House Plan Critique

March 2010 

Earth and Sun Abound But Not Necessarily Good Design

We've been so complimentary of the house plans lately, we're kind of glad to come up with one that has, well, issues.  At first blush, this earth-bermed house plan looked like a solid winner if you're looking to save cash while saving the environment.  And it is, but, take a look at the plan, see what you think, and then read our comments. . . .
 
Ready?
 
We all really like the concept of earth-berming and are strongly attracted to the environmental soundness and efficiency of using the earth for maintaining moderate temperatures at a reduced cost.  In this plan, though, there are some glaring problems we'd like to point out, and it starts with the perspective drawing.  Always tough, a perspective of an angled house is even more difficult to draw as you can see by this sketch - it's hard to tell exactly what's going on with the roof line and the two chimneys.  And, it appears as if the clerestory ends way too soon over the bedrooms.  We're giving the renderer the benefit of the doubt and just assuming that those windows extend to line up with the ones below.  Still, it's odd to stretch the clerestory structure over the garage without carrying out the window placement.  We'd get rid of that and just design a simple gable roof over the garage instead.
 
We also assume that this house is sited due south to take advantage of the solar gain.  Anything else would probably be ridiculous; still site is something you must be mindful of as you weigh the value of a house plan.  If your site doesn't face south, forget this plan.  But here's the thing - with the odd angle (that the architect in the room actually hates), you're losing a lot of the solar power that could be tapped if it was a simple linear line facing south.  True, you can pitch a house 10 degrees off due south and still benefit from solar gain.  But, with the way the living room in this plan juts out, it causes shadows on either side as the sun moves across the southern sky, greatly reducing the benefits.    As well, this angled design begs for roof problems in both constructing and maintaining it.  We'd eliminate the weird angle and stretch this plan into a long, linear, modern line for complete solar gain and a less troublesome roof line.
 
But here's the worst part - we really dislike the fact that one must stroll from the garage past the private bedrooms and baths to get to the main part of the house - the public parts of the home.   And, woe betide the poor schlub who gets to haul the grocery bags all the way from the garage to the kitchen.  Here's what we'd do - we'd just flip the working parts of the home with the private areas, again in that nice linear fashion.  The bubble chart (definitely NOT to scale!) below illustrates what we mean:
 

 

Essentially, we change the flow of the entire home so that there is practical ease of movement in the "working" parts of the home and appropriate separation of the private spaces.  The placement of all of the support rooms - bathrooms, closets, laundry, and the like would shift right along with them.  You lose nothing, and gain a lot by re-orienting the rooms within the home while exploiting the power of the sun for each of the rooms in which the family will spend their time.
 
So, what do we like about this plan?  Well, we like the fact that all of those support services are at the back of this plan - these rooms don't require a "view" so it makes sense that they are tucked against the bermed wall.  Yet they are still benefiting from the natural light provided by the clerestory. 
 
We like the basic kitchen layout, though we would grow the kitchen a bit by pushing further into the nook which does not need to be as large as shown.  We like having both a woodburner in the nook - very cozy - and a fireplace in the living room.  We like the earth berming for its energy efficiency and for the way in which it can place a house snugly and unobtrusively into its surrounding natural environment, and also for the fact that, if built correctly (see our note on bermed structures), it's virtually maintenance free.
 
In the end, we felt this house plan barely rated a 1.5 on our 4-house scale.  But if you made the change we recommend, it might rise up to a 3.5.