What size site do we need?

selfbuild101

Hi there. Myself and my partner are currently looking at a site to purchase in the locality (Wexford). We are purchasing directly so can choose the site size, if the money is right. The min site size requirements is as follows:
<200sq m-.5 acre
200-300sq m-.75 acre.
300sq m+-1 acre.

We by no means want to build a mansion but worry that the limit of 200sq m on a .5 acre will limit our choices. Equally, we don't want to be maintaining a huge garden by buying .75. I feel so clueless about what these dimensions even mean and am contacting everyone I know who has built a house to ask what their sq footage is! We are both mid thirties so won't be having a massive brood at this stage. (Am I tempting fate to suggest 2/3?!?!)

We would ideally want,
DOWNSTAIRS
an open plan kitchen/diner.
a sitting/tv room
a playroom
toilet(no bath/shower required downstairs)
Walk in utility(not in back hallway!)
and access to a garage attached to the house.

UPSTAIRS
one medium-sized master w/WIW & ensuite
One family bathroom
2 double bedrooms
hotpress
(possibly a single room?)

Does square footage count for a garage(as it is not habitable but there will be access from the house). We would be very caught for space if it was i think?!? But advice definitely welcome.
We will also most likely be limited to a dormer looking at other planning on the road. There have been some 2 storey applications withdrawn and replaced with dormer on recommendations of the planner.

Thanks in advance for all your helpful advice:-)

mrsWhippy

200 sq.m is a pretty big house.

We're about to start building a 155 sqm house and we have everything you listed above, apart from the garage and WiW. It'll be a pretty spacious house - a good, well thought out layout with built in storage and good proportions will beat a badly designed larger house any day.

Also, what would turn me off a larger house is the idea of rooms just sitting there idle, gathering dust and just being a dumping ground for boxes and crap we don't need. We will have 3 bedrooms upstairs (larger master, and 2 kids rooms which are big enough for double beds). We also made sure our downstairs playroom could fit a double bed too, so this can be our guest room and/or 4th bedroom if required.

If you are worried about garden maintenance now, you may not be delighted with it as you get older either! It's a lot of work.

Hope that helps.

selfbuild101

Ok and that's good to know. We have lived in smaller houses before and I'm very content to have minimal housework. Just want to be able to entertain and have enough space for whatever comes next in our lives. I completely agree about cleverly thought out spaces rather than a badly designed larger house. Thanks for your help!

mrsWhippy

Have you measured out the house you are currently living in? That really helped me gauge how large/small our rooms will be on the plans, it's much easier when you have something tangible to compare it to!

selfbuild101

We are in a granny flat off his parents' at the moment but you're dead right. Must do that this eve.
Is yours a bungalow? Ideally I'd like a dormer/1 & half storey for all spaces bar kitchen diner which would be in single storey(vaulted ceiling) in a L shaped design off the 'main part'. Lots of hypothetical wants and needs but will all depend on what architect says when we meet next week.

listermint

Before rocking onwards with Site Purchases. Do you qualify for planning permission and specifically local needs requirements.

Quite often (as in nearly everytime) people fall in love with the site buying idea and forget all about these fundamentally important aspects.

mrsWhippy

selfbuild101 wrote: »

We are in a granny flat off his parents' at the moment but you're dead right. Must do that this eve.
Is yours a bungalow? Ideally I'd like a dormer/1 & half storey for all spaces bar kitchen diner which would be in single storey(vaulted ceiling) in a L shaped design off the 'main part'. Lots of hypothetical wants and needs but will all depend on what architect says when we meet next week.

Ours is a 2 story + attic. The 1st floor is about half the size of the bottom floor, but not a dormer if you know what I mean. We were very restricted with the site size so had to design around it, it's tiny compared to what you plan on having.

selfbuild101

Thanks for the heads up. Yes we are buying subject to PP. One of us is from the area, both have been living here for years and both working locally. We also have a preplanning meeting organised 'just in case!!' Not signing anything until after preplanning in any case. Verbal agreement only at this stage. Thanks anyway though!

selfbuild101

mrsWhippy wrote: »

Ours is a 2 story + attic. The 1st floor is about half the size of the bottom floor, but not a dormer if you know what I mean. We were very restricted with the site size so had to design around it, it's tiny compared to what you plan on having.

