Roast my floor plans!

Yes. Every direction, if my house was 2-3-4 feet more, it would be PERFECT.

 

Hmm...we like both bedrooms on the east side. I'm going to use that.

 

Yeah you don’t have as much of an entrance foyer on the east side but I opened up the entrance next to the dining room to allow for guests and coats and shoes. I figure most guest drive cars and would park in a driveway and have shoes and it s a nice place to welcome guests. Also keeps your water wall and sewer drains all on the same side of the house limiting chances of pipes bursting or dripping and ruining what’s in basement storage.


Ps also the non master full bath doesn’t need two toilets I left it by accident. The counter should have two sinks and been shifted east and a linen closet put opposed the toilet.

 

You don’t want/need a basement… it’s just a place where crap goes to die.

Finished concrete floor with zoned radiant heat, including garage. No steps, lips, thresholds anywhere.

Have an ADA pro go over the whole thing for accessibility

Wall mount everything, toilets, sinks, etc…

Maximize wiring in the rafters. Oversized conduit in the walls including for entertainment. Nothing in/under the floor.

Access panels/locations for everything sink, tubs, toilets.

Sprinklers.

Backup/auxiliary heat source (fireplace/stove)

 

In Texas, Basements for a small tornado shelter are not a bad idea. Everyone knows scorpions, rattlesnakes, or Freddy Kruger lurks down there.

We could heed some of that advice for plumbing to be on interior walls with our winter deep freeze.

Garage. A bigger garage collects clutter but having room for stuff—separate his & her master bedroom closets. Master bedroom, showers are more common these days (resell value), but having a bathroom in the house is still good (nice long hot bath or washing the dog). Master bathroom. Toilet with a separate door & window/vent is good.

Our house is a five-bedroom ranch—2500 st ft with a separate 1500 sq ft garage. There is an advantage on tax reasons for doing this (home garages add to sq foot assessments, workshops do not). I have a small 8' x 10' office inside the garage. Small AC makes it a nice place to cool off on those hot, muggy days. Heat index of 115, oh joy. Empty nesters, so it's nice having space when the kids show up, but we need to downsize.

You mention views. Having a kitchen, living area to the rear means a nice area for a private patio/family space when the weather is good.

ADA: 36" exterior doors are good. 32" interior will cover most wheelchair, but 36" interior doors mean more room to get stuff in and out of the room. Four hinge doors. Closets, too. Windows (can a person in a wheel push open a window and get out of a burning structure?

Having 3/4" plywood horizontal means never having a question about a place to mount a grab handle in the bathroom securely.

I like the sun to rise on my cars in the morning to help melt the ice off the windshield, but for them to be in the shade in the afternoon. Western/Southern exposures get hammered by the sun in the South. So designing passive heating for winter/passive cooling for summer. A simple overhang to block summer sun, but when low in the winter comes in through windows—little details. Make a 1/24 size cardboard mockup and play with the roof pitch, overhand, and min/max sun elevations for that location.

Sun calculator.

Old page:
https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/solcalc/azel.html

New page:
https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/solcalc/

 

Yes I do.

I saw the Great Basement Debate over on the home improvement today thread. I realize some people want one and some don't.

Having lived with and without one, and watched grandparents grow old with and without one...we'll use one. Food and other storage will go down there (and if the storage "stuff" doesn't go down there, it will go into the garage instead, which we'd much rather use for other purposes), family room will be down there (mostly to be used as a kid's play area), eventually kid's bedrooms if they want some distance from us (or vice versa).

Once we're old, we'll have a harder time getting down there. But we won't need to go down there much at that point either.

 

Good for thought… walk out basement. In my opinion some of the cheapest most usable space.

