We need help planning our house! - Page 4

CommanderROR · 07-06-2009, 08:28 AM

Well, we had a few delays, but I'm hoping work will strart within the next 2 weeks...as soon as I have something I'll try to post it. Might be that I forget, so feel free to remind me again at the end of the month...

Wetdogeared · 07-06-2009, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

Well, we had a few delays, but I'm hoping work will strart within the next 2 weeks...as soon as I have something I'll try to post it. Might be that I forget, so feel free to remind me again at the end of the month...

A photo of a big foundation hole would be a good start.

WDE.

CommanderROR · 07-19-2009, 06:04 AM

OK, so the newest info is that we should be able to start on the 27th of july. As soon as I have pictures of the big hole you'll get them.
We are also planning to start a "Bautagebuch" online, so I might just link there then. So far we have not gotten round to opening a blog for it...I hope it will work somehow, we are both not exactly versed when it comes to webdesign.

I can provide you with one picture of the plot, it does not actually show much...

By now there are markers up to show how big (or rather small) the house will be and also where the plot ends and starts. Our plot is a measly 524 square metres which we share with a collegue and good friend who is building the second half of our "double house" (what is it in english? semi-attached?).

More to come soon...I hope...

I'll also try to attach the most recent floorplans. They are pretty much final, the only change that has been made since is that the gues-bathroom was made 11cm narrower and the main entrance door moved by the same amount to make room for some pipes that go through the wall next to the door (the wall will be a bit thicker there due to that). It was a necessary change because we have so much stuff planned in that all the pipes and cables that come with our "special equipment" caused some serious headaches for our planners...

Also, the washing machine and dryer positions were moved to the other side of that little wall in the cellar.

Wetdogeared · 07-19-2009, 08:27 AM

Thanks for the update. The term we use for 2 homes sharing a common wall in Canada is "semi-detatched," but "semi-attached" sounds more optomistic.

I had to look up "Bautagebuch" to find out it meant "Building diary." I'm asuming this is some kind of on-line blog with lots of photos and comments as the building progresses.

Looking forward to the big foundation hole. You know if you start before the winter frost it is much easier to dig?

WDE.

zelda_pinwheel · 07-19-2009, 08:44 AM

thanks for the photos ! this is very exciting stuff. i can't wait to see the progress. of course i am sure you are much more excited than i am.

when do you think the house will be finished to move into ? or is that a tricky question ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wetdogeared

Thanks for the update. The term we use for 2 homes sharing a common wall in Canada is "semi-detatched," but "semi-attached" sounds more optomistic.

I had to look up "Bautagebuch" to find out it meant "Building diary." I'm asuming this is some kind of on-line blog with lots of photos and comments as the building progresses.

Looking forward to the big foundation hole. You know if you start before the winter frost it is much easire to dig?

WDE.

HarryT · 07-19-2009, 08:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wetdogeared

Thanks for the update. The term we use for 2 homes sharing a common wall in Canada is "semi-detatched,"

The same word is used in Britain.

CommanderROR · 07-19-2009, 10:40 AM

OK, so semi-detatched it is...

When we'll be able to move in is hard to say right now...we have a guarantee that if it takes more than 6 months they have to pay us 150€ per week as compensation...but of course there are quite a few things that can go wrong that are not covered by that guarantee...

If everything works really well we could be more or less ready in 4 months, but somehow I don't believe we'll be that lucky. Sometime in the next weeks we'll get a list that details when what should be done...I'll tell you more when I know...

zelda_pinwheel · 07-19-2009, 10:42 AM

wow, 4 months ! i don't know much (well... anything, really) about construction but it seems impressive that an entire new house can be finished so quickly. although maybe for you, waiting to inhabit it, it doesn't seem so quick...

please do keep us posted ! it's very interesting to see the progression. it's quite exciting to build your own house to your exact specifications !

yvanleterrible · 07-19-2009, 11:01 AM

Congratulations C.R.

There is an unused space between the living room and the dining area that will only gather dust and be considered a hallway.

Personnally I'd put the kitchen where the dining set is so the cook will be able to communicate with everyone. A secluded kitchen is rough on the person that does the cooking. It will also help a mother to do cooking while being able to watch on the whole floorplan, that's critical when you get children in the house. Plan your dining area to fit in the kitchen. I would put a micro office for the children to study under supervision at the spot you have that kitchen now, with a few sitting chairs, and a second tv.