I do know what you mean! I do think I have all these ideas floating but at this stage need to sit with architect and get him to magically put it all together for us! Thanks!

Casati

selfbuild101 wrote: »

Hi there. Myself and my partner are currently looking at a site to purchase in the locality (Wexford). We are purchasing directly so can choose the site size, if the money is right. The min site size requirements is as follows:
<200sq m-.5 acre
200-300sq m-.75 acre.
300sq m+-1 acre.

We by no means want to build a mansion but worry that the limit of 200sq m on a .5 acre will limit our choices. Equally, we don't want to be maintaining a huge garden by buying .75. I feel so clueless about what these dimensions even mean and am contacting everyone I know who has built a house to ask what their sq footage is! We are both mid thirties so won't be having a massive brood at this stage. (Am I tempting fate to suggest 2/3?!?!)

We would ideally want,
DOWNSTAIRS
an open plan kitchen/diner.
a sitting/tv room
a playroom
toilet(no bath/shower required downstairs)
Walk in utility(not in back hallway!)
and access to a garage attached to the house.

UPSTAIRS
one medium-sized master w/WIW & ensuite
One family bathroom
2 double bedrooms
hotpress
(possibly a single room?)

Does square footage count for a garage(as it is not habitable but there will be access from the house). We would be very caught for space if it was i think?!? But advice definitely welcome.
We will also most likely be limited to a dormer looking at other planning on the road. There have been some 2 storey applications withdrawn and replaced with dormer on recommendations of the planner.

Thanks in advance for all your helpful advice:-)

I never saw those site requirements before, are they official guides?

If you are thinking of potential for three kids you should plan for a forth bedroom imo

As the other poster said this should be very feasible within well designed 200sq m house. I agree make sure you don't have rooms you won't use, e.g. What will happen the playroom when the kids are 8 or 9 and won't want to use it?

selfbuild101

Casati wrote: »

I never saw those site requirements before, are they official guides?

If you are thinking of potential for three kids you should plan for a forth bedroom imo

As the other poster said this should be very feasible within well designed 200sq m house. I agree make sure you don't have rooms you won't use, e.g. What will happen the playroom when the kids are 8 or 9 and won't want to use it?

Yes I had spotted them on a planning application form. Phoned the planning office during the week and they confirmed it. I had initially said there a possible 4th single bedroom upstairs, if space allowed(it looks like it would, going on everyones opinion here). The playroom would ideally become a den/second tv room for them when they're older.

sydthebeat

Just some notes :

1. you don't need to turn your whole site into a garden, so going with a 3/4 acre site doesn't mean more maintenence. Actually preferably you should maintain a meadow area between your house and the road.

2. The bigger the house, the bigger the building line (the distance from the road to the house) so that's why you need bigger sites. Imo you have more room to properly lay out a house and garden on a 3/4 acre site.

Casati

sydthebeat wrote: »

Just some notes :

1. you don't need to turn your whole site into a garden, so going with a 3/4 acre site doesn't mean more maintenence. Actually preferably you should maintain a meadow area between your house and the road.

2. The bigger the house, the bigger the building line (the distance from the road to the house) so that's why you need bigger sites. Imo you have more room to properly lay out a house and garden on a 3/4 acre site.

I would have thought the distance from the road is based on established building line

I.e What your saying here is if you are building a smaller house than your next door neighbour you should plan on building it nearer to the road?

sydthebeat

Established building lines should take precedence, within reason. Ie you may not get permission to build a 3000sq ft house beside a small cottage 10 metres from the road.

Above in referring to where there is no building line. Also, the larger the site the less important the building line.

If planning a large house and there an established building line, let's say 20 meters, generally I would try to locate the from of the new dwelling on the line of the back of the existing one... To gain that extra 7-10 meters

Lumen

Bigger sites are very useful, the squarer the better.

There is a limit to the privacy you can achieve at a boundary. Walls and fences can be only 2m high. You grow hedges higher but they become difficult/expensive to maintain. You can grow trees on the boundary but it's a very bad idea - roots can get damaged by neighbours, they will overhang and cause disputes.

The ideal structure (IMO obviously) is a layered approach, with ~2m fencing or hedging at the boundary, then several metres of gap, and then a shelter belt. When you are close to the boundary you can't see over it, and when you are inside the shelterbelt you get the privacy and wind-breaking effect of the tree canopy.

The gap between the boundary and the trees allows vehicular access to maintain the boundary, e.g a digger to bash in the fence posts.

Trees cost nothing to plant when young and transform a site over time.

I am in the process of putting this into place (expensively) on my own 0.8 acre site. If they'd done it right 30 years ago it would have saved me the bother and heartache of ripping a bunch of stuff out, but it'll look great for the next generation.

Sausage dog

I went around everywhere with a measuring tape. Anytime I visited a friend I measured their kitchen & utility to get a feel for different sizes & lay-outs in relation to rooms I knew. This helped a lot when trying to visualise plans on paper.

I'd also reconsider not having a bath/shower downstairs. If planning from scratch I'd put a room downstairs that has the potential to be a bedroom, even if not used for that at the start, and also a full size bathroom.

Square footage isn't always a good judge of a good design. Higher ceilings throughout the house create a feeling of more space without adding to square footage. Light & orientation would be more important to me than size.

selfbuild101

Sausage dog wrote: »

I went around everywhere with a measuring tape. Anytime I visited a friend I measured their kitchen & utility to get a feel for different sizes & lay-outs in relation to rooms I knew. This helped a lot when trying to visualise plans on paper.

I'd also reconsider not having a bath/shower downstairs. If planning from scratch I'd put a room downstairs that has the potential to be a bedroom, even if not used for that at the start, and also a full size bathroom.

Square footage isn't always a good judge of a good design. Higher ceilings throughout the house create a feeling of more space without adding to square footage. Light & orientation would be more important to me than size.

Yes, I've been measuring and walking out room sizes in friends' homes for the last while so it's been great for showing us what size we want for bedrooms, hallways etc. Architect has advised bungalow over dormer(he said dormers are quite expensive to build with BER standards, insulation and lost attic space.) I'm personally not a big dormer fan so we have a provisional sketch of what we would like from a (hopefully well layed out) bungalow now.

This has then allowed us to have one large family bathroom(w/bath & shower), along with the ensuite in the master.
The sun will move around the front of the house(front is south facing), so we plan on setting the house quite far back on the site to make the most of solar gain here(skylights, solar panels and large front windows ideally). Also obviously for privacy & distance from road. (downside here us that our front & side garden will then become our 'main' garden area)

Also a vaulted ceiling in entrance hallway and kitchen space will hopefully give illusion of more space.

Thanks for your help!

mrsWhippy

That sounds great. Post up the plans (without the arch details) if you want feedback, I've gotten some good tips here before and also because I'm really nosy

selfbuild101

mrsWhippy wrote: »

That sounds great. Post up the plans (without the arch details) if you want feedback, I've gotten some good tips here before and also because I'm really nosy

My current sketch is self made! so will wait until after I meet arch again and see if he has any suggestions before he goes drawing. Will def post then for advice!

He has been extremely helpful. I phoned him to ask re 200m2 house and he photocopied 6 or 7 plans of houses he has already drawn of 200m2 houses for me and sent them out to give us an idea of what size rooms etc we could fit into that metre sq!
We've been taking some ideas from within these plans as a basis for our design. (Some could argue that we could just use one of his designs and not pay for our own drawings but we're fussier than that I'm afraid!)

A2LUE42

Shouldn't your plans and site go hand in hand, as regards what way the house will be facing etc. ?

As regards gardening, it can be as time consuming as you make it. We have been simplifying the layout of our garden and reducing the maintenance required. It doesn't take much longer to mow a larger lawn using a ride on anyway. With a new build if you do a good landscaping job day one, you can set it up for an automower and have it as low maintenance as you like.