Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Eaves or not to eaves 21Jun 16, 2009 12:20 pm Another vote for eaves! We made ours 600mm wide, and had them put all around. I have no idea about the exact technical advantages, but I don't care - I just much prefer the look. Our place would have looked very 'boxy' without eaves, I think. I also prefer them all the way around - I think it looks like you couldn't affford to finish, or couldn't be bothered finishing if you just go around a corner, and you can actually see that they stop. Solidarity, not solidity.......The Lexicon of Life Re: Eaves or not to eaves 22Jun 16, 2009 12:28 pm Practical considerations aside, whether eaves look good or not depends entirely on the style of your house. Some look silly without eaves, and others would look just as silly with them. My house would look ridiculous with eaves. petal I also prefer them all the way around - I think it looks like you couldn't affford to finish, or couldn't be bothered finishing if you just go around a corner, and you can actually see that they stop. I was thinking the same thing yesterday - I walked past a house with eaves on the facade only and the corners just looked kind of odd. Re: Eaves or not to eaves 23Jun 16, 2009 2:39 pm It would be really strange to have eaves in only certain area of the house. You either have it everywhere or no eaves at all. Unless there's any special reason, e.g. your land is not wide enough, have to leave ??m on both side of land from the border, ...etc. I have seen cases where the eaves of garage side was "sacrificed" as the land wasn't wide enough... We have eaves on our house too. Where is Matt? I remember there was a post some time ago arguing about this and Matt is the main supporter for no eaves... Re: Eaves or not to eaves 24Jun 16, 2009 4:44 pm kek Practical considerations aside, whether eaves look good or not depends entirely on the style of your house. Some look silly without eaves, and others would look just as silly with them. My house would look ridiculous with eaves. Aesthetically yes, absolutely. Some styles are meant to be without eaves and look great. And others look cheap or unfinished without eaves. It depends. d3p the back of the house is west, now i am tempting not to put any windows on the west side, but aesthetically (again), someone ask me, how you not having a window in the west ? well, at least, i might put small window on the back. how deep is eaves that enough to cover the summer sun ? would it be best 45, 60 or 90 ? does an eaves actually help winter sun ? i came from country that normally dont have winter, hence i have little knowledge how to play with winter sun... based on yourhome.gov.au, they said, winter sun comes very low angle, which reason why you need eaves... whereas summer sun is high. but how do you measure the angle ? is it depend on how high your house is, your window ? for example: say if i want 45 eaves, and my window is 1 meter high. is this enough to keep away from summer sun? Yak Chat, how bout for melbourne, do they have different angle to brissy ? You want the eaves small enough to NOT block the sun in winter, because the sun helps heat the house and in winter that is what you want. I remember working out the angle of the sun in winter for our solar pergola (which we didn't end up building) from a website. I think it may even be the website Yak Chat provided the link to. You need to find out your latitude and go from there. To be honest I have no idea what our eaves are, they were "standard" for the time. Like I said, the benefit is variable in autumn and spring. If it's a very warm day like you sometimes get in spring or autumn and the sun is partly coming in the window then the house can get very warm. When do you need to make a decision by? It would be helpful for you to visit the open homes on Sustainable House Day but that isn't until September (didn't it used to be in August?). viewtopic.php?f=35&t=19358 I think you would want to keep a window in the bathroom for light and ventilation. You could think about an awning or roller shutter for that window, and deciduous plantings on that side would be a good idea to shade both the window and the wall. Re: Eaves or not to eaves 25Jun 16, 2009 10:07 pm building.our.first.house It would be really strange to have eaves in only certain area of the house. You either have it everywhere or no eaves at all. Unless there's any special reason, e.g. your land is not wide enough, have to leave ??m on both side of land from the border, ...etc. I have seen cases where the eaves of garage side was "sacrificed" as the land wasn't wide enough... : Yes, that's right - we have no eaves on our side garage wall as it is right on the boundary and could not have eaves as they would overhang into neighbours property. However there are obviously no windows on garage side wall either and keeping garage cool is not really an issue so that was fine by us. There seems a strange trend around here to have eaves everywhere except on the front of house , presumably because the no eaves modern look is what they are after - but they are doing this regardless of the direction the house faces Re: Eaves or not to eaves 26Jun 17, 2009 12:20 am d3p, I remember reading somewhere (years ago) that for a passive solar house in Melbourne, northern windows needed to be shaded when the sun was at an angle of 70 degrees. It only gets as high as 75 degrees in midsummer. There is a Hassall Sun Chart for Melb at http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au which shows all the angles of the sun throughout the year. Using 70 degs would give you shading from approx mid Nov to late Jan. Assuming your living areas are on the North side, you would probably have some form of external glazed door, so you would want your shading to be down to ground level. I just did a simple triangulation with trusty pencil and paper and 900mm eaves would cover that. If your windows are a metre above floor level, then 600mm eaves would probably do. In the end its a compromise between aesthetics and function. I couldn't do 900mm eaves as I don't think it would look right. Any size eaves is better than no eaves Hope I didn't get confusing with the explanation, Cheers, Baronvon. First time poster, building 2nd home. Building again. What have we got ourselves in for!!! Re: Eaves or not to eaves 27Jun 17, 2009 9:55 am I agree with everyone that eaves have many advantages - we are putting 600 mm eaves all the way around our house. One important aspect of your house design when thinking about eaves is to avoid permanently shading glass at the top of your windows. The sun is at its lowest angle at about Jun 21 - so we are close to that point now. I was driving through the country the other day and was amazed to see how many houses had north facing windows with wide verandahs and the sunlight was only reaching the bottom 40% of the windows. What this means is that the sun never reaches the top 60% of the windows - so this glass never allows heat to enter the home - it just allows heat to leave the home. When you design eaves, you want to make sure that you minimize this effect. Ideally, for about 6 weeks either side of the winter solstice (about Jun 21), you should be getting sunlight reaching your entire north-facing window. In our case, with 600 mm eaves, that means the top of the window (actually the top of the glass in the window) should be around 30 cm below the level of the eaves. To achieve something close to this with 600 mm eaves, you will need to have 2700 high ceilings (if you are building a standard project-style house). To avoid summer sun, you ideally want your windows to not reach below about 160 cm below the eaves level. So ideally, with 2700 ceilings and 600 mm eaves, you want windows where the actual glazing is about 1.2 metres in height, with the top no higher than about 30 cm below eaves level. Of course, design and personal preference issues also play a role. In our case, we are actually having full length windows (glazing reaching down to about 220 cm below eave level) on the north of our house, and we know we will get some sun in summer. To give you an idea of the effect of this... At the summer solstice, the sun will reach the bottom 50 cm of the window and shine approximately 24 cm into the room at floor level. On Feb 2, about the peak heat time in Victoria, the sun will hit the bottom 100 cm of the window and shine approximately 60 cm into the room at floor level. We decided we can live with this in order to have a maximum view of the nice gum trees on our lot. If anyone is interested in knowing how to do eaves/window/sunlight calculations, let me know and I'll try to find time to write out some instructions. Re: Eaves or not to eaves 28Jun 17, 2009 10:03 pm i might have to sacrifice the garage too ! lol based on my design plan i dont think i can have the garage with eaves, nor the south side with eaves based on the posting in this thread, it seems having eaves in south is not useful enough. so probably i ll plan to have eaves on west, north and east (front) i wonder if it will look odd ? baronvon, seems, yeah agree 900 mm eaves would not suit me, at least, my land not big enough, unless approved by council to have extended width for the house hiker, i would be interested to start calculating mine. my house would be 2590 mm ceiling height, i hope i can translate your calculation to 2590mm ceiling height. how do you find latitude guys ? Helyn building.our.first.house It would be really strange to have eaves in only certain area of the house. You either have it everywhere or no eaves at all. Unless there's any special reason, e.g. your land is not wide enough, have to leave ??m on both side of land from the border, ...etc. I have seen cases where the eaves of garage side was "sacrificed" as the land wasn't wide enough... : Yes, that's right - we have no eaves on our side garage wall as it is right on the boundary and could not have eaves as they would overhang into neighbours property. However there are obviously no windows on garage side wall either and keeping garage cool is not really an issue so that was fine by us. There seems a strange trend around here to have eaves everywhere except on the front of house , presumably because the no eaves modern look is what they are after - but they are doing this regardless of the direction the house faces baronvon d3p, I remember reading somewhere (years ago) that for a passive solar house in Melbourne, northern windows needed to be shaded when the sun was at an angle of 70 degrees. It only gets as high as 75 degrees in midsummer. There is a Hassall Sun Chart for Melb at http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au which shows all the angles of the sun throughout the year. Using 70 degs would give you shading from approx mid Nov to late Jan. Assuming your living areas are on the North side, you would probably have some form of external glazed door, so you would want your shading to be down to ground level. I just did a simple triangulation with trusty pencil and paper and 900mm eaves would cover that. If your windows are a metre above floor level, then 600mm eaves would probably do. Any size eaves is better than no eaves Hope I didn't get confusing with the explanation, Cheers, Baronvon. First time poster, building 2nd home. hiker I agree with everyone that eaves have many advantages - we are putting 600 mm eaves all the way around our house. One important aspect of your house design when thinking about eaves is to avoid permanently shading glass at the top of your windows. The sun is at its lowest angle at about Jun 21 - so we are close to that point now. I was driving through the country the other day and was amazed to see how many houses had north facing windows with wide verandahs and the sunlight was only reaching the bottom 40% of the windows. What this means is that the sun never reaches the top 60% of the windows - so this glass never allows heat to enter the home - it just allows heat to leave the home. When you design eaves, you want to make sure that you minimize this effect. Ideally, for about 6 weeks either side of the winter solstice (about Jun 21), you should be getting sunlight reaching your entire north-facing window. In our case, with 600 mm eaves, that means the top of the window (actually the top of the glass in the window) should be around 30 cm below the level of the eaves. To achieve something close to this with 600 mm eaves, you will need to have 2700 high ceilings (if you are building a standard project-style house). To avoid summer sun, you ideally want your windows to not reach below about 160 cm below the eaves level. So ideally, with 2700 ceilings and 600 mm eaves, you want windows where the actual glazing is about 1.2 metres in height, with the top no higher than about 30 cm below eaves level. Of course, design and personal preference issues also play a role. In our case, we are actually having full length windows (glazing reaching down to about 220 cm below eave level) on the north of our house, and we know we will get some sun in summer. To give you an idea of the effect of this... At the summer solstice, the sun will reach the bottom 50 cm of the window and shine approximately 24 cm into the room at floor level. On Feb 2, about the peak heat time in Victoria, the sun will hit the bottom 100 cm of the window and shine approximately 60 cm into the room at floor level. We decided we can live with this in order to have a maximum view of the nice gum trees on our lot. If anyone is interested in knowing how to do eaves/window/sunlight calculations, let me know and I'll try to find time to write out some instructions. Final stage Re: Eaves or not to eaves 30Jun 18, 2009 2:25 pm Hi all, Eaves are great for cutting out the sun in summer and allowing it in winter The following page gives some good info on how to calculate the optimal eave width http://www.yourhome.gov.au/technical/fs44.html We went with no eaves at all in the end as it didn't suit the house and I needed 900mm wide eaves to get the full effect. I will be planting deciduous trees to assist in minimising and maximising the sun let into the house in summer and winter. We have a polished concrete floor which is a great thermal mass and it helps to regulate the temperature of the house, so getting more sun in winter is better than getting less in summer. I will likely put external louvres on the north windows when the time comes if the trees are not doing the job but we will see how we go. The eaves help to protect the walls as well which can transfer a fair amount of heat, especially when you have a run of hot days. Re: Eaves or not to eaves 31Jun 19, 2009 9:16 pm 600mm eaves all round here. Did it mainly to protect from the hot Brisbane summers. Didn't really consider the aesthetics at all. I think the government website advised 950, but my builder can only do 600 mm max. 2700mm roof should give us decent winter sun and shade in summer. Still need to put down glazing later for our large north facing windows. Going for the clearglaze stuff that is almost invisible but is great with heat. Re: Eaves or not to eaves 32Jun 22, 2009 10:52 am Just my 2c as a reminder to all of you who are increasing the side of your eaves, not sure if you understand how do the builders extend the size of your eaves? If you think that builders will increase the height of the house to accomodate the extra length (compared to the same house with original/no eaves), then you are wrong! They don't! They will just extend the roof edge downwards without changing the wall/ceiling/house height. So the wider your eave is, the lower your house might look as the extra eaves length now blocks part of the wall after the extension. This might not be a major problem, but you should be clear about this in case you have a different expectation. Re: Eaves or not to eaves 34May 28, 2010 9:15 pm 600mm Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a128/pinkpanther80/Photo0255.jpg http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a128/pinkpanther80/house/Photo0409.jpg http://burbankascent2500.blogspot.com/ https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=28503 [url=http://www.TickerFactory.com/] HOUSE COMPLETED IN 119 DAYS PCI Complete Handover 24th August Re: Eaves or not to eaves 36Jun 16, 2010 2:40 am We've built without eaves but instead are running a pergola frame along the north side of our house which has the living areas. We'll be putting a horizontal shade system on the pergola so we can easily vary how much shade we have. This avoids the problem of fixed eaves where you can have too much shade on unusually cool spring/autumn days or too little shade on unusually warm days. Re: Eaves or not to eaves 37Jun 16, 2010 8:19 am I loved eaves but cold not have them all around the house due to the cost And I couldnt have them along the garage due to a zero boundary, but we put them across the front and up the side to the next corner as I didnt like the 'cut' off look 1 metre in. It looks great I think as the dining room was made bigger so it still looks even. The eaves dont look like they are sticking out past the dining room. If we build again I dont care what the cost is, I will have eaves. I prefer a simple house with eaves to an upgraded (10k+) facade. Everyone has a different taste/style though. Front view Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ what yous ee from the front Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ how it looks from the backyard Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Update from me! Couldn't find the trimmer - not sure if there isn't one simply because the eave is so narrow. Went ahead with the spring toggles and it all worked out… 7 4617 The two 15mm holes are obviously not compliant. The Dept of Fair Trading would love to see this one! Do the gutters pool water after it stops raining? Although it's… 4 3915 2 4466 |