Now that you have access to some money for building, GO SOLAR!!!

rgeorg · 07-19-2009, 11:33 AM

4-6 months is very fast for Europe - at least Greece! We are building a house - we started the design process in Nov '07, waited 1 year for the approval, broke ground in April '09, and now we have the foundation, walls and roof. It will take around 8-10 additional months to complete (optimistically). Of course, we have very stringent earthquake regulations which affect the building materials and procedure that have to be followed. The home design is modern and based on the Mansion Tuggendhat (in the Czech Republic, by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe).
http://www.czecot.com/en/tourist-att...ist-villa-brno)

There is a saying here:
"Greeks build houses as though they are going to live forever and they eat as though they are gong to die tomorrow!"

CommanderROR · 07-19-2009, 11:55 AM

@yvanleterrible

all easy to say, but the planning is long over...

The furniture that is printed in is just an example and has nothing to do with our own plans. Only the water connections are already planned in, so the kitchen stays where it is...

My wife wanted it in that corner, actually we had originally planned to have closed-off kitchen like we have now, but discarded it for the open-plan kitchen. That it has to be seperated from the rest somehow was a must from the beginning though, that's why it's in the corner up there...
We do not plan to have any children (fingers crossed that it wil stay that way!) so I'm not too worried about keeping an eye on them...^^

Oh and by the way...we went solar...

You can see the panels on the roof.

rgeorg · 07-19-2009, 02:12 PM

"Public" kitchens are a trend that I am also not very fond of - my ideal is a closed, eat-in kitchen. Your traffic plan looks very efficient and usable. We tried solar water-heating and had some problems, even in Greece where there are many sunny days. I think the solar panels are more advanced and less expensive in Germany. We are considering heating using radiant-heat panels (electric) + a wood-stove for winter. It will probably be too expensive though (the panels). And then we'd have to have a separate boiler for hot-water.....

I never should have started talking about it.....(aggh!) ;-)

CommanderROR · 07-19-2009, 04:58 PM

Well, if you ask me, I would not try heating with electricity...that really costs!

Solar for warm water is OK, I would never consider it as singular solution though...that is bound to cause problems sooner or later. We have gas heating and use solar to help keep the warm water cost low. In summer we might be able to produce a large percentage of our warm water with solar power so the heating can remain mostly idle. The most important bit is the warm-water storage tank in the cellar that stores the sun-generated hot water for when it's needed. The expensive stuff in our house is the stuff that is supposed to stop too much warmth from escaping (and in summer too much heat getting in).

Our walls are pretty well wrapped in Styrodur (on top of the energy efficient bricks), the cellar is wrapped in a special kind of Styrodur that prevents too much cold from the earth seeping in, especially through the floor.
The windows all have triple glazing, the only problem with that is that in a cold winter the outer galss can freeze over because too little warth is transmitted from the inside of the building...but if we close the blinds (what is rolläden in english???) at night that won't happen.
We have floor-heating everywhere (including the cellar) which should also help keep us comfortable and in the lounge we have a place where we can connect a wood-stove. We have chosen this model http://www.haassohn.com/ProductDetai...?id=17&catId=1 because it has a nice 180° window so that we can watch the flames dance from the dining area and also from the couch. Putting a wood-stove in an all-but airtight house is a bit of a problem, but we managed to get around that be having a chimney with an extra channel for fresh air (pulled in from outside), meaning that it does not use much air from inside the house. We'll use the wood-stove for autumn and spring when it's not really worthwhile to fire up the floor-heating.

Heart and soul of our setup is the fresh-air-system. It's a rather complicated Setup from Vaillant that works as follows:

In the bathrooms, kitchen and the heater room in the cellar air is drawn out through openingsin the ceiling. It is then drawn through a series of pipes under the floors and in the walls to the main unit in the cellar. In this device there is a radiator that get's warmed be the outgoing air which leaves the building through a passthorugh in the cellar wall. The other end of the system sucks in fresh air from outside, filters it (two filters, one for bigger particles and one for small stuff like pollen) and leads it through the radiator where it gets warmed up and then blown in through floor vents in the living and sleeping quarters and the other cellar rooms. All doors are slightly open at the bottom to create an unhindered airflow through the entire building. Air is exchanged constantly but slowly and the loss of warmth should be fairly small. That takes care of several problems, most of all the problem of damp and mold that are big issues in well-isolated buildings.
A nifty detail of the system we'll get (Vaillant Recovair) is that it comes with a so-called summer-bypass that makes sure that the radiator gets bypassed in summer where you don't want the house to overheat. As soon as the system detects that the outside temperature is lower than the inside (in summer) it completely bypasses the radiator and cools the inside of the house down, mostly over night when it cools down a bit in the summer months. I could really use something like that right now since it's terribly hot in here right now and as soon as I open the windows I get attacked by a large variety of bugs that think I taste delicious...

