Floor Plans 2

In a previous post, we talked about how the design of the first floor layout helps make the home feel bigger than it really is. The upstairs is a different story — we need to fit three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a washer/dryer into a small space. There’s no way to open everything up: it’s going to feel tight no matter what. The question is whether we can arrange everything to use space efficiently while keeping the floor plan as open as possible.

Much like the first floor layout, GO Logic provided fantastic off-the-shelf floor plans, and I couldn’t help but to shift a couple of things around.

Double doors at the top of the stairs and a window

I love the feeling of walking into a well-designed home for the first time. Your viewpoint is obstructed by something — maybe stairs or walls — then, bam!, you see straight ahead onto an interesting space, wide open and well-lit. It’s a great feeling: emerging from a tight space to observe a striking view.

I wanted to go for a similar feeling with the stairway, in a much more modest way. The image above gives the perspective as you walk up the staircase and look straight ahead toward the study. We added double doors to the study entrance so that the top of the staircase would feel expansive, and so that you get an unobstructed view out the window in the background. The small landing at the top of the stairs gets to function as an extension of the study rather than a closed off space.

A lovely view north, but no north-facing windows?

The view north overlooks an apple orchard, marshland, great blue herons, egrets, hawks, beavers and more — it’s awesome. The property is a rare treasure for its proximity to wetland, conservation land and hiking trails. But north-facing windows are heat losers, with no solar gain, and should be minimized in passive houses. Should I sacrifice the passive house design principles in order take full advantage of the surrounding views of wildlife and conservation land?

Looking out over the property, the architect, Matt O’Malia, turned to me and said: “You know, we don’t have to build a passive house. We can face north. It will be a house that performs well, but doesn’t meet passive house standards.” I thought about it for a bit. In the end, I couldn’t give up two things: the bragging rights of a passive house and the wonderful feeling of having abundant sunlight streaming into a room.

Some north-facing windows are OK

As a compromise, we increased the size of the north facing window over the stairs and added a west-facing window at the landing, but kept our adherence to the passive house standard. Our Kneer-Südfenster windows are so good that these changes didn’t incurring much of a heat demand penalty anyway.

The image above shows the stairway landing, as seen from the study. The west-facing window (on the left) will be a great spot for wildlife viewing and watching the sunset while also serving to illuminate the hallway. The north-facing window over the stairs is sufficiently large to provide a nice view from the landing.

More storage or more views?

The built-in shelving is one aspect that I’m still on the fence about. On the one hand, storage space is limited and I’d like to use the space at the top of the stairs effectively. On the other hand, the shelving is blocking the view to the north window from the landing and the study, and might be closing off the top of the stairs awkwardly. The compromise that the builder and I came up with is to wait until the second floor and the walls are up, then have a look around and see if we can come to a decision.

Here’s a look at the same perspective as above, but with the shelving removed, leaving a direct line of sight to the rear window. What do you think? Why sacrifice the heat loss through a large northern window and yet not take full advantage of the view out that window?

Small washer/dryers save a lot of space

Go to Best Buy or Home Depot and look at the washer-dryers; they’re enormous! How am I going to find a place for these behemoths? Luckily, the Europeans came to the rescue, once again.

These are the Miele washer/dryers. They’re compact, efficient, yet accommodate a surprising volume of laundry, and they look neat. They can fit right into a hallway without taking up too much space. The downside is that they are unbelievably expensive. I ultimately decided it was worth it.

The image above is looking down the hallway back toward the landing and the west-facing window. Notice how the washer/dryer stack is flush with the wall — no doors or a separate laundry room to needlessly take up space. The bathroom is off to the right. Both the washer and the shower are fed hot water from a single on-demand water heat located in the utility closet on the first floor, right beneath the hallway. The close proximity of the water heater, the washer and the shower helps reduce the length of the hot water pipes, giving instant hot water and reducing wasted heat.

I also love the fact that the west facing window at the end of the hallway will let afternoon light percolate deep into the hallway. It’ll be a great spot to watch the sunset. In the summer, however, there will be a cooling load penalty: the afternoon sunlight will warm up the home somewhat. I think the window adds so much to the hallway, however, that I’m willing to use a little more energy in the summer to cool the home.

Extra windows for the master bedroom versus overheating?

The architect had originally planned for two windows in the master bedroom, having determined the right amount of south facing window area needed to heat the upstairs while avoiding overheating. But I argued that overheating in the bedroom was less of a concern for me than to have a wide open view, a more open bedroom and more of a connection to the outdoors. A midday nap in a warm bedroom on a sunny day doesn’t sound that bad to me, anyway. I don’t tend to use the bedroom during the day, though, so I think we’ll be OK even if overheating is an issue.

