Comments on floor plan

[cidisbell]

Hello all. I was hoping to upload a jpg of my proposed floor plan and get some comments. I haver read that its simpler to build a square house, but the land I purchased ( top of a mountain ) is much more suitable to a long, more narrow home.
I also have bad knees and as I get older I would love to not have to climb up and down stairs alot. I also have a bunch of big dogs, and as they get older, stairs are hard on them too.
So, I really prefer a single floor layout if possible and I would like to take advantage of passive solar designs.

How can I upload a jpg of my floor plan?

Thanks,
Cid

[Shark]

best thing to do is load it on an online account like photobucket, then just post the link.

[hemlock77]

You can still build square with single floor plan. Bottom line by building square footage for your buck. I am building rectangle, to avoid having to go through aproval all over again. My footprint is 27x36, if I had done 30x30 I would have roughly the same square footage, plus I would have reduced my material costs by 20%. Another drawback is you end up with larger gaps in between logs on short walls. As far as making a square home fit nicely on your plot by incorperating driveway layout as whell as other landscaping features to give it just the right feel, that is where you can get creative.
Stu
http://s165.photobucket.com/albums/u64/hemlock77/

[cidisbell]

Thanks for the info on building square. I have given it much thought, and I would really like to find a way to make this floor plan work if possible! You all let me know what you think:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/isbell

Thanks!

[StressMan79]

Cid,

It is doable. It won't be easy, fast, or cheap. You are effectively building 2.5 houses, and you have lots of short-to-long walls that will make BnP very very difficult. There were no dimensions, but the long wall will be quite long (~50'). This is going to be difficult and expensive.

Long story short, there are lots of reasons to build square, not just "you get the most for the materials" but also, you make the fewest corners, and you use the same lenght trees, with approximately the same taper.

If you have your heart set on it, go for it, but plan on a $500k initial pricetag and continuing maintenence costs.

-Peter

[cidisbell]

Hey Peter,

Thanks for the comments. Yeah, of course I have expensive taste! I was just doing some calculations and I came up with approx. 500k as well. Yikes!

I will play with the floor plan and see if I can create something square that has sides less than 40 feet. I was really hoping to avoid a second floor, but that seems to be a money saver all around! I will post a new floor plan soon.

thanks!
Cid