New member, long time lurker...

[Onkeludo2]

I feel I already know many of you as I have been reading these forums on and off for months.  For the last week I have had more free time than expected and read a huge chuck of information.

Currently I work in Iraq or Afghanistan (fourth tour) depending on the assignment.  I am here until my wife finishes her Master's and finally enters the workforce.  Our next move will most like be to Maryland half way between PAX River and DC (Waldorf area).  I have been planning to build a house for the last 10 years but a few changes in our life have made me throw out all my old designs and start fresh.  In short, we are going to one-level living with a second floor (basement) for workshop and additional storage/utilities only.

I will try this image attachment thing for our current favorite floor plan.  It is a 20 x 44' with a small cantilever.  Window and door placement will change based on solar gain requirements.  Looking to have you guys poke holes in it.  Aiming to slap it on at least 3 acres of vastly overpriced land.



A little background.  I learned long ago that my wife and I will never share a bathroom long term.  We have no children nor any plans for them.  Most of our guests will be invited to overnight elsewhere or we will build a small guest cottage on the property (we moved away from our families for a reason).  I plan to heavily insulate and seal the be-jesus out of the house and test the results with a blower door.  Yes, this would be for full time living and I plan to build all but the basement myself with a great deal of the work being done solo.  I learned when helping a friend add a 1200 sq ft addition to his house friends and family are not a reliable source of long-term help for such things.  I learned by doing all my own remodeling when home, but hiring out when I am away, that contractors tend to be less reliable than friends and family (and those that aren't are too busy to book).

Glad to finally be on board and look forward to your comments.

Mike

[ScottA]

 

The floor plan looks solid. You may find the laundry area a bit cramped.

[Onkeludo2]

ScottA, glad you like it.  Your build was the first one I read start to finish back when I still lived in Tulsa, OK but was working a job in Moses Lake, Washington.  At that time we were still considering building on my land up near Grand Lake but life moved us North and will be moving us east when I return.  

DW swears this will be the last move for a while so I have the official thumbs up to buy land and build.  I have a standing job offer at Pax River NAS and there are a ton jobs in her area of study even in this down economy.

The laundry area is the size we had in our Tulsa house (now a rental) so I am not too concerned but a second set of hook-ups will be in the basement.  They will normally feed my brewery but if I have to move that for the sake of marital harmony it is a sacrifice I am prepared to make.

Mike

[Redoverfarm]

Onkeludo2 the only thing that jumps out at me is the "outswing" doors.  Most entry are "inswing" for a variety of reasons.

[dougpete]

Greetings -

I too am about to start on a project, in fact the basement should go in this month.  You mentioned brewing - somehow I forgot to add plumbing for a brew room!  Thanks for the reminder.......

DougPete

[rwanders]

If you can widen your footprint to 24' wide both you and the wife will be much happier for relatively small increase in costs----especially your wife long term.(and thus you long term) It will require a few adjustments in foundation and spans for floor and roof joists, etc, but will pay many dividends. I used up a lot of paper designing floor plans until I tried 24' wide.

Welcome to the forum and thanks for your service!

[glenn kangiser]

to the forum.  Looks like you have a good plan started.

[MountainDon]

1. Thanks for your service.     Here's to a safe return.

2. 

3. Question: Have you lived with pocket doors? I like them as a space saver, but don't like them so much if it's something that is going to be closed/opened frequently. If you want them get the best ones, the ones that have a metal framework and top notch roller sets.

4. The exterior double doors you have illustrated: As redoverfarm stated, outswing exterior doors are unusual. I realize they save interior space, never get in the way inside. They do preclude ever installing a storm or screen door though.

5. If there is to be a basement, why not gain a little upstairs space by moving the laundry down there? That would give more room for laundry as well.

6. One last poke  , the closet door that swings inside is also unusual.   

Take care.

[Onkeludo2]

Thanks for all the replies!

dougpete:  Everything I have ever designed before now was a 24' wide footprint but a couple of things became painfully clear to me.  If I want a clear-span basement and I am doing most of this work solo, 20' is the functional limit to the I-joists or floor trusses I can use.  If I did a central steel or LVL beam, which would solve this issue, it would have to be extremely deep and heavy requiring a crane for install.  If I go with I-joist large enough to clear-span the basement it will be impossible to install them solo (20' is tough enough) due to the depth required.

MountainDon: The inward swinging closet door is intentional.  The master bedroom suite, kitchen and all public areas are to be built "barrier-free".  This means 36" doorways amongst other things.  Compromises had to be made to accomplish this.  

The same is true of the pocket doors...I have lived with them and I love them.  We rarely close any doors in our last two houses so it is more for the occasional visitor than for us.  

The laundry is planned for the first floor because of the whole one-story living thing.  There may be a time in the very near future that my wife cannot manage the stairs and our one relative that does visit frequently, and is welcomed with open arms, is already confined to a wheel-chair most of the time.  

Don't get too excited about thanking me for my service...I am contractor and my biggest accomplishment over here is keeping other contractors honest.  Sadly the Gubm't learned about 2005 that they did not have the expertise to manage all the contractors they had in theatre...the idea to make sure soldiers do the sharp end of the stick stuff and have contractors take care of construction and "Basic Life Support" is sound.  Soldiers shoot and contractors feed, house and supply them.  The problem was, contractors are for-profit entities and left to their own devices, often do not do what they should.  I audit them to keep them honest and on mission...something existing agencies have proven under-staffed and under-qualified to do.  It is truly a sad state of affairs that contractors are auditing contractors.

dougpete:  How could you forget the brewery!  Do not forget to set aside a location for the cool-room as well for lagering and/or serving temperature storage.  I still have to convince the wife that we need a serving tower in the kitchen counter but that one has fallen on deaf ears so far.  I have a commercial hood with make-up air that I have been dying to install so that full-scale brewing can be done indoors.

