Building a new house and would love to hear from people for ideas that they would have put in their palace in hindsight? Something you think would have been good to put in during construction?

Mark _australia said...

Never had my own but as one who lives in housing provided by work and thus I have no choice where I live:

Every room should have a window. Particularly toilets - no dunny in middle of the house with no ventilation (and sunlight kills bugs)

Have eaves!

Kitchen, linen cupboard and laundry relatively close together if you have a family. Housewife home all day goes kitchen to laundy and linen cupboard repeatedly. The cheaper designs nowadays don't even give you a linen cupboard.

Likewise if you have little kids - ability to close a door between living area and the passage that leads to their bedroom - particularly if you have tiles.

Tick to all those... maybe im on the right track!

The toilet and bathroom should have a window but I think it would be great to have a decent sized room with no window. Great for sleeping in the day where it's dark and quiet.


If possible try to insulate the building and also stick in plenty of power points. Around twice as many as you think you will need may be adequate. A fireplace of some sort is great especially if you have access to some trees for wood. If you can get a water heater element going through you fireplace you will both heat your house and your water with fire in winter.

Eaves definitely but NOT boxed or covered in - doesn't matter if your gutters overflow then when or if it rains.
Cellar - dual purpose in cyclone area.
BIG shed or garage for toys.
More insulation in my timber framed house.
NO weatherboards due to the bastards needing painting every five or so years - I believed the ads that say ten
If you're miles away from the coast sell and move closer and just build a smaller house.
If you are a shift worker put your bedroom at the southwest corner - cooler until midday after nights and if you somehow sleep too long you can feel the seabreeze kick in in WA......

Good luck and have fun.

We've got a passive solar design with north facing living (with eaves) good thermal mass and good insulation (hebel Powerpanel cladding system) so I hope were kicking goals. .
Bedroom in the SW corner for sleeping (shift worker) and as far away from the living as possible.

What about a home theatre room in the centre of the house so that you can insulate it well?

One of the best things I did to my house was to install a skylight window in the loungeroom, but only because it faces south and got very little natural light. Now its excellent and only needs lights at night.

My bathroom has windows high up and faces north, so it has great privacy and plenty of natural sun light.

So, I would agree, good solar design would be a must have. I guess if you are using powerpanels and have decent thermal mass, you are onto a good design. Are there prevailing breezes that you can take advantage of so that you can get a breeze flowing through the place?

Oh yeah, if you are crazy like me, cable up everything with twisted pair cabling!

patsken said...

Eaves definitely but NOT boxed or covered in - doesn't matter if your gutters overflow then when or if it rains.
>>>>>>>

Standard building practice here is to have boxed eaves level and semi sealed at the roof edge but open at the cavity. Seems designed to flood the house as soon as gutters overflow. It's a bit of extra work to make the gutters lower than the outside skin, but it's not rocket science.

Unless you want to collect rain water, (and that's a good idea these days) you don't need gutters.

I wanted a low maintenance house so we did with out them. We just made sure the ground slopes away from the house all the way round. No leaves or sand to clear out, or rusted gutters to replace or paint.

Eaves are long enough to keep northerly summer sun completely off the walls. but short enough for winter sun to reach the top of the windows.

Or just say fk it and have a look at the Humpy thread

Decrepit said..

"Unless you want to collect rain water, (and that's a good idea these days) you don't need gutters."

The East Freo council (as late as 2007 when I built my games room, carport and shed) insists that all run-off be contained on the property. That means gutters, downpipes and soak-wells or tank.

Waste of time as far as I'm concerned. The gutters on the house get blocked from our lovely shady trees and the upstairs ones are about 6m above ground level and I'm getting WAY too old to be climbing the extension ladder....

Some points to ponder.
High ceilings if you can go that way. Not the standard job, but high. I think its 32 course brick high, but check.
Tinted glass, not the add on film but tinted, or darkened glass.
Big wide deep kitchen draws.
Big bathroom, with vent fan over shower, and in bathroom itself. Don'T bother with a bath with jets, we did and have used it randomly in 6 years.
Walk in robes, no faffy tiny ones, proper size jobs.
Double check, and check again as the window frames and door frames are bricked in. Its a pain in the coit sorting out not square frames with screens and tiles after its all in.
Fill the gutters, then check for low spots (will rust out) add down pipes as required to elevate.

Make sure you can service the loan on a single income and live comfortably which is slowly becoming /out of reach (ausie dream) ,budget in the future that there might be kids if your young.Australia is becoming very unaffordable now Its "THE HAVES AND HAVE NOTS"
Most successful people are the ones who are third fourth generation who have stuck together and held accumulated assets.

