| I looked at lots of stock house plans and finally decided on my own design for several reasons. Cost. The design is basically "salt box" - a cube. It maximizes floor space for the money. Also, living in the country, this is a fairly typical design. So far I'm pleased. I would say that the biggest draw back is the fact that it is compact. No matter where you are in the house, you're never more than 40 feet from the farthest point. Oh well. I'm still working on sound proofing. My original plans called for a screened porch to wrap completely around the first floor. Because the porch was an additional 80% of the house cost, I'm still working on that. I ended up with a fairly large and usable deck in the mean time. As you can see in the picture above, the first floor is really 9 feet up over the basement/garage. Because the home site is about 3 feet above the normal high tide level, I planned on flooding. If fact, during construction, there was a hurricane that drove the water level up so that it would have been about 4 inches deep in the garage. The price of waterfront property. When the water is that high at the house, it is almost 3 feet deep on the driveway. (I'll try to find pictures of the flood. I know there is video somewhere, maybe I can pull frames.) So my own design because of cost, style, and unique flood considerations. I also have 6 inche exterior walls to allow for more insulation, and enough windows for light and breeze. For those people who make the comment that this or that should be all glass to appreciate the view, I say "Go out there and look all you want, you don't have to pay for heat and air conditioning." When I got bids for the heat pumps, all respondants said that I would need a 1.5 ton unit for the downstairs, and a 1 ton unit for the up stairs. The installer I selected let me put in one unit defering the other. Guess what? Four years later, I still don't need it. The house stays comfortable with just the 1.5 ton unit. The shade from the tall southern pines in the summer helps, and the wood fired boiler I use in the winter makes the house really comfortable. |