Ok, now I'll stop with the boring details...at least for now...

Sweetpea · 07-20-2009, 02:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wetdogeared

Thanks for the update. The term we use for 2 homes sharing a common wall in Canada is "semi-detatched," but "semi-attached" sounds more optomistic.

We just call it a two-under-one-roof house...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wetdogeared

I had to look up "Bautagebuch" to find out it meant "Building diary." I'm asuming this is some kind of on-line blog with lots of photos and comments as the building progresses.

I always planned to do this, made all the pictures, but never got around to writing a blog

Quote:

Originally Posted by rgeorg

4-6 months is very fast for Europe - at least Greece!

6 months isn't very fast for the Netherlands. In the town where I live, they just finished a set of about 10 free standing houses. They started in februari or march (somewhere).

[QUOTE=CommanderROR;526511]Solar for warm water is OK, I would never consider it as singular solution though...that is bound to cause problems sooner or later. /QUOTE]

A solar boiler? We are thinking about that too...

Quote:

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

Putting a wood-stove in an all-but airtight house is a bit of a problem,

Hmnm, the biggest difference between an old house and a new house is the airtightness

Ours is leaking everywhere! Though, once we're completely done, it should be less... (that new front door helped a lot!) I don't think we should be afraid of gassing ourselves with our gas heater...

We want more pictures!

CommanderROR · 07-20-2009, 06:12 AM

The problem with the airtighness and the wood stove is that they usually suck in lots of air from the room they are in and blow it out of the chimney. In an old hose this is no problem because there are lots of leaks where fresh air from outside can replace the "missing" air. In a modern air-tight house the air is sucked out but not replaced so the fire won't burn properly and also the oxygen levels in the house will become quite low inside the house. The biggest danger however is under-pressure. If too much air get's sucked out of the house there is a pressure-vacuum that can lead to the chimney sucking exhaust air back in instead of blowing it out. Then you have poisonous fumes in the lounge...and I think nobody wants that.

About the construction time...it depends very much on what you are building. In the area where our house will (hopefully soon) stand there are quite a few bungalow type houses under constrcution .They went from nonexisten to just-about-done in the course of a few weeks. However, a two-storey house with cellar and a lot of extras built in takes a fair bit longer to build. Also, there are differences in construction methods. You can build a brick house (like we are doing) where they actually have to pull it up brick by brick or you can build with pre-fabricated parts, mainly made from wood. A really fast company can have a house made from prefabricated bits all don in 2 weeks...electricity and all.
In our case only the cellar is going to be built from prefabricated parts...it has to be watertight so we'll have sandwich walls filled with water-tight concrete. It's going to be interesting to watch that. The rest of the house is bricks.

07-19-2009, 06:04 AM	#48
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	OK, so the newest info is that we should be able to start on the 27th of july. As soon as I have pictures of the big hole you'll get them. We are also planning to start a "Bautagebuch" online, so I might just link there then. So far we have not gotten round to opening a blog for it...I hope it will work somehow, we are both not exactly versed when it comes to webdesign. I can provide you with one picture of the plot, it does not actually show much... By now there are markers up to show how big (or rather small) the house will be and also where the plot ends and starts. Our plot is a measly 524 square metres which we share with a collegue and good friend who is building the second half of our "double house" (what is it in english? semi-attached?). More to come soon...I hope... I'll also try to attach the most recent floorplans. They are pretty much final, the only change that has been made since is that the gues-bathroom was made 11cm narrower and the main entrance door moved by the same amount to make room for some pipes that go through the wall next to the door (the wall will be a bit thicker there due to that). It was a necessary change because we have so much stuff planned in that all the pipes and cables that come with our "special equipment" caused some serious headaches for our planners... Also, the washing machine and dryer positions were moved to the other side of that little wall in the cellar. Attached Thumbnails

