Laundry room - your opinions please!

Muckit

Hi everyone

First time posting on this forum, so hope this tread is in the most appropriate spot? Mods feel free to move to another location if needs be. I've always found boards great for sharing ideas and opinions, be them good or bad or indifferent.... so bring it on!;)

Anyways.....we are currently drawing up a 'wish list' of things we want in our new house plans. Living presently in a 2bedroom apartment, it has really made us appreciate space and also focused us on what our main daily household activities are!

LAUNDRY LAUNDRY LAUNDRY There is only the two of us, but where does it all come from we are constantly asking ourselves?!
Due to limited space and no back garden or balcony ('Is there much drying out' anyways these days?!) we dry all our clothes on clothes horses, using a dehumidifer to remove moisture and dry them. This works well, but because of space restrictions, the clothes horse is plonked in the living open plan living area, which is far from ideal. We are both image conscious people and I dread people calling around unexpectedly and clothes seem to be strewn everywhere!

I don't want this situation to continue when we move to our 'forever house' in the country. The situation has made me adamant that our new house deserves to have a room solely dedicated to the purpose of laundering clothes. It would be a very practical room. Fancy frills have no place here. Clothes go in dirty and come out clean and dried, ready for the wardrobe! No visitors would inadvertantly pass through or have to see this room. Just close the door and the rest of the house is visitor friendly

I am not talking about a 'utility room' in the traditional sense, which is in essence is another small kitchen IMO(fitted presses another sink!), just with a washing machine and drier and fitted presses It's just another place to store clutter IMO!:rolleyes:)

Do people like this idea? Perhaps you have a room presently in your house for this purpose?

All help, thoughts and suggestions good bad or indifferent gratefully appreciated.

Muckit

EPointer=Birdss

Muckit wrote: »

Hi everyone

First time posting on this forum, so hope this tread is in the most appropriate spot? Mods feel free to move to another location if needs be. I've always found boards great for sharing ideas and opinions, be them good or bad or indifferent.... so bring it on!;)

Anyways.....we are currently drawing up a 'wish list' of things we want in our new house plans. Living presently in a 2bedroom apartment, it has really made us appreciate space and also focused us on what our main daily household activities are!

LAUNDRY LAUNDRY LAUNDRY There is only the two of us, but where does it all come from we are constantly asking ourselves?!
Due to limited space and no back garden or balcony ('Is there much drying out' anyways these days?!) we dry all our clothes on clothes horses, using a dehumidifer to remove moisture and dry them. This works well, but because of space restrictions, the clothes horse is plonked in the living open plan living area, which is far from ideal. We are both image conscious people and I dread people calling around unexpectedly and clothes seem to be strewn everywhere!

I don't want this situation to continue when we move to our 'forever house' in the country. The situation has made me adamant that our new house deserves to have a room solely dedicated to the purpose of laundering clothes. It would be a very practical room. Fancy frills have no place here. Clothes go in dirty and come out clean and dried, ready for the wardrobe! No visitors would inadvertantly pass through or have to see this room. Just close the door and the rest of the house is visitor friendly

I am not talking about a 'utility room' in the traditional sense, which is in essence is another small kitchen IMO(fitted presses another sink!), just with a washing machine and drier and fitted presses It's just another place to store clutter IMO!:rolleyes:)

Do people like this idea? Perhaps you have a room presently in your house for this purpose?

All help, thoughts and suggestions good bad or indifferent gratefully appreciated.

Muckit

Saw this in a very nice house I viewed & was well impressesd.
It was upstairs next to a 2nd back stairs beside the back door. The washing machine was in a little boiler room accessed from the outside beside the back door. In close proximaty to washing lines etc
The laundry room had a laundry hatch down to the back door where all upstairs linen etc was thrown in ready for washing.
The upstairs room itself had a drier, shelving, retractable lines & ironing station so to speak. Was a long narrow room & used space very well...

just do it

Muckit wrote: »

Do people like this idea? Perhaps you have a room presently in your house for this purpose?

Hi there Muckit, welcome to construction and planning! Good to see you on here;). Lots of good stuff on this forum. The live self builds thread is worth reading back through albeit alot quieter than 4 years ago when I first started looking at boards.ie.

We're getting close to turning the sod and a laundry is part of the plans. It is on the same floor as the bedrooms and close to all the bedrooms. Originally the plant and laudry rooms were separate but decided it was a waste having 2 passageways when 1 could be shared between the two rooms. The architect has been invaluable and will design a house to suit your individual needs, local planning constraints, site constraints, passive house design principles (which are no-brainers even if PH isn't your end goal).

