Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Mar 04, 2010 11:52 am Hi guys, Can people shed some light on the correct home layout for north facing blocks? If you have a north facing home, do you mind showing me your house layout with the positive and negatives you have experienced. e.g. how hot does the living/bedrooms get in summer or how cold in winter. Please refer to my build threat (link below) to view my current layout. Thanks so much. Re: North Facing Homes 2Mar 04, 2010 2:18 pm Hi Wrexter THis website helped me alot : http://www.yourhome.gov.au/technical/index.html from what i got from this, living areas should be north facing, bedrooms south side and try and have little or no windows on the west side of the house. This web site also gives you some ideas on where to plant and put shade to help with heating & cooling. Hope this helps ! Re: North Facing Homes 3Mar 04, 2010 2:29 pm Imber Hi Wrexter THis website helped me alot : http://www.yourhome.gov.au/technical/index.html from what i got from this, living areas should be north facing, bedrooms south side and try and have little or no windows on the west side of the house. This web site also gives you some ideas on where to plant and put shade to help with heating & cooling. Hope this helps ! I know i have seen that website. Few issues, my living areas cant face north as i have chosen my design and dont want to change it. i just want to know if i should keep the current layout or whether i should mirror it. cheers Re: North Facing Homes 4Mar 04, 2010 2:36 pm I would mirror it, as most of your living areas are facing west at the moment, very hot in summer. My old house had a west facing alfresco and I couldnt use it during the day as it was just too hot. but i suppose if you do mirror it then your bedrooms will be on the west but you could always shade them with some trees, you would spend more time in the living areas than the back bedrooms ? Re: North Facing Homes 5Mar 04, 2010 3:27 pm I have the same aspect as you. As we are two storey our main living areas and the kids bedrooms face west. This was the same before we knocked our old house down. I'm sure there will be the down side in summer when it gets hot BUT think of winter. I can't imagine anything worse than having east facing icy cold no sun in my kitchen and living areas in winter. It would be utterly depressing. But that's me....I LOVE sunlight To combat the heat of summer we have insulation and toned (like tinted but the colour is inside the glass) windows, and we'll be putting up block out blinds. Here is a link to our plan: http://www.masterton.com.au/villina.htm Re: North Facing Homes 6Mar 04, 2010 4:07 pm We have a north facing block too (our plan looks similar to yours, check out the Pegasus or Santa Cruz on the New Gen site). We have our living areas to the west. Reason for this being the house that exists on the west is slightly elevated so part of the sun will be blocked after a certain time and I like the evening sun. We will be having blockout blinds anyway so not too concerned about the heat coming through. A friend of ours has their living areas on the east (north facing block) and I hate how it gets dark early and they have to turn the lights on. And it was bloody freezing in winter with no sun. Having said this, everyone will have something they prefer. Summit/New Gen Homes Slab - 9/4/10 PCI - 13/9/10 Handover - 22/9/10 Re: North Facing Homes 7Mar 04, 2010 4:23 pm I would definetly flip it so the liveing areas and the alfresco face east - this does mean the bedrooms face west but thats not such an issue- how often are you in the bedroom in the afternoon - and if you are haveing a nap you close the blinds/drapes. But you dont want to close the blinds of the liveing areas during the day and the windows and alfresco will get glary as well as hot. We have an alfresco on our eastern side too and this is fine. It dosent get dark or cold here - hot dry area, country SA, so this is not an issue here. Phoenixrain makes a good point though - best orientation depends on your location and surroundings. Re: North Facing Homes 8Mar 04, 2010 4:51 pm First of all a comment about terminology. When we sold our previous house I was disappointed when I saw the agent describe it as west facing in the summary. He explained that in their summary the orientation refers to the front of the block. So the block was west facing but the house was actually north-facing because it ran down the block with the longest side of the house and the largest windows facing north. For a north facing block to be suitable for a north facing house it would have to be an unusually wide block or a corner block. It does make it confusing because you might say a house faces a certain way referring to the position of the street/front door, or because of the solar orientation of the house, or because the majority of windows face a particular view. It's often said that bedrooms should be on the southside but IMO that's over-emphasised. Living areas should face north which doesn't always leave room for the bedrooms to face that way too. I imagine if you prefer a cooler room to sleep in then a south-facing bedroom would be preferable. Three of our four bedrooms face north and we love it. One living area goes across the width of the house and I suppose we could have shuffled the rooms around to have one more bedroom on the south side and the whole living area on the north side, but it would have meant no living areas would have taken advantage of the view and I don't believe it would have made any overall difference to warming/cooling the house. Now for your house. The front faces north, right? I think I would mirror it. We've found the afternoon glare of west-facing windows to be a nuisance in any season. How much space will you have between the house and the boundary? There are things you can do to protect the west-facing windows such as plantings if there's room, or awnings/roller shutters. Also reducing the size of the windows, easier I think with bedrooms as short windows are more aesthetically acceptable. I take it the dotted line shows the eaves, so the north facing windows should be fine. If the living areas face east they'll warm up in the mornings. That wouldn't be bad in winter. In summer you could think about external shading. I don't know what your climate is but I've been assuming you're not in the tropics? Depending on how cold it gets, that south-facing games room window could be a problem. We used to get more condensation on the south side in winter so if you aren't getting double glazing then think about getting it for that window at least. Re: North Facing Homes 9Mar 04, 2010 5:35 pm I have just realised and im sure this will play in to my favour: My house will be on a sloping street. The house on the west side is higher than the house on the east side. That would mean the house on the west, being a bit higher than mine, would block out some portions of the sun. Re: North Facing Homes 10Mar 04, 2010 6:39 pm Might be interesting to have a go at drawing it up to see how much protection you'd get. We thought our west facing window would be fine, extra wide verandah, no worries. It doesn't really give as much protection as expected. But of course if it turns out you need extra external shading there's things you can do later. Re: North Facing Homes 11Mar 05, 2010 3:32 am wrexter I have just realised and im sure this will play in to my favour: My house will be on a sloping street. The house on the west side is higher than the house on the east side. That would mean the house on the west, being a bit higher than mine, would block out some portions of the sun. So exactly like ours (except I don't know how much of a slope you're on). I noticed display homes with both west and east living areas NOR. Maybe you should go and have a closer look at a few displays again? Either way, you have to be happy with what you want. Summit/New Gen Homes Slab - 9/4/10 PCI - 13/9/10 Handover - 22/9/10 Re: North Facing Homes 12Mar 05, 2010 4:01 pm just got drawings from the developer, our block is only 400mm higher than the block adjacent to us, however the block on the east of us is about 1100mm below. lucky bastards. i didnt choose the lower block as i thought being higher is better and so that people werent looking down into my backyard, i had first choice in my stage. Re: North Facing Homes 13Mar 05, 2010 9:59 pm Hi, The house we are in now is north facing. We built it 16yrs ago, Going by your plan yor main bedroom is north facing, We have three rooms at the front, lounge with eave about 2mtres wide, that room is great in summer and winter, next is bed3 with eave about 1mtre thats great too, but bed 2 is north facing and has no eave and is stinking hot in the summer. bed 1 is south facing that has a west wall with no window and that is cold and damp in the winter. Hope that helps abit My building thread viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25279 NEARLY DONE. KEYS ON 5/11 AT 1PM The warning is on the sticker on the door too. Second the aluminium powdercoat 6 18177 May I ask why you chose not to use GJ Gardiner? I'm actually meeting with one of the sales guys tomorrow for an appointment. Definitely not signing anything yet… 3 13234 It might be a bit darker in the mornings but the light is still light, so you should be getting it. Similar to what you see from your western windows 3 19971 |