We can eat up into living room obviously for this, but without moving furniture around.
– 1 small bathroom downstairs with only shower and toilet, upstairs also with a tub and some storage for towels and makeup and such stuff
– laundry as isolated as possible, since it’s also a technical room with condensing gas boiler/ ASHP indoor unit and possibly HRV/ERV. Since we put used clothes in a basket in a bathroom, we thought it a good idea to put it next to bathroom. We would rarely dry clothes outside, so upstairs should be fine (the only way that I knew how to have plumbing in one place).
– kitchen with a walk in pantry
– simple cubical house, no unneeded corners anywhere, only slightly recessed entry door
Please advise if there are some obvious errors.
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Replies
Davor,
1. You might want to flip the downstairs plan so that the entry door leads to the living/dining area instead of the area near your study and guest bathroom.
2. Is the partition wall between the downstairs hall and the living/dining room really necessary?
3. Access to the laundry room is awkward, because you have to walk through the bathroom to get there.
4. The door to "Child Room 2" is awkward -- consider an angled partition to solve the problem.
5. The door to the master bedroom and the door to the walk-in closet conflict.
6. You should draw the toilets, showers, tubs, and lavatories to make sure everything works well.
-- Martin Holladay
1. You might want to flip the downstairs plan so that the entry door leads to the living/dining area instead of the area near your study and guest bathroom.
There will also be a big terrace, along the whole of the south wall, with glass doors from both living room and dining. As I said, this is just a starting point :)
2. Is the partition wall between the downstairs hall and the living/dining room really necessary?
I reckon yes, it is supposed to be a supportive wall. Also, we like open plan, but not that much. When I watch a TV late night, I don't want to interfere with others who might be sleeping.
3. Access to the laundry room is awkward, because you have to walk through the bathroom to get there.
Hm, this is what we actually found to be a good thing, since clothes will be collected in the bathroom basket. Also, it's more removed from the rest of the house, because of the potential noise.
But I suppose we can rotate it so that it's accessible from the hallway. We will think about it.
4. The door to "Child Room 2" is awkward -- consider an angled partition to solve the problem.
Ok, that makes sense, since we can still put the closet there in any case. We will rework this section.
5. The door to the master bedroom and the door to the walk-in closet conflict.
Doors (and windows) have not yet been taken into serious account. but yes, the doors placement will have to be improved.
6. You should draw the toilets, showers, tubs, and lavatories to make sure everything works well.
I have, taking measures of the stuff we already have in our current home, to get a good scale. I have this drawing as well, but not right now. I suppose no harm in posting it later today.
Thanks again for your help Martin!
A couple of thoughts...
1. You don't seem to have much storage space in the downstairs for coats/shoes etc... We're planning a remodel starting in a couple of months and we're including a good size mudroom. Make sure you have access under the stairs so you can use that space for storage.
2. You could incorporate a second door from the hallway into the pantry, this will save you having to carry all your groceries round and through the dining room.
3. The upstairs looks like it could be improved. A 14' x 9' closet is enormous. Personally I'd think about cutting that in half and maybe having a small master bath. Also the closet uses 1/3rd of your southern wall.
Personally I'd consider moving child bed 1 to the propose closet, make the proposed master child bed 2, push the bathroom and mechanical into the area that is currently child bed 1 and use the eastern side of the house for a master suite with bedroom, second bathroom and walk-in closet. I know this means there's a bit more plumbing required, but your main water loads (bathrooms and laundry) are near that mechanical room and it's not like you're running 50' pipes to get hot water to a remote bathroom...
>1. You don't seem to have much storage space in the downstairs for coats/shoes etc... We're planning a remodel starting in a couple of months and we're including a good size mudroom. Make sure you have access under the stairs so you can use that space for storage.
Yes, stairs will also serve as storage for coats and shoes. Perhaps more storage would be welcome, but we do think this will suffice, judging by our current needs.
>2. You could incorporate a second door from the hallway into the pantry, this will save you having to carry all your groceries round and through the dining room.
This is probably a good advice.
>3. The upstairs looks like it could be improved. A 14' x 9' closet is enormous. Personally I'd think about cutting that in half and maybe having a small master bath.
We do not want master bath. That would mean we would have 3 bathrooms, which is insane. And it would cut our storage space significantly. Big wardrobe is not just wardreobe, it would also double as "knick-knack" storage room, for all the stuff you can't throw away, yet you don't use them all that often (like, for example, my Nintendo console collection :) )
>Personally I'd consider moving child bed 1 to the propose closet, make the proposed master child bed 2, push the bathroom and mechanical into the area that is currently child bed 1 and use the eastern side of the house for a master suite with bedroom, second bathroom and walk-in closet. I know this means there's a bit more plumbing required, but your main water loads (bathrooms and laundry) are near that mechanical room and it's not like you're running 50' pipes to get hot water to a remote bathroom...
That makes a lot of sense. I took the rule of grouping all the rooms that need water and plumbing perhaps too seriously?
If this does not represent a big problem, or if this does not mean I would have to wait too long for hot water in the kitchen downstairs, those proposed changes would be very much welcome.
Thanks a lot!
