Eaves on a Small block?

Hi all,

We are looking to build a Rothwell 29 with Carlisle homes in Victoria.

I was planning on getting 450mm eaves all around the house but I am worried about how it will affect the natural lighting within the house.

The block we have is 14m wide. We will have about 1m either side of the house. With fences typically 1.8m high and 450mm eaves I feel like the house will be very dark.

Any thoughts?

our block is the same width, and we took eaves out on some side walls in our house. our reason for doing it was to give us a bit of extra space in rooms like living, bath, WIR etc, rather than provide more lighting.

Did you extend your house as a result? Our build is 12.8m and we don’t plan to expand on that. Just wondering if the space between the gutters and the fence when we have 450mm eaves will be sufficient to light the house.

we did, but the house only exists on the plans so far, so I can't tell you how it affects the lighting. also our neighbors haven't built theirs either yet, so no fences or anything.

most rooms that have no eaves don't really need much natural light anyway, and we went for a large fixed glass panel in the living room (2.1m by 2.1m iirc) in addition to the 3m alfresco sliding door and another window.

i think our width might be about the same as yours though as we have 1.25m minimum setbacks

Personally I don't like the look of small eaves on a house. I'm actually building with 1m eaves, but it's a double story.

House design could be a factor to consider too. How many windows are there on the sides, what are the windows for? People sometimes try to minimise the number of windows on the sides if you have neighbours so you don't look at each other all day. If those windows on the sides are for rooms like study, laundry, bathroom, pantry, theater or even bedrooms, I wouldn't worry too much about natural light issue. As long as your main living area is facing the right direction, you should be able to get plenty of light in.

Look for an modern eaves which slopes up rather than parallel to the ground.

Try To make glazing in the north bigger. I looked for the floorplan you mentionee and I think the study, WCs needs skylights.

I don't think you can have eaves that big? We had to have gutter on brickwork in some places as we were told the minimum gap between the fence and the house had to be 1m, and that the gap is measured from the fence to the first bit of 'house' (so to the eaves, not necessarily to the brickwork).

Long story short, to have eaves would intrude into the 1m space and couldn't happen.

really depends on your council/estate requirements and the block size/house layout.

you could have 1m eaves, if you aren't trying to use as much of the space as possible, because you're on small/narrow lot. in which case you'll probably go for standard or no-eaves option to give you more useful house space.

Don't forget the requirements for light and neighbouring houses. There may well be deletes of part of your eves outside your neighbours habitable windows if they are one to the boundary too.