i cant see wasting 625 square feet of space on a place for your cars when the rest of your house is only 900 square feet and no room in the place is bigger than 400 square feet... its just not the way to live i dont think...
here there is a problem.. the lots are small, and second stories are impractical because they are hard to cool... thats why most small places are a single story on a concrete slab... if you want a big place and you can afford to have a big AC to cool the second floor then thats ok, but you have to know that you are looking at hundreds of bucks a month to cool your house... whereas a swamp cooler will cool a single story place cheaply as long as the venting is right...
what would be cool in a small house is to do like at the beach or in cities where the garage is the first floor and then you build your house on top of it.. you dont sacrifice floor space at all that way... but if you only have a slab so big to put only one story on you are limited if you must include a garage...
what does anybody think of detatched garages?... i think for a small house its the way to do it... especially since you can use to block the afternoon sun from your house and your yard... i am going to build me a garage this winter i think... and you can use a garage to help define some exterior spaces and create shady areas that you can plant and stuff... as it is, outdoor areas without shade in the desert are useless...
i think garages are cool, but there is a way to do it that is better... like not have it make your home look like a mini storage... carports are an option... i have seen some very cool carports in palm springs...
i am doing some cool floor plans right now for a place... to build...1500 square feet WITHOUT a garage... 3 bed 2 bath... big spaces... windows and doors... but still cheap to build... so i can make more money on selling it... but all my research tells me that people have gotta have an attatched 2 car garage even if its the biggest room in their house!...
its frustrating.... i'll post my floor plan soon... if i really wanted only to make money i would get a prefab and trailer in the parts and nail it all together and sell it. but if i am going to do anything i want it to be some place that i would be excited about living in...
this house they are building behind me is nice and simple and ok and all but you could do something better for a similar cost with a little imagination...
my goal is to build two houses that are smart and practical with big spaces, and natural light... free and airy... with really efficent use of space, great storage, but cheap to build... i can do it i think... either with a cool carport or detatched garage...
5 comments:
Detached garage can shape exterior space as you say but is more costly than incorporating into walls / roof / floor / envelope of main house.
What if the garage where 'attached' to the house but the house was more of an L shape creating a courtyard with shade and plants and maybe partly trellised for more shade and hang plants on etc.. For example from the street you may see front of garage to right and a courtyard to left with main house behind - forming back side to garden area. But instead of being exposed suburban style, there could be a 3 foot high wall along street edge extended from garage front wall that 'protects' courtyard and with trellis elements etc. would feel protected but connected to street and would allow more glass in house wall behind - being protected from sun and having privacy from courtyard stuff. This would provide front porch - watch the street space - and a place to be more inward too if you provide different shades of visibility along street edge. At its coolest would have effect of carved out cube that would include interior and exterior space of plot... as opposed to house - yard scenario.
right on... if the nook of the "L" faced to the north then you would get year round sun without the pounding heat in the hottest months... then you could also have some south facing windows in a large living area sharing the northern windows so that you could get solar warmth in the winter...
the prevailing winds are west-east and sometimes east west... a good idea here is to have a tall ceiling with high placed windows that can be opened so that the winds can cross ventilate the house... most of the year the temperature is right so that you need neither heat nor cooling... a nice breeze would be so good in your home.. with natural light, and open spaces.. mmmmmmm...
http://www.livemodern.com/sunsetbreezehouse
this doesn't deal with the garage issue but its an interesting notion of prefab and breeze. i love these kinds of design problems.
n.
For passive cooling with breeze - incomming air openings at body level and outgoing air openings at ceiling level push out hotter air above and trap cooler air below - as you were hinting at. If you have both high and low operable glazing on east and west elevations user can adapt to wind direction. If you can get shaded courtyard on upwind side of interior during summer's prevailing wind then incomming wind will be cooled. Also if you incorporate some masonry into courtyard - concrete, pavers, etc., you get more cooling effect as it stores night cool and releases during day - good for courtyard and house cooling - slab will do same inside if windows open at night. Also water is good here. Is counter-intuitive because of humidity but adding this cool humidity brings down air temp and can make big difference. Roof overhang / shading devices can block summer sun for south windows - design depends on winter / summer sun angle for your location.
Check out architect Glenn Murcutt for one - Australian Architect who does houses in similar climate with no mechanical heat / ac...
yeah... that's what I am really in to... thanks for the link...
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