An open feeling in a small bedroom

A couple of neat tricks help make the bedrooms more feel spacious even through they are tiny (the master bedroom is only 136 sq ft while the typical American master bedroom is 256 sq ft). First, vaulted ceilings provide extra space overhead and also look cool. Second, the closet doors were removed in favor of an open closet with a closet system. Third, the position of the door to the third bedroom across the hall allows you to peer across the full width of the home when sitting in the reading chair, the viewpoint from which the above image was drawn.

The walls on the second floor are going up this week, so it won’t be long until we get to see how it all comes together!

Floor plans 1

Many thanks to GO Logic

I expended a tremendous amount of energy fussing with the floor plans of this home, much to the terror of my wonderful team of architects at GO Logic (Matt OMalia, Todd Boyd, and Svea Tullberg). Even though GO Logic provides off the shelf plans, I felt the need to demand certain changes to their plans, then promptly reversed those changes, only to eventually reinstate the original changes. In the end, we must have gone through at least six iterations of the floor plans. I owe many thanks to Matt, Todd and Svea for their amazing patience, professionalism and talent.

I learned a lot through the process and I thought I would share why I settled on the floor plan pictured above, which I believe is going to be terrific. Im including only the first floor in this post, the second floor is just as cool, but it will come later.

How to make a tiny home feel gigantic

I’m not an architect, but over the years I’ve noticed a few tricks that seem to make a small boxy space feel bigger than it really is. A few years ago, I attempted to use these principles in the layout of my lab at Mount Holyoke College, a small 600 sq ft research space for next generation solar cells — and the results were fantastic.

1. Open up the floor plan as much as possible
2. Make sure that the line of sight from any location extends as far as possible, preferably the full length of the house
3. Use long straight lines or spaces wherever possible to simplify visual clutter and emphasize elongated forms
4. Substitute sliding or double doors where possible, to be able to open up or close off the floor plan as needed
5. Use well placed widows to illuminate all areas and open up smaller areas

Below, I’ll explain how I went about implemented these design rules.

Using 3D renderings to plan the layout

To get a feel for the floor plan, I generated 3D renderings of the interior using the mac app "Live Interior 3D Standard Edition." The app lets you draw a floor plan and then creates a 3D space that you can navigate through. I didn’t like the tacky color and faux realism of the renderings, so I used my iPad to trace some of the critical scenes as line drawings. The simple black and white lines might be a little difficult to look at at first, but they allow your mind to fill in the extraneous details.

The dininitchen room

The entrance leads directly into a single open space that serves as both the kitchen and dining space (above) — hence the dininitchen — a large area for gathering, cooking and eating. Three large windows behind the dinner table open up the space even further. The kitchen counter spans the left wall, with the induction cooktop and range hood almost spilling into the dinning area, blurring the distinction between the two rooms. A small built-in counter and shelving area to the right will serve as a pantry.

Off to the right of the entryway is the mud room and a half bath. A small bench to remove your shoes sits in front of a removable bookshelf, giving access to hidden storage under the stairs. An opening in the upper wall looks through to the staircase landing, helping to bring in light from the large window in the stairway. I wanted the bathroom to be tucked away from the kitchen and the living room, and to be easily accessible from the outside.

Looking from the dining room back at the entryway (above), notice how the kitchen counter follows an L shape along the wall — the layout allows for ample counter space while giving easy access to the front door, half bath (to the left of the door), the pantry, the dining area and the living area. The straight line of the countertop along the right wall lengthens the kitchen area, creating a sense of an usually large kitchen.

The closet off of the living area doubles as a storage space and utility room for two of the on-demand hot water heaters, the heat pump wall unit and the drain water heat recovery (DWHR) pipe.

An efficient dinner assembly line

The kitchen is laid out to maximize the efficiency of manufacturing dinner. The cooking process moves from left to right, starting with the vegetables in the fridge, moving to the counter, washing in the sink, cutting on the next counter, frying on the cooktop, and then serving at the dining table. Cleanup follows the same linear pathway in reverse: dirty dishes move from right to left; from the dining table, to the counter, to the sink, and into the dishwasher.

Handling sunlight throughout the day

One aspect that I love about this design is how sunlight moves throughout the space over the course of the day. The image above is looking at the living area from the kitchen.

The morning sun from the east filters into the kitchen window through the row of trees on the east property side. Breakfast at the table is warmed by the morning sun as well. Later in the day, the sun might be too strong at the dinner table — a tremendous amount of energy is captured by the three large south facing windows — but the living room offers a refuge with some protection from the sun. Afternoon sun keeps the living area illuminated continuously as the sun moves from the south facing window to the west facing window later in the day. In the afternoon, the kitchen will be free of sun, so cooking in the heat of the sun is not a problem.

Stay tuned to find out if the design actually works in practice!