New house build - orientation for sun

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#2638536 19-Jan-2021 23:22

Tinting will reduce the quantity of visible light and solar heat gain entering the room. In fact part of the way it works is by making the inside darker relative to the outside. A standard grey tint approximately halves light intake. It is not as bad as it sounds as the eyes do adjust.

Reflective glass is a group of highly varied products in appearance and in performance specifications but as far as I know it is possible to achieve daytime privacy with a higher light intake than tinted glass but solar heat gain will still suffer similarly. Stopsol Supersilver Light Green or Eclipse Advantage Clear may be what you're looking for. The latter may have more internal reflections but performs well and provides some thermal performance without the need for a thermal low-e coating. Some city councils might restrict use of reflective glass.

https://www.metroglass.co.nz/Catalogue/documents/114-119_perfdata_12-4_insulatingglass.pdf

Ottherwise you could look at an obscured glass. The selection for non bathroom purposes in New Zealand is not great but one option that comes to mind is soft white aka cool white laminate. This shouldn't be confused with the much more common opalescent aka milky laminate aka white translucent laminate common in bathrooms which can't really be seen through or pure white laminate which is solid white. Soft white laminate doesn't greatly reduce light and solar heat gain and is semitransparent. Another advantage of this route is by being a laminate it reduces road noise and makes the glass harder to break but on the down side you won't see outside as clearly as with reflective or tinted glass.

https://www.woodworkers.com.au/publications-faq/04-timber-and-glass-options-for-joinery

View the "soft white" image on the above page then change .jpg to .JPG to see full size.

33coupe

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#2639617 21-Jan-2021 14:25

This brings back memories lol, I've just recently been through the exact same thing (huge thread, with lots of tips and help from the knowledgeable people here-thanks again). Even though my house isnt fully built yet, just thought Id add a couple of thoughts in case it helps.

Do whatever now will cost a lot more to retrofit in the future (tiles, ducted, gas etc)

My house is similar orientation and I think will work well (sun in bedrooms in morning, afternoon sun in lounge / kitchen etc)

Weve gone with 2.7 stud height for the kitchen /lounge only. Its not essential but I think its money well spent, makes a big difference

I looked at thermally broken, but was way out of price range, I think 20k or something.

For the price of 2 heatpumps, it was only a few $k more to get ducted (and will heat the house evenly). Due to condensation concerns and reducing power bill, weve also gone with Lossnay (HRV). 18 months interest free etc.

If not included in the build contract, either get them (or do it yourself, pretty easy) to get all internal walls insulated. Not only for warmth, but helps soundproofing etc.

If you get a bigger shower, make sure you still have room around the toilet

Shower niche would be pretty great

check position of drains / downpipes (unwanted on deck etc)

Every time a plan gets updated, check every single thing (dimensions, window size etc)

If you havent already done so, go to every show home there is, can get some great ideas (add or remove from wishlist)

D.W

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#2639668 21-Jan-2021 14:43

How much roughly was your ducted system all-up?

We've gone back to 4 bedroom house, 2 bedrooms east (kids rooms), one south/west (master), spare room west-facing.

We're going with ducted heatpump, but don't have confirmed pricing at this stage. Thermally broken is also out of our price-range. We were going for higher ceilings but stuck with 2.4. We are going for tiled floor, gas cooktop/water.

Regarding our north-facing front window, we've decided to go with a single large window (which is street-facing) and we're going to use hedging at street-front to add privacy.

33coupe

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#2639683 21-Jan-2021 15:08

Im pretty sure its 13k for ducted (7 outlets & wifi), and $3.5k for the lossnay. Daikin 15.0kw unit for 180sqm house. Wasnt planning on having one due to cost but I think it will be worthwhile long term, and 18month interest free was deciding factor.

Even though my house is small, we went 4 bedrooms as well (made it smaller, just as a study / wfh area), thinking long term could be good selling point as well.

If youre getting curtains for the large window then its all good, but if youre thinking about blinds (esp Roman), then it may cost a fair bit

timmmay

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#2639687 21-Jan-2021 15:15

HRV / Panasonic are about $8600 for four vents, $10,600 for 6 vents which is a double height outdoor unit. Powers are about 7.6kw heating and about 14kw heating, from memory. There's one in between those two that I'm getting installed soon, and there are larger models, and air con output is less - but that doesn't really matter for NZ, heating output is key for us. That price doesn't include zoning which they don't do, but they can manually tweak the dampers to balance airflow and temperatures out. You can get a third party zoning system like Airtouch I think, I haven't looked into that.

33coupe

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#2640119 22-Jan-2021 13:29

oh and something we kind of missed / couldnt have. If you want recessed vanity mirror cupboard & toilet cistern in the stud cavity, they have to be on the internal walls.

Lego

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D.W

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#2641672 25-Jan-2021 13:29

Thanks for all the feedback/general information, has been very useful.

Our current floor plan below, I've asked for a window to be added to east face of garage, and other than that I think we're getting near where we want to be. We reduced the bedrooms by 5cm on the east side to get a garage to the same size as we have in our current house (5.8m, with laundry), so we know how it'll be size-wise. We'd prefer bigger but we had to make some compromises, and we know this size is functional enough for us. Our plan is to add a large garden shed on the easter edge of the property to increase storage space.

The street facing end of the house is close to north, so we've gone with a single large street-facing window on the north edge of the house (2.4m x 1.2m (w x h)), and we'll add hedges for privacy along the boundary of the section at the footpath.

This pretty much limits us to having the TV set up on the west wall, which would be the best from a screen glare perspective anyway I believe, but open to any feedback on this layout. We could go with two smaller windows on either side and keep the north-facing wall available for a TV, but I'd rather a) be looking out the west window than looking at north if facing the TV, and b) maximize the window size on the north wall.

sen8or

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#2641764 25-Jan-2021 16:57

Are you insulating the internal walls?