 

Not a bad plan with with nice open living area and all on one level.
To live there until you croak that is a smart move because nobody knows what condition they will be in when they get old.
My wife has disabilities and when we built our home I knew someday she would need things done with the house that would make it easier for her to get around.
We went with an open floor plan like yours. I also added 3 foot interior doors for her wheel chair and we made sure the cabinet door handles were easy to grasp from a wheel chair.
Also I had extended stoops put on the front of the house so we could extend a wheel chair ramp along with hand rails.
I saw 3 things with your plan that concerned me.
1. No back door except through the garage. With kids going in and out that might not be good.
2. Master Bathroom behind the walk in closet isn't good if your closet looks like a lot of peoples. especially being old and trying to step over things.
3. When I saw the hallway bath room and the toilet backed up against the living room wall I couldn't help but think everyone in the living room is going to know what your doing on the toilet.
In most homes that bathroom is tucked in between the kitchen and bedroom.
Good luck and look at that house like you will be seeing it when your old. Its cheaper and easier to make changes now than when your old. Im 62 now and retired and did all of that when I was 40. I'm glad I was thinking that far ahead.

 

or…. add a room, buy a shed, build an outbuilding, etc. instead of digging a hole under your house.

basements are stupid… they leak… they crack… they move… why remove all the material from one side of a wall just to let Mother Nature push and pull on the other… people who sleep in basements have respiratory issues and die in fires… pests like basements… people fall on basement steps and hurt themselves lugging junk up and down… basements grow mold… basements trap radon, but hey…


it’s your house, you go moleman.

 

Have you been in a basement built since 1899?

 

I think going through the closet to get to the bathroom is a good idea. Having a bathroom door open directly into a sleeping space is weird to me. Think about it, the bedroom is quiet at night and the love of your life is sleeping peacefully. if you have an upset stomach or some bowel issues, the extra distance through the closet and going around a corner will offer more privacy.

 

Yay, we're not the only ones!

Since so many people have commented on it, I'll do some 'splaining on my wife's and my personal tastes that led to the bathroom/closet arrangement. As is obviously the case with basements, other's preferences may vary.
1. She and I have pretty much seen/smelled the worst of what each other has to...um...offer. As long as we're both in the bathroom doing bathroom stuff, we don't care if it's wide open. No need for a separate toilet compartment. However...
2. When one of us is in bed, we don't want the noise, light, etc. of the other one in the bathroom coming through. We'd prefer to sleep through whatever else the other one is doing in there. I especially like it completely dark when I'm sleeping, and an extra corner or two for the bathroom lights to go around before getting to my bed helps with that.

 

Yes…

they’ve only gotten stupider.


Seriously though: why go ‘down’…? You’re not going ‘up’. I don’t get it.

 

Going down is less expensive than going up. By a lot. (Caveat: We're leaving it unfinished for now. We'll finish it ourselves as time and money allow.)

Down naturally stays cooler than up. It's better for storage of perishable stuffs and makes for a very pleasant place to hang out during the summer.

The soil on our site drains well. As long as there isn't "standing" ground water at that depth, I'm not worried about a correctly-waterproofed basement leaking. And we have monitoring wells in place on our land right now to find out whether we have any "standing" ground water to worry about.

Cool selfie, thanks for sharing.

 

Not really, in the contiguous US, from an adiabatic perspective, considering what most humans deem comfortable…

 

Diabatics runs in my family so I'm keeping an eye out for it. Right now the doctor still says I'm adiabatic so I guess your equation makes sense. But if I keep eating the way I have been I'm going to become diabatic soon and then I think a basement will make more sense.

 

This is just another reason why I say the toilet should be in a room (door) within the bathroom. THAT stink exits via it's own fan/window, THAT sound is more isolated..........

 

We did have our first meeting with the builder that we will probably go with last week. Here's the updated version that we gave him to start from.
I really appreciate most people's input on here, especially @Toyko Joe for the bedroom re-arrangement idea.

 

What in the holy hell?

I've owned 3 houses, all of which had basements. None of them leaked or cracked, all houses settle, I have no respiratory issues, haven't died yet, ok, I'll give you the pests one - we have some spiders here and there, I've never fallen, don't have mold or radon.

Up here we need to dig down to 48" to get below the frost line for footing anyway. Might as well dig down a bit more and make the space usable.

 

“Frost-protected shallow foundations have some advantages over conventional foundations:

• They require less excavation, so smaller equipment and less labor are involved.
• Less concrete is consumed.
• Monolithic slabs are formed and poured in one shot, speeding the work schedule.
• They typically cost 15% to 21% less than a conventional foundation, according to a study by the NAHB Research Center (now the Home Innovation Research Labs).”

https://www.finehomebuilding.com/2010/11/11/frost-protected-shallow-foundations-2