AntrimGlens

Hi Muckit,
I take it you're maybe in the same boat as me, building at home on the farm. We've literally just got the footings finished today and waiting on ground floor slab guys coming to measure up. Myself and OH spent at least two years trying to get the design of the house right before we submitted for planning and a laundry room in the right place was a big part of this along with a mud room for me to completely get stripped and washed after coming in from the farm rather than heading to the bedroom to get changed. I've attached the plans which might give you some ideas, (or maybe not what to do).

EPointer=Birdss

AntrimGlens wrote: »

Hi Muckit,
I take it you're maybe in the same boat as me, building at home on the farm. We've literally just got the footings finished today and waiting on ground floor slab guys coming to measure up. Myself and OH spent at least two years trying to get the design of the house right before we submitted for planning and a laundry room in the right place was a big part of this along with a mud room for me to completely get stripped and washed after coming in from the farm rather than heading to the bedroom to get changed. I've attached the plans which might give you some ideas, (or maybe not what to do).

Fair paly for putting up your plans.
Question- any reason you wouldn't access the mud room directly from outside into the mud room & enter the hall then clean as opposed to entering it via the hall...
Strikes me you could keep the hall cleaner by keeping the mud in the mud room. Also if this was a step lower than the hall it might help keep dirt in there also...

muffler

AntrimGlens wrote: »

Hi Muckit,
I take it you're maybe in the same boat as me, building at home on the farm. We've literally just got the footings finished today and waiting on ground floor slab guys coming to measure up. Myself and OH spent at least two years trying to get the design of the house right before we submitted for planning and a laundry room in the right place was a big part of this along with a mud room for me to completely get stripped and washed after coming in from the farm rather than heading to the bedroom to get changed. I've attached the plans which might give you some ideas, (or maybe not what to do).

Please read the forum charter particularly section 3.(e).

I have deleted the attachment but if you can remove the title block from the plans then feel free to resubmit.

just do it

This house is an upside down house for a number of reasons, the main ones being to get planning for a 2 storey and take full advantage of views to south and Atlantic Ocean to the west.

Main points about layout.
- Mudroom (called wetroom in drawing) entered from East. Dog and farm clothes will reside here. Possibly a shower and sink but probably only plumbed to allow addition at a later date.
- Main bathroom is close to all bedrooms (there is another guest bedroom upstairs, just suited site and design to have it up there).
- Master bedroom is away from stairs but close to other functional rooms.
- Originally plant and laundry were separate rooms but by combining them we've saved a few m2.
- Bedrooms moderately sized allowing for more generous space in main living rooms upstairs. Overall house is 240m2.
- I think void will be fantastic and wide corridor here will act as a playroom communicating directly with outside.
- Void will communicate with open plan living, dining and kitchen upstairs.
-Plenty storage under stairs.
- Design allows for the addition of a car port to East.

This has been a long process and the one thing I'll say is having a good architect involved adds immeasurably to the final layout and design.

AntrimGlens

Oops - had submitted plans before i realised i had attached the wrong set with details still visible. This is an upside down house with all bedrooms on ground floor, hopefully reducing the amount of laundry to be transported up and down stairs.
the reason we didnt put a door from the outside into the mud room was due to wanting to be able to see all the way thought the house from front door through to rear hall which shall be a glass door and thereforewe were limited with room to put another door into laundry. i'll be having an outside hot tap to wash boots andwaterproofs which can be left under the first floor decking and kept dry so no need to traipse these into the mud room, thus the reason for no stepped floor and also for the fact that we never really gave it much thought.

Laundry was situated close to all the bedrooms and as close to rear door as possible as the washing machine shall be in hereand drier,also closest to the exit where the washing line shall be and beside the hotpress to try and reduce the amount of carrying of stuff. the laundry is proposed to be solely for this purpose and not a utility room.... we'll see

just do it

AntrimGlens wrote: »

Oops - had submitted plans before i realised i had attached the wrong set with details still visible. This is an upside down house with all bedrooms on ground floor, hopefully reducing the amount of laundry to be transported up and down stairs.
the reason we didnt put a door from the outside into the mud room was due to wanting to be able to see all the way thought the house from front door through to rear hall which shall be a glass door and thereforewe were limited with room to put another door into laundry. i'll be having an outside hot tap to wash boots andwaterproofs which can be left under the first floor decking and kept dry so no need to traipse these into the mud room, thus the reason for no stepped floor and also for the fact that we never really gave it much thought.

Laundry was situated close to all the bedrooms and as close to rear door as possible as the washing machine shall be in hereand drier,also closest to the exit where the washing line shall be and beside the hotpress to try and reduce the amount of carrying of stuff. the laundry is proposed to be solely for this purpose and not a utility room.... we'll see

A lot of similarities between our drawings. Being an upside down house will it mean you'll have an outside stairway up to the front door?

