Floor Plan Feedback
kentthompson
| Posted in Plans Review on
We’re building a single family home in Sacramento, CA, zone 3B. PGH inspired. We have an architect but would love to hear feedback from you knowledgeable folks.
A few notes that might make some of our choices make more sense: The first floor is unconditioned garage/shop space, second floor living space. Sacramento is at risk for flooding, and we’re near the river, which is one reason to have all the living space upstairs. I realize that good air sealing between the garage and living spaces will be critical for good IAQ. This house will be on 1 acre where we have a large garden and orchard. We’re not farmers, but work outdoors and process food a lot. Currently there is another house on the lot and we have plans of building small multifamily here in the future.
My grandmother lived in a house with an elevator in it. She lived to be 100 years old and would not have been able to stay in her home for the last few decades without the elevator. We’ll also be expecting to have aging parents as regular visitors. Perhaps the extra expense of an elevator seems excessive until it’s necessary…happy to hear your opinions.
The floor plans are still in the design phase…so they’re still rough…but that also means any input you provide can be incorporated. We haven’t really spent time thinking about the window placement and size yet. We’ll be focusing on daylighting with them and otherwise try to keep them sensibly sized.
A few questions I’m still chewing on:
1) How would you plan the air barrier for the elevator shaft? All inside or all outside the conditioned air barrier?
2) The second floor will have an ERV, how would you ventilate the garage/shop space? Exhaust only ventilation?
Thanks for any input! I really value the opinions of the folks on this site and have learned a lot from the articles and forum.
Kent Thompson
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Replies
I'm not thrilled with your plan for the second floor. As soon as guests walk in through the front door you're immediately confronted with the dining table and chairs. The room is 14'6" wide but 3 feet of that will be for the entry, bench and closet so that leaves 11'6" (not a lot of room to get around the table when the chairs are pulled out and people are sitting there). The wall above the dining room also constricts the space but I understand that that is there just to block views into the bathroom.
The laundry can stay on this floor (but in a much smaller space) and the mechanicals can move downstairs. That will allow the middle bathroom to be a turned 90 degrees with the door in the middle, the tub on the left and the sink and toilet on the right (this design means that you don't have a useless window in the tub/shower area getting wet and moldy - it will be straight ahead to look at when you open the door).
The living room is also cramped. There will probably be a couple of occasional chairs in there as well, along with side tables and maybe a floor lamp? That will really cut down on the circulation pathways (that bookcase in the hallway blocks sightlines and creates a weird obstacle in the hall - you should recess it into the bedroom wall).
The master bedroom is WAY TOO BIG! It's a room that will remain empty 16 hours out of the day, you don't need that much space.
Personally, I would try to find a different spot for that office/guest room and extend the living/dining room across the front of the house. Why block off one side of the house (where you could have windows for the view) from the main living space where most people will be spending their day? Let them enjoy the views, not one person sitting in the office for a couple of hours a day.
I would lay out the rear of the house this way: bedroom 1, elevator, bathroom, laundry, bedroom 2, office/guest room, master bedroom moved to upper right corner.
Front of the house: living room, dining room, entry, kitchen, master bathroom in the lower right corner.
Thank you rockies!
I largely agree with your assessment. I'll spend some time thinking about your alternative layout.
A few design considerations I didn't mention in my original post are that:
1) We had been trying to keep the HWH and air handler/ducts entirely within conditioned space. I agree there certainly is plenty of room downstairs for them to be. A flood if/when it happens would be a lot less catastrophic if the mechanicals were high and dry. It is hard to weigh the benefits of a better layout against energy efficiency and disaster planning.
2) We were trying to cluster the wet rooms as much as possible to minimize our "hot water rectangle". Again hard to compare the worth of that to a layout that works better.
3) The views to the west are not that great...the views are of a neighbor's backyard, while to the south and east it's our garden.
kentthompson,
The living areas will be very dark if they are under a 16 foot overhang. They would also benefit from being relocated so they have light from two sides.
The relationship of private to public spaces needs more attention. The occupants of two bedrooms and the guest room have to walk through the living areas to reach the bathroom.
I see why you added a wall to protect the entry to the main bathroom, but it effectively makes all the area to the north circulation space, which otherwise would be part of the living/ dining area. I would remove the wall and re-orient the bathroom door.
It's not something you do often, but getting anything large up those stairs would be very difficult, both because of their shape, and how close to the house they start.
Houses with all their living areas on the second floor often feel unwelcoming or awkward to approach. Visitors have to climb onto what is essentially a private deck to reach the front door. Perhaps incorporating a formal entry on the first level would help, as the house I linked to does. That would also allow you to leave outdoor clothing on the first level and not intrude into the living/dining area. https://www.kaplanthompson.com/project/white-mountain-view/
Thank you Malcolm! I appreciate you taking the time. That Kaplan home is beautiful and very similar to what we're trying to do.