Your pantry is wide enough to walk through IF you don't have any shelves on the wall. To be effective as a pantry, I suspect you will want some decent depth shelves, however.
Similarly, your laundry room seems excessively narrow. I suggest putting icons in for the washer and dryer. Don't assume that the back of the dryer will be flat against the wall. Sometimes it takes some space to hook up the vent.
With a bend in the stairs, I suspect you will wish they were wider when It is time to carry furniture upstairs.
Don't go too far in the process before you consider where windows go. Sometimes, you need windows in certain places to make the house look right from the outside and those places don't correspond to the logical places for windows on the inside. For example, outdoor appearance would call for a window in your laundry/technical room but you may not really want one in that room.
>Your pantry is wide enough to walk through IF you don't have any shelves on the wall. To be effective as a pantry, I suspect you will want some decent depth shelves, however.
16 inch shelves, 32 inches to walk should do it, I think? i increased the width by 4in.
>Similarly, your laundry room seems excessively narrow. I suggest putting icons in for the washer and dryer. Don't assume that the back of the dryer will be flat against the wall. Sometimes it takes some space to hook up the vent.
Thanks! I took 2 inches clearance for most stuff where space can potentially be an issue.
That means 25.5 inches for washer/dryer/kitchen counter/desks/chairs.
I drew by hand from the dimensions I got from Ikea, since this is where we will get a lot of our stuff, and the rest will be custom made.
With a bend in the stairs, I suspect you will wish they were wider when It is time to carry furniture upstairs.
Added 4 inches total for the stairs, 2 inches per flight.
>Don't go too far in the process before you consider where windows go. Sometimes, you need windows in certain places to make the house look right from the outside and those places don't correspond to the logical places for windows on the inside. For example, outdoor appearance would call for a window in your laundry/technical room but you may not really want one in that room.
I did put windows there, just not final placement. For example, I'm still evaluating if they should be aligned and same size, or asymmetric and different sizes.
I am drawing extensively in Sketchup now, to get the idea of how it works. We like how it looks so far, whatever we do :D
Western side needs to be minimal windows because we have neighbors there. That is also what limits me in where to put which room. For example if i want a window in the kitchen, kitchen needs to be on the eastern side.
And so on.
Later today i will put up an image with furniture.
Though I am still uncertain in how strictly do I need to look for plumbing. I feel reluctant putting upstairs mechanical/laundry room + bathroom too far horizontally from downstairs kitchen+bathroom, like ben suggested. It does make sense in the layout, but I don't know how much extra cost that is, and also how much longer would I be waiting on the hot water in the kitchen downstairs. I will have to consult our PM further, though he already told me that he would not like that :)
This article is hideously complex, but it infers that flow rates for residential plumbing should be somewhere between 1.5 and 2 meters per second. If I'm not mistaken that means every meter between the water heater and the tap will add between 0.5 and 0.75 seconds to the time it takes for hot water to flow... 5 meters from heater to tap = 2.5 - 3.75 seconds of the hot water to 'appear', at 8 meters that time becomes 4 - 6 seconds.
http://www.johnhearfield.com/Water/Water_in_pipes.htm
If you plan to use an architect, I wouldn't spend much more energy and time on the floor plan. When designing our house, we more or less knew what spaces we wanted, but our architect was able to take our ideas and make them workable. You'll probably end up with a floor plan very different from what you have now.
Ben Balcombe,
The topic is not quite as complex as you imply. See the tables below (reproduced from a GBA article by Gary Klein titled Inefficient Hot Water Piping Layouts Waste Hot Water).
For more information on the topic, read Klein's article -- and check out the links in the "Related Articles" sidebar on that page.
.
Martin - I was referring to the article I linked as being hideously complex. It gets into chaos theory, fluid dynamics etc... to explain why you don't want/can't have a flow of water more than 2 meters per second in a pipe...
Hire an Architect. Draw upon your experience with rooms that you have lived with (how big of a bathroom or bedroom do you really need), You have one bathroom for 3 1/3 bedrooms - not a good idea at all. Hall space in nicely minimized. Kitchen seems like a reasonable size. Are you putting closets in the bedrooms?
You need some professional help with the design, or you will regret not doing so.
>You have one bathroom for 3 1/3 bedrooms
This is a European thing :)
We don't want 3 bathrooms for (eventually) only 4 household members. It's a waste of space and money, in our view. There is another bathroom, downstairs, for emergencies and when coming from a garden or something like that.
>Are you putting closets in the bedrooms?
Yes. I had no time to finish a sketch with furniture, I'll get to that over the weekend.
>Hire an Architect
Our PM has his architect. But I doubt it's a very good one, since the price is too low for that. To hire one separately is out of our budget. That's why we want to flesh out our vision as much as possible and let the PM and his architect correct details. Which is why I am asking for advice here as well, so I don't end up with a completely different house.
PM is pushing us toward some of the houses for which he already has projects, because it's obviously easier for him, and most people have no problem with that. But this is not what we want. All of them have balconies, and floorplans don't really work for our land (south facing, neighbors on the west side).
Also, thanks for the hot water equations! That's useful. So the difference is not that much. If the cost is also not a big difference, we might as well rearange a bit to get that north room in the south.