The building site where a new home will be constructed is so, so important. Generally, it is recommended that you don’t even begin designing your house until a potential building site has been selected – so that the house can be developed to utilize the best features of the land, and avoid the pitfalls.
We purchased our building site in 2009. You can read more details about how we found and fell in love with our 4.5 acres in this post. Through the years, as I have been sketching ideas for the cottage, I have been careful to keep the lay of the land in mind – at least conceptually. I am now far enough in the design that I need to look more closely at how the cottage will actually be positioned.
This week I spent quite a bit of time fine tuning design details – the garage placement, the driveway configuration, and where the walkout door from the basement will be. Each of these decisions were heavily based on the site.
Our site is super unique, and has some interesting challenges. These are some of the site related issues that have been guiding our design:
SLOPED LAND
I’m sure that this particular parcel of land was passed over by multiple people solely because of its most dramatic natural feature – the slope. From the roadside there is a bit of flat land, but the slope down to the pond below is quite dramatic.
SETBACKS
The red area shown in the above graphic is the ‘flat’ land. The portion of land closest to the road (shown outlined in blue) is not build-able, because of setbacks and easements. Right from the start, we knew that we would likely have a longer driveway than most because of these setbacks alone.
MANY NEIGHBORS
Our land borders quite a few properties – both on the south and west property lines and, visually, across the pond. 14 parcels border ours. While this could be seen as a major drawback, I have been working strategically on the design so that our privacy within the home is maintained.
DENSE TREES
the kids standing by one of the many large trees that will need to be removed (2017)
One of the reasons we fell in love with our building site was that it was absolutely FILLED with mature trees: oak, maple, and other varieties. Sadly, there will be tree removal when the time comes to build. There is absolutely no avoiding that fact. By minimizing the overall footprint of the cottage, we hope to remove as few trees as possible.
EXPOSURE TO THE ELEMENTS
A view from our property, looking south. Our mini van is parked on the curved portion of the road.
An often overlooked, but important aspect of home design is the orientation it has in regard to the sun and wind. Because we live in a Northern climate, our strongest sunshine comes from the south. It is generally advised in this climate that you position your home with windows facing south (both for daylight, and for heating purposes in the winter). Thankfully, once a few trees are removed, we will have quite a bit of southern exposure.
It can get very cold in our state during the winter months – and the prevailing wind direction is from the northwest. I plan to rotate the cottage so that the garage can be used a bit for protection from those strong winds.
THE IDEAL POSITION FOR OUR COTTAGE
With all of these site issues in mind, I have narrowed down the placement of our cottage. I am working on finding the best angle of rotation and also determining how exactly the driveway will function – but we are getting close!
Just for fun, here are a few 3d images showing the cottage positioned on the land.
The cylinders are place holders for privacy trees (some of which are existing, and others that we hope to plant in the future.
I worked a long time to find an appropriate position for the garage. I was sure that I wanted the garage doors to be set back from the front of the house/porch. For a while I had the garage rotated 90 degrees so that you accessed the doors from the side – but I eventually realized that this would not create ideal conditions for the driveway, making it both awkward and extremely long. The garage is now accessed head on and set to the very back of the house so that it isn’t visually imposing.
The wall of windows on the southeast elevation will let in a ton of wonderful natural daylight. It is one of my favorite features so far, and never would have happened if we hadn’t talked to our contractor about current building prices – which prompted us to make a major change to the design.
You can see from this image how the cottage interacts with the slope. There will be a bit of excavating and retaining involved in creating the lower level walkout patio.
As the weather warms up, I hope to make a trip to the land again – and maybe stake out the corners or use spray paint to get an even more visual perspective on what we will see out of each window of the cottage.
Exciting times ahead!
