Browse Forums General Discussion Re: Broad Reno ideas for enhanced layout 18Jun 09, 2017 11:31 am Yeah, thinking about natural light & maximizing the sunshine that enters your house in winter is a very, very good idea. Designing for the path of the sun is called passive solar design. I'll outline the concept below, & more can be found on this very informative government website, http://www.yourhome.gov.au/passive-design/orientation The sun crosses the northern part of the sky, higher in summer, lower in winter. You want to design your floorplan around this. Generally, you want your living areas (& a large proportion of your glazing) to face north. These northern windows will receive plenty of sunshine in winter, but will be shaded by eaves in summer, when the sun is higher in the sky. Bedrooms can be located to the south, as they don't need as much light, & it's ok for them to be a bit cooler. Bedrooms should not have west facing windows, as these are very hard to shade, allowing hot afternoon sunshine to enter the house. If rooms must face west, it's better that they are garages & rarely used rooms like laundries & bathrooms. But, although not ideal, if it's a choice between the two, it's better that living rooms face west than bedrooms. This is because warm living rooms can be far more tolerable on hot summer evenings than warm bedrooms. Of course, this is the general case, for much of Australia. But houses have to be designed differently for different climates. Tropical North Queensland has very different requirements to Tasmania. So my first question, where are you located? The perfect passive solar house is rectangular, with the longer faces pointing due north & south, the shorter faces pointing east & west. Unfortunately, along with being an odd shape, you're house faces 45° to the compass points. This greatly complicates shading windows. But generally, with your orientation, you'd want to minimize NW widows (which looks impossible), locate your living areas to the north with NE widows where possible (somewhat achievable), locate bedrooms to the south with SE windows (somewhat achievable). Taking this all into account, I'm not overly keen on your new plan to locate your master at the front of the house, where the living room is currently located. It will rob your living areas/kitchen of natural light, & limit sunlight heating of your living areas in winter. Is is also likely to make your master unbearably hot on summer evenings, as this room has what looks like large NW facing windows. So I'D LEAVE YOUR LIVING AREA WHERE IT IS. As you say, your kitchen & meals area are very dark, because the windows in these rooms face SE & SW. To lighten up the kitchen I'd revert to your original plan, & KNOCKOUT MUCH OF THE WALLS BETWEEN THE KITCHEN, DINING ROOM & ENTRY HALLWAY. This will have a great effect on lighting your kitchen. One thing I do like, is that you've kept your kitchen, laundry & bathroom in their current location. This will help to minimise renovation costs greatly, as moving wet areas & plumbing is expensive. Plus S (along with W) is a good orientation for wet areas, as these are quite rarely used, & don't need to be warm. Now for another question, your family situation. Do you plan on using all 4 bedrooms regularly? If bedroom 4 is a guest bedroom & will be rarely used my plan would be to LOCATE BEDROOM 4 IN WHAT IS CURRENTLY THE MEALS AREA. This room is dark because of it's orientation, perfect for a bedroom. It would be quite small, but ok for guests or a study. If you wanted this room to be larger, you could rob some floor area from the laundry, though I may have other plans for this below. I'll go along with your plans of changing the use of the central bedroom, but instead of making this your living area I'd MAKE THE CENTRAL BEDROOM YOUR RUMPUS. You could decide how much of the walls you want left, deciding between privacy & noise reduction, & daylighting the rear of the house (which wouldn't really be necessary, as it's bedrooms & bathrooms). I would include a door somewhere between the rumpus, new bedroom 4 / kitchen. This door can be used to zone the living areas. Separating your living areas from your bedrooms, so you can choose to only heat your living areas in winter, which is great for energy efficiency & your bills. Like your new plan, I'd EXTEND THE HOUSE IN THE SE CORNER. But I would LOCATE THE MASTER / ENSUITE IN THE SE EXTENSION. Again, this orientation is good for bedrooms. The master could have private outside areas. You could also increase it's privacy by locating the ensuite or robe on the wall adjacent to the other bedroom. Re: Broad Reno ideas for enhanced layout 19Jun 09, 2017 11:49 am Wowee, thankyou so much for the very detailed response! all of the ideas and knowledge was fantastic to read. I can certainly understand the need to keep the current lounge as it is, as you say, that front facing window is quite large and would get a lot of heat in the afternoon in summer. FYI I am in Melbourne. My only concern with keeping that lounge, and knocking out bed 1 to make a rumpus is that bed 1 would be no more and I'm not sure where is would go...I guess that could always be part of the extension, and for now bed 1 could stay where it is. I think that if I was to knock out the kitchen/dining walls facinv the hallways, I would maybe look at moving bed 1's door around to being near the bed 2 door. We are planning to have 3 kids so the 4th bed would still need to be a comfortable size. So with all that in mind, if the goals was to initially renovate things like the floors, electrics, paint etc and put in a new kitchen and then down the track (maybe 7-9 years away) do an extension so that the house has 4 beds (1 with ensuite), dual living, what would be your suggestion? My main concern is that I don't want to have to do the kitchen again, so I want to place that where I want it to be long term. The meals, kitchen and dining areas are too pokey, so I want to try and end up with just a good size kitchen and meals area (big enough for a family size table). Re: Broad Reno ideas for enhanced layout 20Jun 09, 2017 12:03 pm Sorry, this IPad keeps refreshing while I'm writing, & I lose what I type (just lost a paragraph on outdoor areas. Grrrr). So I've been editing what I've originally typed. So you mightn't have seen I said put the master in the extension, when you build it. Leave the master where it is, until your ready to extend. Once that's done, convert bed one to the rumpus. Only problem is you don't get an ensuite until you extend. I'll continue writing, in a new post. Hi everyone, we are struggling to find inspiration for our house renovations. We've got a mid-1980s home in Perth that we want to renovate ourselves (as much as possible… 0 928 Thanks for the suggestion. The space between shower and sinks was too tight. I agree about the toilet location. So I have tried two other options: The lower one is… 3 6118 |