Glenn:  Your home is an inspiration!  I could go on and on but, let's just say if I were still single...or wanted to be single again...I would be going underground.

All: I may rethink the out swinging french doors but I used them on the Tulsa house with great results.  For screened doors we used roller screens because the dogs would destroy anything else.  I am a firm believer in the concept that locked doors keep the honest people out so the majority of our security is provided by our pack of wild mutts and a Mossberg verses door locks.  I have not found the weather sealing to be an issue and the large overhangs take care of a lot of that.  Still, something to think about.

You might have noticed I mentioned the dogs a couple of times and they are a major reason for our change to single-story living.  We have been rescueing and rehabilitating badly abused "unadoptable" dogs for about 10 years now.  We tend toward the bigger dogs (some in excess of a 100#'s) and the last two times I have been working overseas, my 4'10" wife has had to deal with a post-surgical pup that had weeks of limitted moblity.  When your house has all the bedrooms on the second floor, this means setting up a bed in the dining room and she is pretty sick of that.  Of course I keep telling her that I have to walk a block to the bathroom and showers but she is not impressed.

Mike

[Don_P]

Hi Onkeludo2
Sounds like you have the makings of a screenplay.
Just a thought that came to mind with the mention of brewing. I do occasionally on the 5 gallon scale, fun. The gentleman I'm working for does it on a large home scale, they live on a property that had the town blacksmith and icehouse. He uses the fully underground icehouse to do some of it in. A walk down ships ladder into the pit. None of us realized it but CO2 lays in there and excludes the oxygen. He and his son both made it up the ladder to pass out in the yard luckily. Just something to keep in mind when designing those areas.

[Rover]

You have likely given it thought, but maybe change one tub to be a large shower?  Maybe even slope and waterproof the whole washroom floor.  It would give you a simple shower which is easier to keep clean.  And it would give options for washing down.  Could even washdown a dog.

[Onkeludo2]

Good point.  I have always planned to make my bathroom what I affectionately call the "Italian Pensione" bathroom.  The whole dang thing is tiled, there is small hinged glass "splash" panel to keep shower water off the toilet (and toilet paper).  You slope the whole bathroom to a floor drain.

I promise not to go so far as one place a I stayed at in Como, Italy that actually had that floor drain strategically placed below the sink...nothing but an extended tailpiece and you can figure out the rest.  Shave (back when I still shaved), step back as far as possible and pull the chain for the stopper.

Thanks for reminding me of that.  Will absolutely plan on incorporating it.  Now I may need to extend the cantilever section enough to expand the bathroom for clearance enough to make it a roll-in shower  It is close now, but making the turn from the hallway into the bath, then the toilet projecting 30" into a 6' room gives no room to turn around.  24' plan keeps looking better...Maybe I just need to use the local version of "hire-a-drunk" to a get a day laborer to help me set those 24', 16" deep I-joists...

Mike

[rwanders]

  I think you would find 24'x16" I-joist isn't too bad for one person to slide out across a foundation. As you say, finding help for one or two days isn't impossible----a nice strong teenager will suffice.

[psammy]

these might be pretty manageable..... http://www.gp.com/build/product.aspx?pid=6383

psammy

[Onkeludo2]

rwanders:  When there is a will there is a way.  I can always build a prop with casters to put in the basement, slide the I-joist to the prop, then get in the basement and slide it the rest of the way to the other basement wall.

psammy:  Those are nice because they already have the knock-outs but it does not change the basic problem of installing I-joists solo.  The darn things are wiggly as all get-out!  The deeper and longer they get, the more they like to act like a limp piece of pasta.  Even standing them up and keeping them stood up until nailed off can be a whole new experience.

When we built the the addition on a friend's house we had some that were 32' long!  This was an oversized 2-car garage with a master bedroom suite above.  The 32-footers were spanning 26' plus a 3' cantilever on either end.  I told the guy he was nuts but the two of us still managed to get them installed without a problem.  Keeping the spacing straight mid-span was even a challenge as each piece of blocking was custom width due to the I-joist layout (double joists for certain loads and to miss the plumbing for the toilet, etc).  That project convinced me that when I built my house it was going to be a simple gable roofed-rectangle optimized for the standard widths and lengths of building materials...and then a few years later I found this wonderful site! 

[glenn kangiser]

Thanks Mike, and looking forward to seeing your project progress.

[plumbertemecula]

hello everyone....newbie here...and I want to know more about this forum,,,,

[considerations]

Welcome! Planning is really fun, especially when you can toss your ideas at the forum and get honest and supportive feedback.  This is a good group of folks. I'll be following your progress with interest.

[markert2523]

Michael,

Do you think you could haul those I-beams in your hearse?  That was one cool wagon.

Eric

[Onkeludo2]

I swear we could have strapped them to the roof and not had 'em overhanging either end!  Those rollers were great for loading sheets of drywall in the back and I got me lots of stares at Home Depot.

Sadly the Caddy was destined to be donor vehicle to someone else's hot rod project.  Never could get the title for the car as the funeral home never registered the car...in the entire 20 years they owned it!