^^^
nice segue !




"Off a guy, whack a guy, whack off a guy ???"

red said...

Building a new house and would love to hear from people for ideas that they would have put in their palace in hindsight? Something you think would have been good to put in during construction?

dont be shy with the insulation
Ive just finished 2 rooms in a 1940's built house the first in the SWcorner got wall insulation, a foil layer under the iron, batts on the cieling , and will get foil undr the floor before winter,
the lounge just got foil under the tin and batts on the cieling, I cant get under the floor( too oldto crawl that far).
Try for higher cielings and fans, more power points, sky lights for the darker rooms.
In Kalgoorlie the trend is for huge houses, and very little thought is given to the things that make a house livable.
friends have just gotten through a really hot summer in their new house,
they had a $900 power bill, the refrigerated A/C kept shutting down and they spent about 1/4 of the really hot nights sleeping out on the back verandah.
they have built a huge house, with little or no eaves( to get the max floor plan) and now they cant afford to heat it in winter and the dsign / materials used turn it into an oven in summer.
Ive watched a number of houses going up in our area, and realize that the building companies use as little insulation as they can get away with, ( to cut costs presumably)

Pick you 3 favorite rooms....
Room 1 - add 3 feet
Room 2 - add 2 feet
Room 3 - add 1 foot

ie - 3 feet on the garage (boards), 2 feet on living dining, and 1 foot on mater bedroom. And and 1 metre to the main robe for the wife.

In all seriousness... (the above is), the "standard garage" is a JOKE at 6m x 6m, or even worse at 5.6m x 6.0m. Go for 6.5m x 6.5m. And trust me, 7.5m x 6.5m is what you really want !! 7.5m gives reasonable space for 2 car, perhaps boards, bicycles, etc... Racks for storing boxes, documents, etc. Believe me, 7.5m x 6.5m is what you will want.

My advice as an Architectural draftsman would be to build as small as possible. All thermal and fire requirements are legislated in the building code and part of Basix requirements so eaves and insulation and water tanks are necessary.If you see windows without eaves around your area and its a new house then theres something else going on in the design, maybe the eaveless side is facing south and if it south it will never get sun so wont need eaves . Either way Basix is flexible and small design changes can influence thermal requirement outcomes dramatically. If it wont pass basix , try changing window sizes, amount of windows, or the amount of fall off and size of water tank, its very corruptable . A good idea would be to purchase a copy of "building your own home" and visiting this site forum.homeone.com.au/


just some things to keep in mind:
-Every Area is different from the next, what goes down in Sydney wont neccessarily be the samw thing for newcastle or QLD or Darwin so asking on this forum you're gonna get so much misinfo. Thats why people employ local architects or drafties coz they know the requirements right off the bat. employing non local designers will increase costs a bit if they are unfamiliar with your area as there is soooooo much BS to sift through each councils requirements.
-Higher ceilings= higher heating and cooling costs
-concrete floor= excellent thermal mass
-steel frames only can be used for one story buildings and still need termite inspection due to the rest of the house containing timber products.
- Timber framed houses last much longer in a fire, steel frames will buckle and melt much quicker.
-dont over insulate, it will work against you, but Basix will sort out minimum requirements according to design and climate conditions.
-Solar/ gas are the best and cost efficient water heating
-If you install solar panels for elec, build room for storage battery banks.
-Bathroom and kitchens are where you will spend most of your money so if you can keep them as small as possible the better.

- the house should be a highly functioning organism as well as keeping you dry and comfortable so get everything right

PS its only a personal opinion here but I think attached garages are a bit of a wank, I mean its like a bedroom for your car and is expensive too, the concrete alone needs to be a higher rating and usually garages are bigger than the master bedroom, for what? a car? carports are a very cheap and effective alternative. It can also depend where your building, most new estates have covenants that say you need to have an attached garage so all the houses can be somewhat congruent, but personally you'd never catch me out in one of those new manufactured suburbs with tiny streets where you can get fined for parking on your own grass. Put a massive steel shed out the back for half the cost.
PSS. I'd never build a new home.

patsken said...

Decrepit said..

"Unless you want to collect rain water, (and that's a good idea these days) you don't need gutters."

The East Freo council (as late as 2007 when I built my games room, carport and shed) insists that all run-off be contained on the property. That means gutters, downpipes and soak-wells or tank.

Waste of time as far as I'm concerned. The gutters on the house get blocked from our lovely shady trees and the upstairs ones are about 6m above ground level and I'm getting WAY too old to be climbing the extension ladder....

Is there a gutter guard that can keep them clean?