07-19-2009, 08:27 AM	#49
Wetdogeared Storm Surge'n Posts: 5,780 Karma: 8213195 Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Polar Vortex Device: S0ny PRS-300/350/505/700/T1	Thanks for the update. The term we use for 2 homes sharing a common wall in Canada is "semi-detatched," but "semi-attached" sounds more optomistic. I had to look up "Bautagebuch" to find out it meant "Building diary." I'm asuming this is some kind of on-line blog with lots of photos and comments as the building progresses. Looking forward to the big foundation hole. You know if you start before the winter frost it is much easier to dig? WDE. Last edited by Wetdogeared; 07-19-2009 at 10:43 AM. Reason: Corrected spelling

07-19-2009, 11:33 AM	#55
rgeorg Guru Posts: 675 Karma: 3314796 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Europe & USA Device: K3/3G(2x), Glo HD, Amazon Voyage	Another European House 4-6 months is very fast for Europe - at least Greece! We are building a house - we started the design process in Nov '07, waited 1 year for the approval, broke ground in April '09, and now we have the foundation, walls and roof. It will take around 8-10 additional months to complete (optimistically). Of course, we have very stringent earthquake regulations which affect the building materials and procedure that have to be followed. The home design is modern and based on the Mansion Tuggendhat (in the Czech Republic, by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe). http://www.czecot.com/en/tourist-att...ist-villa-brno) There is a saying here: "Greeks build houses as though they are going to live forever and they eat as though they are gong to die tomorrow!" Last edited by rgeorg; 07-19-2009 at 11:59 AM. Reason: details

07-19-2009, 02:12 PM	#57
rgeorg Guru Posts: 675 Karma: 3314796 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Europe & USA Device: K3/3G(2x), Glo HD, Amazon Voyage	"Public" kitchens are a trend that I am also not very fond of - my ideal is a closed, eat-in kitchen. Your traffic plan looks very efficient and usable. We tried solar water-heating and had some problems, even in Greece where there are many sunny days. I think the solar panels are more advanced and less expensive in Germany. We are considering heating using radiant-heat panels (electric) + a wood-stove for winter. It will probably be too expensive though (the panels). And then we'd have to have a separate boiler for hot-water..... I never should have started talking about it.....(aggh!) ;-) Last edited by rgeorg; 07-19-2009 at 02:20 PM.

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07-06-2009, 08:28 AM	#46
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	Well, we had a few delays, but I'm hoping work will strart within the next 2 weeks...as soon as I have something I'll try to post it. Might be that I forget, so feel free to remind me again at the end of the month...

07-19-2009, 10:40 AM	#52
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	OK, so semi-detatched it is... When we'll be able to move in is hard to say right now...we have a guarantee that if it takes more than 6 months they have to pay us 150€ per week as compensation...but of course there are quite a few things that can go wrong that are not covered by that guarantee... If everything works really well we could be more or less ready in 4 months, but somehow I don't believe we'll be that lucky. Sometime in the next weeks we'll get a list that details when what should be done...I'll tell you more when I know...

07-19-2009, 10:42 AM	#53
zelda_pinwheel zeldinha zippy zeldissima Posts: 27,827 Karma: 921169 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Paris, France Device: eb1150 & is that a nook in her pocket, or she just happy to see you?	wow, 4 months ! i don't know much (well... anything, really) about construction but it seems impressive that an entire new house can be finished so quickly. although maybe for you, waiting to inhabit it, it doesn't seem so quick... please do keep us posted ! it's very interesting to see the progression. it's quite exciting to build your own house to your exact specifications !

07-19-2009, 11:01 AM	#54
yvanleterrible Reborn Paper User Posts: 8,616 Karma: 15446734 Join Date: May 2006 Location: Que Nada Device: iPhone8, iPad Air	Congratulations C.R. There is an unused space between the living room and the dining area that will only gather dust and be considered a hallway. Personnally I'd put the kitchen where the dining set is so the cook will be able to communicate with everyone. A secluded kitchen is rough on the person that does the cooking. It will also help a mother to do cooking while being able to watch on the whole floorplan, that's critical when you get children in the house. Plan your dining area to fit in the kitchen. I would put a micro office for the children to study under supervision at the spot you have that kitchen now, with a few sitting chairs, and a second tv. Now that you have access to some money for building, GO SOLAR!!!

07-19-2009, 11:55 AM	#56
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	@yvanleterrible all easy to say, but the planning is long over... The furniture that is printed in is just an example and has nothing to do with our own plans. Only the water connections are already planned in, so the kitchen stays where it is... My wife wanted it in that corner, actually we had originally planned to have closed-off kitchen like we have now, but discarded it for the open-plan kitchen. That it has to be seperated from the rest somehow was a must from the beginning though, that's why it's in the corner up there... We do not plan to have any children (fingers crossed that it wil stay that way!) so I'm not too worried about keeping an eye on them...^^ Oh and by the way...we went solar... You can see the panels on the roof.

