we will be closing on our land in a couple of weeks and then I have to start designing my very efficient next house. the goal is to build it efficiently and inexpensively and to build it in a way that minimizes future tax value so I have decided on a box with a simple gable roof. there is a building restriction of 2500 sq ft minimum thus the large size. please tell me what you think. no need to sugar coat anything as floorplans are free but the actual building is not so I want to get it right at this stage. it will only have windows on the south side. and will only have water on the north side to simplify plumbing.

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Yes, a box and minimal windows greatly improves potential energy efficiency. With only south windows, you should properly work out the monthly passive solar gain numbers. If you don't need the extra bedrooms, consider putting that space into a larger great room...and perhaps the home theate too. If you do that, you almost have the home that we have. We also have a separate garage/shop that has guest quarters...which is the optimal solution when the kids visit.

Both our passive solar, hydronic floor heated buildings are single level, full hip metal roof, ICF walls, and fiber cement exterior siding...all to maximize fire resistance which was proven to be very effective as we suffered zero damage when a wildfire swept through our area this past Summer.

Ramsey Canyon Wildfire

Some may say that a single bedroom home has lower market appeal, and they would indeed be correct. However, there are increasing numbers of older couples looking for this type of home and they tend to be way more affluent than the family market.

Thanks for the input. We have kids so we need the rooms. My brother who is a realtor is even insisting that I put in a "powder room" for resale value. He doesn't understand that it means more tax value and this more taxes. The living area is almost 900 SQ ft. I don't know what I will put in it as it seems so huge already. May I ask what size is your home? Oh, I'll also be going with a standing seam metal roof. No other alternative for me.

Attaching the standing seam panels with hidden fasteners instead of screws through the metal will help to avoid future leaks.

Our last two houses we built we put the laundry in the master walk-in closet. Some people laugh when I tell them but we love it. We get out of our cloths at night and start the load....it is done by morning.

We are using a LG washer dryer combo so start it and forget it. The unit uses a couple gallons of cold water to condense the water out of the cloths while drying so it really doesn't heat the room up.
It doesn't require a vent to outside so no wall penetrations and it runs only off 110 VAC so no 220 needed.

This could give you saving in your mechanical room size and in wiring, plumping, and vent.

Also help keep the house sealed up because of less holes in the walls.....Good Luck with your project.

double post....

Our home is 2400 sf total. It has a 200 sf room on the east side that has a large window with removable double panes to allow creating a screened in wall. For reduced tax value, it is considered unheated even though it has an electric pulse modulation radiant panel to allow short duration fast heating if desired during the colder months. It has a nice view of our creek and waterfalls, and we mostly use it in the morning as a sunroom and in the evening as our screened porch.

We have our laundry room in what we call the bedroom suite section of the house which consists of our bedroom, walk in closet, laundry room and the biggest of our two full bathrooms which has a jacuzzi tub and walk in shower. The bedroom suite section is on the west side and is separated from the rest of the house by a 24" thick wall that is faced with brick on bedroom side and faced with stone on the living room side. This wall increases the interior thermal mass and nicely isolates the bedroom suite section from rest of house allowing it to be a lower temperature and very quiet.

Our great room consists of our living area, dining area and kitchen. We have 12' wide movie screen that comes down from the ceiling (all of our ceilings are 10' in height) and covers one of the south windows when fully lowered. There is a masonry heater that provides some separation between the kitchen and living area and it has a pizza oven on the kitchen side. We don’t have any windows at all on the west wall and only a couple small windows on our north wall for our office and second bathroom.

Yes, like Alton mentioned, be sure to use a standing seam metal roof that conceals the screws under the seams.

Posted By newbostonconst on 01 Dec 2018 05:51 PM
Our last two houses we built we put the laundry in the master walk-in closet. Some people laugh when I tell them but we love it. We get out of our cloths at night and start the load....it is done by morning.

We are using a LG washer dryer combo so start it and forget it. The unit uses a couple gallons of cold water to condense the water out of the cloths while drying so it really doesn't heat the room up.
It doesn't require a vent to outside so no wall penetrations and it runs only off 110 VAC so no 220 needed.

This could give you saving in your mechanical room size and in wiring, plumping, and vent.

Also help keep the house sealed up because of less holes in the walls.....Good Luck with your project.

thats a good idea but i dont know if I want the kids coming into our closet when they get old enough to do laundry. Now that you mention that, I did see a house that had a washer and dryer in the closet, and a second washer and dryer in a more public area. thanks for the suggestion

Posted By Alton on 01 Dec 2018 03:18 PM
Attaching the standing seam panels with hidden fasteners instead of screws through the metal will help to avoid future leaks.

yes sir! we are putting standing seam on our current house right now and they are using the true clips and not the screw through type which would have been less than half the price but would start having problems in two years [per roofing guy and what Ive seen online] I also got it in white [sri 93 !] to save some money in the summer. the new house will have a white roof too.

Posted By sailawayrb on 02 Dec 2018 12:50 AM
Our home is 2400 sf total. It has a 200 sf room on the east side that has a large window with removable double panes to allow creating a screened in wall. For reduced tax value, it is considered unheated even though it has an electric pulse modulation radiant panel to allow short duration fast heating if desired during the colder months. It has a nice view of our creek and waterfalls, and we mostly use it in the morning as a sunroom and in the evening as our screened porch.