Muckit

Sorry for late reply. Thanks guys for posting your plans. The idea of an upsidedown house satisifies the ideal of having the laundry room nearest where the laundry will be collected (bedrooms) and also nearest an exit for outside drying.

Only at the planning stage ourselves, so just writing a wishlist of things we want. A large actual walk-in wardrobe like you have there Antrimglens is also top of our agenda. Love the large bathrooms and ensuite too

Muckit

just do it wrote: »

- Originally plant and laundry were separate rooms but by combining them we've saved a few m2.

What do you mean by 'plant' lad? Will this contain undefloor heating controls etc?

I couldn't understand all the stairs outside until I seen it was an upside down house! Wouldn't mind a sneek peek of the elevations sometime

just do it

Muckit wrote: »

Only at the planning stage ourselves, so just writing a wishlist of things we want. A large actual walk-in wardrobe like you have there Antrimglens is also top of our agenda. Love the large bathrooms and ensuite too

Sounds like where we were 4 years ago and subsequently got planning for a 330m2 house. Then lack of bank lending and reduction in disposable income bite us in the butt and after a bit of soul searching started considering downsizing. Then the architect rang to say if we were posponing he'd be interested in redesigning the house as he'd just completed the passive house designer course. So after some more time we now have planning for 240m2 house. We concentrated on cutting m2 from areas such as corridors, bedrooms etc. With this in mind the plant and laundry were combined as mentioned already and the walk-in wardrobe was dropped. It means one less internal wall and an extra few m2 of corridor within the wardrobe.

I have to say I've enjoyed the design phase, pouring over drawings pondering how they can be improved etc. But you're right, to start with include absolutely everything you might want and then take it from there.

just do it

Muckit wrote: »

What do you mean by 'plant' lad? Will this contain undefloor heating controls etc?

I couldn't understand all the stairs outside until I seen it was an upside down house! Wouldn't mind a sneek peek of the elevations sometime

Yeah plant is a new concept but one you'll see in modern low energy homes. Water tanks are now as big as 1000L, possibly a buffer tank for the dumping of water when the solar is producing too much, motors for HRV. But it's a clean room so may aswell combine it with the laundry.

Stairs probably look funny alright. It's a sloping site and a lot of work has been done to position it so we could get a 2 storey (I'm surrounded by dormers!!!) I should say it's a storey with a split level 1 storey element to the North which will include the main entrance and allowing for approach from ground level. I'll get the drawings up here in the next few days so you get a better idea of what I'm on about.

The seai website is a good starting point on designing an energy efficient house. Whilst the following guide is for passive house, the same principles apply regardless of how low energy you decide to build. http://www.seai.ie/Renewables/Renewable_Energy_Library/PH_Guidelines_July_08.pdf

And I've just noticed they've a new guide that I must have a look at http://www.seai.ie/Renewables/Renewable_Energy_Library/Low_energy,_low_carbon_and_passive_houses_Consumer_Guide_2010.pdf

AntrimGlens

just do it wrote: »

A lot of similarities between our drawings. Being an upside down house will it mean you'll have an outside stairway up to the front door?

Just Do it,
yeah quite a few similarities in our plans and looking at out at opposite sides of the country - i'm looking right out to Scotland. It was a choice of either building a retaining wall at the rear of the site or bringing the house out of the ground and we went with the latter. Given the views we have it only made sense. The stairs to the first floor are at the rear of the house as thats the side i'll use coming from the farm but we wanted to keep the front porch on a level with the yard for those visiting. we will have to build up the front with quite a bit of fill to get the levels we'll need. I'm putting my plant room under the external stairs to house manifolds, 300l water cylinder and other bits and pieces, keeping the mud and laundry rooms free for units etc. The wall adjacent to the stairs is now proposed to be solid to the ground not a void as it appears in this image

just do it

AntrimGlens wrote: »

Just Do it,
yeah quite a few similarities in our plans and looking at out at opposite sides of the country - i'm looking right out to Scotland. It was a choice of either building a retaining wall at the rear of the site or bringing the house out of the ground and we went with the latter. Given the views we have it only made sense. The stairs to the first floor are at the rear of the house as thats the side i'll use coming from the farm but we wanted to keep the front porch on a level with the yard for those visiting. we will have to build up the front with quite a bit of fill to get the levels we'll need. I'm putting my plant room under the external stairs to house manifolds, 300l water cylinder and other bits and pieces, keeping the mud and laundry rooms free for units etc. The wall adjacent to the stairs is now proposed to be solid to the ground not a void as it appears in this image

Again more similarities! I'll get a few pics up soon....

just do it

just do it wrote: »

Again more similarities! I'll get a few pics up soon....

Here we go: