Browse Forums Building A New House 1 May 08, 2019 10:30 am I'm looking to buy a plot of land in an upcoming estate. The land is west facing. I was planning to put all the living areas on the northern side of the lot as that's where the most sun will be, but looking at the "Things you forget" thread, it seems that one talks about getting a north/south facing block and putting your living areas in the front or back. My current house is a corner east facing lot where the north side is facing the street. I've put windows on that side that go into my family and kitchen, and during the day there's so much light and warmth that it's awesome during winter. During the summer I'd have to close the blinds most of the day but that's OK. I'm just wondering with the new lot, since it's not a corner, is it a mistake getting west facing? The set backs for the neighbours are 1m on the sides, but the garage can be built on the boundary. Also, there's nothing in the design guidelines as to how far the second floor has to be set back for double storey houses. I don't want my north facing windows blocked out by a double storey wall 2m away. Re: Lot orientation for future house E/W vs N/S 2May 09, 2019 10:11 am It's my belief that it's possible to design a good house for any suburban block … however, I do think that it's probably easiest if the rear faces north because the living areas have more privacy, if the front faces north the living areas face the street but that can work out OK depending on the street & balcony-design etc. In my opinion, and it's only an opinion without a lot of experience, I think you're right to be concerned about the northern wall running along the side of the block - our house has a 3m wide side-driveway to the west, meaning probably 4m before the neighbour's 2-storey house, and yet the neighbour's house still shades the ground floor on that side in winter. Re: Lot orientation for future house E/W vs N/S 4May 09, 2019 11:04 am navman Understood Forg, but surely west facing in your example will have different sun path characteristics to north facing? Hi, we have the past year or so going through this in relation to buying a block and designing a house. We built 10 years ago with the front of the house facing north and only had the main bedroom & garage on that warmer north aspect (for winter). Our living areas were mostly west and south facing. Was quite an uncomfortable house year round although we did put up some external eaves and Alfresco to shield from the west sun. Anyhow when we looked for a new block early last year we settled on a north-south block with north to the rear. It also widened from front to back so we have designed our main living areas running along the rear with most bedrooms on the east side. Looking back though I think a west facing block is arguably best (assuming at least 5-6m spacing to northern neighbour’s house) as you design a single fronted house with garage and maybe main bedroom on west front, main living areas lengthwise on the north aspect and utility rooms on the south side? Our original build with south facing front I believe is the most challenging unless you can design a skillion type roof with clerestory windows into your living areas? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Check our Homeone build blog here Re: Lot orientation for future house E/W vs N/S 5May 09, 2019 11:07 am darb74 Looking back though I think a west facing block is arguably best (assuming at least 5-6m spacing to northern neighbour’s house) as you design a single fronted house with garage and maybe main bedroom on west front, main living areas lengthwise on the north aspect and utility rooms on the south side? Yes this is what I was thinking. But 5-6m spacing to neighbours is a long shot in an estate with 1m setbacks from the boundaries. Just looking at the estate guidelines, there's no standard as to how much setback the second floor of a house has to be. So in that case would Victorian ResCode apply? Re: Lot orientation for future house E/W vs N/S 6May 09, 2019 12:17 pm navman Just looking at the estate guidelines, there's no standard as to how much setback the second floor of a house has to be. So in that case would Victorian ResCode apply? Interesting question, I'm not that familiar with the Vic ResCode apart from some parameters we had to deal with relating to a single story such as >1m of clear sky for habitable rooms etc. I do know from some sun shadow modelling I did for our house (relating to a shed location) is we needed around 6m clearance for our 2.6m wall height (11deg pitch roof) shed from the house to allow most of the winter sun to still penetrate adequately. I also checked the potential scenario if our neighbour built a 2 story house to our north and we needed around 11m clearance in this instance....to our single story. With double story design would you be better off having your main living areas on the upper level? With a single story, maybe a skillion roof with clerestory windows would be the go when dealing with tight setbacks to neighbours? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Check our Homeone build blog here Re: Lot orientation for future house E/W vs N/S 7May 10, 2019 10:52 am navman Understood Forg, but surely west facing in your example will have different sun path characteristics to north facing? For sure, but given how far south Sydney isn't, the sun is still surprisingly (to me) low to the north in winter. The sun comes around to that side of our house by about 2:30pm-3pm & the sun's just as low regardless of which direction you're facing, so best case is you'd get shading from that time, Google for stuff like sun angles, I can't recall what the search-terms are but once you know the angles you can draw it up pretty quickly with some simple diagrams and either a protractor or some simple trigonometry from high school. Most likely your house & theirs will be 1800mm apart, and most likely you'll only have to worry about the height of their wall closest to yours (6m-ish usually if I remember correctly but dunno your local regs). Scientists have used random matrix theory to demonstrate theoretically that the neutrino mass hierarchy can be explained mathematically. When a substance is fragmented… 21 20639 Would anyone on this forum know of a builder/company in Brisbane with house designs for a shallow block. 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