I would at least consider some noise dampening on the northern walls and corridor of the master bedroom, between them and the 2 adjacent bedrooms. Sound travels through normal gib and you don't want to be kept up by noisy children, nor do you want to wake up or disturb the children by being noisy adults 😉

D.W

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#2641823 25-Jan-2021 17:38

Yep internal walls will be insulated to reduce noise.

Zal

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#2642376 26-Jan-2021 14:19

D.W:

Yep internal walls will be insulated to reduce noise.

Sup DW, long time no see. I still use those sata cables you gave me like 5 years ago...

I haven't read the whole thread as I just happened to see this, so forgive me for looking like an egg if its said already.

I build spec builds for a living,

Some thoughts:

You may want to move the laundry from the garage. Its cold in winter, any towels or sheets will smell like car.

Insulate all the garage walls and the door to make it warmer - great for kids parties.

Don't insulate all the internal walls - better spent on Gib noise line.

Put solid doors on your garage and master bedroom to reduce noise as well.

I'd put your kitchen closer to the outside, it will be dark...

Not much storage in your house. You could half the cupboards in the bedrooms and put doors on the other side in the hallway.

Put attic trusses in and attic stairs so you can store stuff up there. Don't forget the ply before you put the truss on.

Who is building this? Builder or big housing company?

D.W

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#2642386 26-Jan-2021 14:40

Zal:

Sup DW, long time no see. I still use those sata cables you gave me like 5 years ago...

I haven't read the whole thread as I just happened to see this, so forgive me for looking like an egg if its said already.

I build spec builds for a living,

Some thoughts:

You may want to move the laundry from the garage. Its cold in winter, any towels or sheets will smell like car.

Insulate all the garage walls and the door to make it warmer - great for kids parties.

Don't insulate all the internal walls - better spent on Gib noise line.

Put solid doors on your garage and master bedroom to reduce noise as well.

I'd put your kitchen closer to the outside, it will be dark...

Not much storage in your house. You could half the cupboards in the bedrooms and put doors on the other side in the hallway.

Put attic trusses in and attic stairs so you can store stuff up there. Don't forget the ply before you put the truss on.

Who is building this? Builder or big housing company?

Hey, thanks for response.

Firstly, big building company (Orange Homes), we tried and tried to secure a section ourselves to go with a smaller builder, but couldn't get one (Lincoln). Demand was ridiculous, sections pretty much all sold before they were released to the public.

We would've preferred laundry not in garage, but we've had to make some compromises and this was one we've settled on. We currently have a laundry in our garage so we know what to expect.

If we're going to get better performance out of the gib noise line I'm happy to do that.

We've measured up the storage (again in comparison to our current house), and we're OK with the amount we've included. We've included attic trusses for storage also. We're only a 3 room family (two kids), 4th bedroom is a spare room, so we'll be fine for storage.

I'll see if we can stretch the budget to insulate the garage, its something I've wanted but we're stretching things as-is.

Re: kitchen position/lighting, we were thinking of adding a solatube above the kitchen to get a bit more light in. We haven't really found a position that doesn't move us too close to the western wall (getting too hot) or too far north (privacy).

When we were looking at buying rather than building, we made an offer on a house that had a near-identical layout on a near identical section/sun orientation, so we do have a rough idea what to expect, and we were OK with the house we were looking to buy.

Lego

Shop now for Lego sets and other gifts (affiliate link).

sen8or

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#2642806 27-Jan-2021 08:43

-1 for noiseline.

We did this in our house, wall between media room and master bedroom, wall between sons bedroom and our ensuite. Complete waste of money. Noise still travels from media room too easily and even through our ensuite with closed doors (with tiled shower) we can still hear our son on his PC at nights.

Combination of both perhaps, or maybe double lined, but noiseline by itself, from my experience, ineffective.

See layout for reference

billgates

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#2642808 27-Jan-2021 08:49

We did Ultraline GIB + insulation + solid core doors in every room incl garage and noise is not an issue.

Do whatever you want to do man.

Froglotion

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#2660020 20-Feb-2021 00:00

I've gone ahead and blown your budget for you by adding more space to the house. That hall way step just annoyed me too much. Every time you walk from the garage, or to the garage, you're going to have to step sideways. Depending on space to boundary, you could move the rear garage door to the side, to keep the garage the same size. Then all (I think) it does really is make the bathroom a bit bigger and the garage cupboard bigger. Living area does have to shift up a bit too, but I think it's 100% worth it. Did you a paint.exe sketch anyway.

https://postimg.cc/xXbq5jv8

D.W

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#2660060 20-Feb-2021 10:51

Froglotion:

I've gone ahead and blown your budget for you by adding more space to the house. That hall way step just annoyed me too much. Every time you walk from the garage, or to the garage, you're going to have to step sideways. Depending on space to boundary, you could move the rear garage door to the side, to keep the garage the same size. Then all (I think) it does really is make the bathroom a bit bigger and the garage cupboard bigger. Living area does have to shift up a bit too, but I think it's 100% worth it. Did you a paint.exe sketch anyway.

https://postimg.cc/xXbq5jv8

Thanks for suggestion. Realistically we're not going to make the footprint any bigger, but we could do it without increasing space. We'd lose around 40cm from the living/dining area, but I don't think that is a big deal, it would still be bigger than the house we're currently living in, and we'd gain a bigger cupboard, bigger bathroom, a bit more garage space.

The plan has a few other minor changes since the last post also.

https://ibb.co/8sn1HQ5

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