January 2012 – A New House

Starting House Design 3

In two other posts (Bubble Diagrams 1 and Bubble Diagram 2) I have described how you can start a design using bubble diagrams. When you are happy with the bubble diagrams then you can start working on how the floor plan will look.

At this stage use graph paper to make it easy to draw things up quickly and change things. Don’t get too involved with exact dimensions the nearest 200 or 250mm (or foot if you use imperial measurements) should be fine.

The plan above was based on the bubble diagrams.

The features of this house are:

A rectangular plan to keep things simple and economical.
A north facing Passive Solar House with bedrooms lounge and dining room on the north side, all having 2m high windows or patio doors.
A full length veranda on the North side providing Shading from the Northern Sun
A single small West facing window in the laundry.
A single narrow East facing window in the bedroom.
A wood burning stove in the centre of the house with solid brick chimney for thermal mass.
Bathroom, en-suite, toilet, study all forming a Buffer Zone on the south.
A car port and fernery was proposed on the south to provide a protective Microclimate.
Our bedroom at the opposite end of the house to the children.
Being able to see approaching visitors from the kitchen window.

Once you have got a layout that you can agree on, its time to think about getting it drawn up accurately.

Postscript

Although we loved this house it wasn’t perfect . . . . here are some things we got wrong.

The laundry was too small.
The spa bath was hardly used in the ten years we lived there. . we would have been better off making the bathroom smaller and the laundry bigger.
The connecting door between the family room and the lounge. . . we found the kids would walk in front of us through the lounge in getting from their room to the kitchen!

For similar posts see Drawings and Floor Plans

Types of Solar Panels for Electricity

From some of the adverts you see you would think there is only one sort of solar panels…. in fact there are several alternatives.

The type of panels generally available are:

Monocrystalline solar panels The highest cost but the most efficient with a long history of use.
Poly-crystalline Similar to mono-crystalline panels, but the silicon used has a different structure which is easier to make and therefore cheaper but less efficient in watts per m².
Thin-film This includes several technologies of which the latest is CIS. These panels are the usually the lowest cost panels but can be twice the area of a Monocrystalline panel for the same output.
Hybrids There are also a number of hybrid panels around which combine different technologies to improve all round performance.

Don’t get too confused by the marketing hype and the quoted efficiencies.

Unless you are have limited space to put the panels the best panel is the one that produces power at the smallest price per watt and will continue to do it for the longest time.

An advantage of having larger, but lower efficiency, panels is that more of the roof is shaded by the panels in the summer. This will reduce the heat gain in the roof space, saving on cooling costs.

The only times that efficiency becomes important is when;

You are running the whole house off panels and you need more area for low cost panels than you have got roof area – more for off grid applications.
You only have a small North-facing roof.
The roof is Badly Shaded.

As well as the cost per watt you should also looking for panels from reputable manufacturers that come with a long guarantee (Up to 25 years). Additionally you would be advised to ask for a 5 year installation guarantee.

What Will It Cost?

When you are setting your budget for a new house, it’s not only the cost of the house and land, but all the other things that you might not have thought about.

If you haven’t considered these you might find that as well as a big mortgage your credit cards are all maxed out.

Here are some of the things you will need to consider based on Melbourne Outer Metro prices (say 35-40 km from CBD) in late 2010.

The costs are based on a small house with the builders basic fit out, say 15 square (140m2):

LAND

Cost of land $150,000 PLUS

Stamp duty say $5,000 PLUS

Legal fees say 2% $3,000

BUILDING

Basic cost of building say $150,000

Building cost are in the range $6,000 to $8,500 a square. Smaller houses have higher costs per square with cost per square reducing as the house gets bigger.

Site Cost say 5% $7500

Excavation to level the site (See this link: Steeper Sites) and/or additional foundations (See this link: Poor Ground ) and costs can quadruple.

Extras say 5% $6,500 plus

Can includes extra electrical fittings, washing line, garden paths. If you want premium kitchen and bathroom units it could be $50,000 or more. (see this link: Love the Display Home)

Legal fees say 2% $3,000

Fence say $2,000

Light fittings, picture hooks, curtains, blinds and other bits and pieces say $5,000

Garden say $10,000 plus

Additional Furniture say $5,000 plus

Removal say $1,000

TOTAL

Land and House $348,000 plus

Remember even if you get a house and land package for $300,000 you will need to allow for at least another $40,000 before you have finished.

A big cost is the land. This cost will drop as you go further from the city.

When I first bought a house the rule was you could only borrow two and a half times your annual salary! If you were to go back to that rule the only way to go in the future would be to fit houses on smaller blocks.

Month: January 2012