Earlier iterations of the design did not extend the roof over the deck, which would help with daylighting. We're still left with needing shade on the deck to make it usable much of the year but there are other ways to do that. The deck is also bigger than most, it could be made smaller.
The entry on the first floor does sound appealing. That was part of the early designs, but we moved it outside to recapture the square footage that the stair took on both floors and I thought it would simplify the air sealing details between the garage/shop space and the living area.
kentthompson,
GBA is all about high performance building and detailing, but the danger of approaching a house design focused through that lens is of building a container for living in, primarily optimized for energy use.
Houses are primarily cultural objects. they are there to support our lives in all their messy complexity. Using things like minimizing the length that hot water needs to travel to fixtures, or simplifying air-sealing as a drivers for floor plans misunderstands this fundamental point.
I'm of course not advocating creating something that is hard to build efficiently, but try and create something beautiful, that will bring you joy to live in.
I get you and agree.
I've long ago realized that my brain doesn't work in floor plans. Which is why I'm happy to lean on designers and architects that have been thinking in this mode for years.
kentthompson,
I think Rockies63 has given you some very useful suggestions.
The big thing about designing floor plans is not necessarily the layout of one particular room, it's the relationship between rooms, how you move between them and whether you're moving from a public space (like an entry) to a semi-public space (like the living room, dining room and kitchen) and a private space (like bedrooms and bathrooms).
When you consider circulation pathways, I think the biggest problem with the plan is that you have private zones at both ends of the house.
The simplest solution is to remove bedroom #1 and the guest room and put them between the kitchen and the master bedroom and master bathroom part. I would then flip the locations of bedroom 2 and the bathroom so that the bathroom door opens in front of the elevator (and is not seen from the living space). If you reduce the depth of what is now the mechanical/laundry room (and make it just a laundry room) the door to bedroom 2 can open to a small hall on the right of it (you'll have to move the pantry back as well). With both the bathroom door and bedroom 2 door now opening to the sides you can remove the wall that is above the dining table (that will make the entire main space appear MUCH larger).
Now your private zones are all at one end of the house and your living space has exterior walls and windows on the left. You might want to add on a bumpout to the left of the elevator for an interior staircase to the lower level - that may be a practical addition for bringing things upstairs.
As to mechanicals on the lower level, you could always enclose the room with concrete walls and waterproof it, along with a water tight door. Just put the room under where the main bathrooms are on the second level.
Looks to me like the garage isn't deep enough and the storage rooms to the north of it are too deep. Garage is tight on space where you access the elevator. ~6' deep seems to work well for storage. 2' for stuff along the walls and 2' of walkway. Deeper than that tends to get piled up with stuff you have to climb over. I'm also not keen on double garage doors. A pair of singles gives better spacing between the vehicles.
Regards flooding how deep do you think the water could get? You've got enough height downstairs to put mechanicals on pedestals or to build an elevated mechanical room. Or maybe haul in dirt to build up the entire pad.
Good comments above.
6' space in the kitchen between counter and island is far too much. Makes island useless.
Master bedroom is wayyyyy to large. Master bedroom needs a wall across from the bed wall for a TV (you may not need this but needed for resale value)
Master bath needs 2 sinks
Entry is in an awkward location
Living room is too small for size of house
Guest/office is too large. For office ideas, watch the first episode of Netflix's "Hack my House".
I'm surprised an architect would release this plan, even as an early draft...
OK everybody. Thank you for your comments thus far. I really appreciate it. Based on the feedback, we're going to go back to the drawing board and include ~1/2 of the downstairs space in the conditioned space and move the office and mechanical room down there, rework the upstairs. I'll post the next draft here when it's ready.
I have one further thought on your layout.
In dividing up the plan into public zones, semi-public zones and private zones it's always best to cluster like minded spaces all together in order to keep circulation pathways clear and distinct. As I said in a previous comment, having the guest room and bedroom #1 at the left end of the plan means that people are moving from a private zone (bedrooms) through a semi-public zone (living room) in order to get to another private zone (bathroom). Moving the guest room and bedroom to the right side of the plan will concentrate all these private zones into one area but that still leaves a problem with the front entrance.
As it is now, you walk in through the front door and you're immediately in the dining room. Yes, there is a closet and bench on either side of the front door but they also face directly onto the dining table. Imagine a guest arriving a little late for dinner and walking in while everyone else is already seated. It's a bit awkward.
If you can (and if you remove the part of the house that has bedroom #1 and the guest room), I would move the front entry over to the upper left corner of the house and have the entry open up into a space next to the elevator. Then all the public spaces are off to the side and out of the way. Guests can come in, take off wet shoes, hang up coats, use the bathroom (Or better yet, turn the bathroom into a powder room with the door facing left) and then they can enter into the semi-public living room. Your dining room will also be much larger and more intimate with the front entry gone and you also won't have any major circulation paths cutting through it (you'll also gain some wall space to put in a nice window next to the dining table).
Best of luck with your plans!