We have our laundry room in what we call the bedroom suite section of the house which consists of our bedroom, walk in closet, laundry room and the biggest of our two full bathrooms which has a jacuzzi tub and walk in shower. The bedroom suite section is on the west side and is separated from the rest of the house by a 24" thick wall that is faced with brick on bedroom side and faced with stone on the living room side. This wall increases the interior thermal mass and nicely isolates the bedroom suite section from rest of house allowing it to be a lower temperature and very quiet.

Our great room consists of our living area, dining area and kitchen. We have 12' wide movie screen that comes down from the ceiling (all of our ceilings are 10' in height) and covers one of the south windows when fully lowered. There is a masonry heater that provides some separation between the kitchen and living area and it has a pizza oven on the kitchen side. We don’t have any windows at all on the west wall and only a couple small windows on our north wall for our office and second bathroom.

Yes, like Alton mentioned, be sure to use a standing seam metal roof that conceals the screws under the seams.

thanks for that info. I would LOVE to see a floor plan but I understand if you don't want to share for privacy purposes. I want to have plenty of windows on the west side[i misspoke earlier] as that wall will be backed up to a heavily treed part of the lot and will have a good view and lots of shade. Ive been thinking about doing it shed roof style, for ease of installation and more sunlight in the winter. what are your thoughts. It would essentially have to span 36ft plus some for the overhang!

update. I simplified the master suite and reclaimed some space. I moved the bathroom closer to bedroom 1 and 2. please critique. I still dont have a front door

Which side of the house is the front facing the road? The bottom side of the drawing? If so, are you going to have a porch or anything to break up that long 72' wall? Also think about the symmetry of window and door placement (and porch columns if used) on the street side of the house.

What Arkie said and I suspect he is not being as critical as he could be. As a starting point, you might want to pick a magazine showing the most popular floor plans for single level homes. Then you can refine from there. You likely don't even need any hallway or worst case, a much smaller one. I would be happy to send you our floor plan if you PM me your email address. We use Chief Architect to do all our construction drawings.

Posted By arkie6 on 02 Dec 2018 05:13 PM

A 5' wide hallway seems wide. Any particular reason for that? Typical hallways in our area are 4' wide (4' wall center-to-center).

Framers typically use interior wall centerline measurements, not edge of wall as shown on your drawing. Part of the problem with using edge of wall measurements is that the framer is typically working with 3.5" wide studs. Does your program assume walls are 3.5" or 4" wide?

Your master WIC is plenty wide enough to have shelf & rods down both sides, but your door is shifted all the way to one side blocking the use of shelf & rods there. You need about 2'2" on each side of the door for shelf/rod and clothes hanging. That leaves enough room for a standard 2'6", or wider 2'8", or even 3'0" wide door in the middle. We used a pocket door on our WIC, but it presented some challenges with supporting the shelf & rod on the wall where the pocket door slid into. Looking back, I wish I had went with a sliding barn style door arrangement on the bedroom side of the wall.

thanks for the feedback Arkie6. No particular reason except I didnt want the hallway to be constricted. But I was talking to my younger brother and his hallways are 32". he said 4 ft is ADA requirement so i think I will change it to 4 ft and reclaim some space. thanks I use sketchup free for the drawings. I just started using it. I'll see if I can make measurements from the center of the wall. Great idea on the closet door. I will change that asap and I actually like the idea of pocket or barn doors. although, I was thinking of skipping a door to the closet altogether and leaving a doorless entry .

Posted By arkie6 on 02 Dec 2018 05:20 PM
Which side of the house is the front facing the road? The bottom side of the drawing? If so, are you going to have a porch or anything to break up that long 72' wall? Also think about the symmetry of window and door placement (and porch columns if used) on the street side of the house.

the bottom side will face the street. I wasnt planning to have a porch(taxes) but that brings up another question. Ive calculated that I need 5 ft overhangs(for gable) or 8 ft (for shed roof) . do you know the max length of overhangs one can have before you have to use columns? I dont mind columsn but would like to avoid if possible. I will post my ideas for the front and columns if you dont mind taking a look

Posted By sailawayrb on 02 Dec 2018 05:38 PM
What Arkie said and I suspect he is not being as critical as he could be. As a starting point, you might want to pick a magazine showing the most popular floor plans for single level homes. Then you can refine from there. You likely don't even need any hallway or worst case, a much smaller one. I would be happy to send you our floor plan if you PM me your email address. We use Chief Architect to do all our construction drawings.

thanks!!! I will pm you my email . Ive looked at and continue to look at hundreds of floor plans. Finding something simple to build, good for passive solar, rectangular, and with an open living area, is HARD!!!

this is what Im thinking for the windows. of course, when push comes to shove I'll probably end up going with less expensive, smaller windows

I originally wanted a simple gable roof but after modelling it, the gable roof will have worse rain performance, and worse solar rejection on west and east side. the hip roof seems better for our hot, humid climate (north texas)

Im also looking at a shed roof, which would be the easiest I think