07-19-2009, 04:58 PM	#58
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	Well, if you ask me, I would not try heating with electricity...that really costs! Solar for warm water is OK, I would never consider it as singular solution though...that is bound to cause problems sooner or later. We have gas heating and use solar to help keep the warm water cost low. In summer we might be able to produce a large percentage of our warm water with solar power so the heating can remain mostly idle. The most important bit is the warm-water storage tank in the cellar that stores the sun-generated hot water for when it's needed. The expensive stuff in our house is the stuff that is supposed to stop too much warmth from escaping (and in summer too much heat getting in). Our walls are pretty well wrapped in Styrodur (on top of the energy efficient bricks), the cellar is wrapped in a special kind of Styrodur that prevents too much cold from the earth seeping in, especially through the floor. The windows all have triple glazing, the only problem with that is that in a cold winter the outer galss can freeze over because too little warth is transmitted from the inside of the building...but if we close the blinds (what is rolläden in english???) at night that won't happen. We have floor-heating everywhere (including the cellar) which should also help keep us comfortable and in the lounge we have a place where we can connect a wood-stove. We have chosen this model http://www.haassohn.com/ProductDetai...?id=17&catId=1 because it has a nice 180° window so that we can watch the flames dance from the dining area and also from the couch. Putting a wood-stove in an all-but airtight house is a bit of a problem, but we managed to get around that be having a chimney with an extra channel for fresh air (pulled in from outside), meaning that it does not use much air from inside the house. We'll use the wood-stove for autumn and spring when it's not really worthwhile to fire up the floor-heating. Heart and soul of our setup is the fresh-air-system. It's a rather complicated Setup from Vaillant that works as follows: In the bathrooms, kitchen and the heater room in the cellar air is drawn out through openingsin the ceiling. It is then drawn through a series of pipes under the floors and in the walls to the main unit in the cellar. In this device there is a radiator that get's warmed be the outgoing air which leaves the building through a passthorugh in the cellar wall. The other end of the system sucks in fresh air from outside, filters it (two filters, one for bigger particles and one for small stuff like pollen) and leads it through the radiator where it gets warmed up and then blown in through floor vents in the living and sleeping quarters and the other cellar rooms. All doors are slightly open at the bottom to create an unhindered airflow through the entire building. Air is exchanged constantly but slowly and the loss of warmth should be fairly small. That takes care of several problems, most of all the problem of damp and mold that are big issues in well-isolated buildings. A nifty detail of the system we'll get (Vaillant Recovair) is that it comes with a so-called summer-bypass that makes sure that the radiator gets bypassed in summer where you don't want the house to overheat. As soon as the system detects that the outside temperature is lower than the inside (in summer) it completely bypasses the radiator and cools the inside of the house down, mostly over night when it cools down a bit in the summer months. I could really use something like that right now since it's terribly hot in here right now and as soon as I open the windows I get attacked by a large variety of bugs that think I taste delicious... Ok, now I'll stop with the boring details...at least for now...

07-20-2009, 06:12 AM	#60
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	The problem with the airtighness and the wood stove is that they usually suck in lots of air from the room they are in and blow it out of the chimney. In an old hose this is no problem because there are lots of leaks where fresh air from outside can replace the "missing" air. In a modern air-tight house the air is sucked out but not replaced so the fire won't burn properly and also the oxygen levels in the house will become quite low inside the house. The biggest danger however is under-pressure. If too much air get's sucked out of the house there is a pressure-vacuum that can lead to the chimney sucking exhaust air back in instead of blowing it out. Then you have poisonous fumes in the lounge...and I think nobody wants that. About the construction time...it depends very much on what you are building. In the area where our house will (hopefully soon) stand there are quite a few bungalow type houses under constrcution .They went from nonexisten to just-about-done in the course of a few weeks. However, a two-storey house with cellar and a lot of extras built in takes a fair bit longer to build. Also, there are differences in construction methods. You can build a brick house (like we are doing) where they actually have to pull it up brick by brick or you can build with pre-fabricated parts, mainly made from wood. A really fast company can have a house made from prefabricated bits all don in 2 weeks...electricity and all. In our case only the cellar is going to be built from prefabricated parts...it has to be watertight so we'll have sandwich walls filled with water-tight concrete. It's going to be interesting to watch that. The rest of the house is bricks.