Adding eaves to facade = shorter external walls ?

We are building the Forestdale 29 with PD and going with the standard (allendale) facade. To this we added 25 degree roof pitch and 600mm eaves to the front of the house.

At pre-contract stage, we've got the amended drawings as per the selections and the eaves have been added by extending the roof lining downwards from the original level. By doing so, the front walls are considerably smaller and I think the house will look like a huge roof sitting on small walls. I wasn't expecting this at all and was thinking that the eaves will remain at the original roof level.

This is the standard facade:


After adding eaves, the eaves on the room on the left are touching the upper level of the window and similarly the eaves on garage are touching the garage door. The eaves above the portico and the adjoining room are at the level of the current garage roof level.

Just wondering, is this the standard way of adding eaves to houses and/or facades ?

We've got 600mm eaves on our north & west sides and yes, it does come down lower than if you had 450mm eaves.

Here's a shot of the side of our house. There's one row of bricks over the windows and only a small slice of that is showing now that the eave linings have been done. The roof looks huge as not only does it come down lower due to the eaves, but we have to have a 27 degree pitch roof. Plenty of space for solar panels if we decide to do that later.

Adding eaves just extends the roofline without altering anything else, so of course the edges of the roof end up lower. So, yes: your external walls won't be as high.

Perhaps a different facade might suit you better if you have your heart set on eaves? Changing one thing sometimes throws other design elements out of balance, leaving the overall effect looking a bit odd.

We have 600mm eaves on our whole house (Although the house originally already have 450mm eaves). One way you could make the gap between the windows and the eaves is to go for higher ceilings? we are having 8'6 (I think thats 2550mm?) which is only 6 inches more.

Hi catjim.. thanks for the pic.. it does make the roof look a lot bigger

We are having 8'6" ceilings. I wanted 9' ceilings but it was about 3K for the upgrade so had to take that out. So, I guess we have two options now:
*If PD would still allow, reduce the roof pitch to 22.5 degrees and then go for 450mm eaves
*Or if the above's not possible, then remove the eaves all together.

Lots of people including some of the tradies have said how big our house is. It's just under 29 squares (incl garage, alfresco & portico) which for us is a big step up but not huge compared to lots of houses. I think it LOOKS big though because of the large roof area and because it takes up most of the block.

We have a combination of eaves on our house going from no eaves for the majority of the south side (due to being 1200mm from the boundary), 450mm across the front and 600mm on the north and west sides.

I would think about why you want / wanted the eaves. Is it because of the look or needing shade?

Personally I prefer eaves and 450mm is better aethestically than 600mm in my opinion. We would have had to shave 300mm off the width of the house to have eaves over the bedrooms on the south side but weren't willing to do that so hence the no eaves on that side. Stupid rule We opted for 600mm eaves for shading.

When adding eaves, we were only thinking about the asthetics of the house.

Other option that we can go for is to just have the 600mm eaves to the portico and the adjoining room only. This way the eaves will be at the level of the roof lining of the garage and the room on the extreme left.

I think it would look good like that. Might get a little tricky where it goes around the corners though to meet the non eave areas.

Bumping an 11 year old thread...

We are building and have optioned 450mm eaves and a 25 degree roof pitch. We have 2.7m internal ceilings. The end result is that there are no bricks above the windows, and the portico has less of a timber infill. This to me looks a bit worse.

I would have thought they could just leave the eaves at a certain height and then increase the roof pitch from there. Is this not possible?

If I have to go the builders way, should I be getting a discount for the fact there are less bricks and no lintels above the windows? Or will they install this anyway and cover it with the eaves?

Appreciate any advice!

You should be able to specify to have the eaves finish at the same height as your internal ceiling (2.7m). This will increase the roof height if leaving the pitch the same and cost more for materials.

That sounds exactly what I would like to achieve. Hopefully the builder comes to the party.