House orientation question

HI Guys,

The land block that i have purchased is oriented towards North East. I rushed through purchasing process and didn't give much thought on orientation at that time. I'm particularly concerned about orientation of sleeping and day time living areas based on the floor plan that i have selected. I have attached herewith the floor plan and photograph of the land showing the orientation.

Also another point I'm concerned about is as you can see on the photograph of the land , it has a retaining wall established by the developer on side boundary facing North-West. When i recently visited the land, I saw that a neighbor has built his fence sitting on the retaining wall. I guess that top end of fence is at least 3.5 meters taller from the ground(considering retaining wall height as well).

I'm not sure how will this affect my floor plan and cooling/ heating during summer and winter.

Appreciate if anyone knowledgeable in this area could share your thoughts.

thanks

Mello

http://postimage.org/

Basically with that site you shouldn't have to worry about overheating in summer but you won't get any benefit from sun heating the house in winter.

With a lot of the rooms faceing south east I would be tempted to move the house closer to the retaining wall so that the main rooms can look at a side garden.

Have a good read of this thread on orientation...
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=55057
and passive solar design in Sydney...
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=71561

Stewie

Thanks Bashworth. You made the comment because of taller side fence blocking the sun or purely because of site orientation?

I'm worried whether I have made a bad decision selecting this block. I never thought side fence going to be this taller.

Thanks for the resource stewie.

If it were me I'd flip the whole thing so your living areas get some northerly sun for passive solar design. And then maybe push it as close back to the southern boundary as is allowed. Yes, your master on the road front will cop most of it but you could plant your front yard to provide some shade during summer with trees that drop their leaves in winter to let sun in.

A combination of both the house orientation and the retaining wall + fence.

Without the retaining wall and fence flipping the house would improve passive heating in winter. but the shading will mean minimal advantage See this link to understand winter shading http://www.anewhouse.com.au/2012/01/winter-sun/.

Another suggestion is to look to reduce window size. Windows are the least efficient part of the building and large south facing windows will loose a lot of heat in winter.

Seeing as the block isn't aligned with any of the cardinal points, you can't take advantage of the standard northern windows with overhang for passive solar. This isn't so unusual though. It just means that any windows that get winter sun will be a liability for summer sun.

I don't see a build location... what is your climate? More heating, or cooling, or both?

That retaining wall will mainly block afternoon sun in winter, but the house design wouldn't be taking much advantage of it in that area anyhow. You should still get fairly good midday sun into the activity area, and to some extent bed 2. This could be quite a nice area during a sunny winter's day. The yard space along that north west boundary probably won't be such a pleasant area due to the wall, but at least will get sunlight through the late morning.

Bed 3 and Bed 4 will get a moderate about of western sun in summer. This can be a threat in that it can be hot when trying to go to sleep.

The living space won't get much sun in summer. I'd consider a design that swapped the back bedrooms for living space.

How far off each side boundary are you?

Your master window faces north east. This is great if you're a morning person, but might be difficult to sleep in during summer. Two of your other bedrooms will be flogged by the western summer sun, so yes build as close to western side as possible (900mm) to shade from that higher fence.

Your living areas (barring activity) have no possibility for solar optimization. They will be as cool as possible in summer, but as cool as possible in winter.

Overall, expect a lower than average summer utilities bill, but higher than average winter bill.

Unforunately, this 20-30 degrees off N-S orientation is always hard to work with. Flipping the house would just make summer worse and winter better.

Hi john, the site is located in a suburb in Melbourne. So there are only 10 or 12 days in summer going to be extremely hot.

I have updated my post with proposed site sitting closer to boundary with distances.

Hi all

Thanks for the valuable thoughts. This is a great forum to share knowledge. I have added an image depicting site sitting.

I'm with Beazley77, but I would only flip the back half of the house, i.e. the garage and master suite remain as they are and flip the rest over so the living area facing SW and bedrooms on the SE. I think that way you'll get a much brighter house and dont need to worry about relocating the x-over. Also increase the garage width as much as possible so that the entire habitable area is shifted away from the retaining wall. Reduce the size of the window in livingroom or better still, change it to 2 x 600mm width skinny awnings on each side. It's really stupid to have a large window facing the TV, you'll get lots reflection. overall it's not too bad i would say, with the high fence, you wont look into neighbours house at least and they wont look into yours. just my 2c.