Get your model done.... at Google Sketch-up! Look at my house.

[WhiteLotusLane]

I've looked at Google's free 3D design drafting tool before but always found it a bit frustrating, but yesterday I gave it another go after watching some instruction videos (which are here: Sketchup Video Tutorials )

And after going to bed MUCH too late, I actually have something that shows pretty closely what I have in my head for a small weekend dwelling-in-the-garden or future guest house.

I probably made loads of mistakes, but the main point is that it shows the basic design, which previously existed only between my ears, and now it exists somewhere where you can look at it and spin it around! My wife looked at it in the morning and she said she loved that style! So I did something right..

I'm still looking for some ideas, criticism and common sense though. I spaced the posts 3 meters apart. Should (Could) that be 4? Does it make the inside space too small? I like a 1 room layout though. (Would there be a support post in the middle though also on the first floor going up to support the roof?)

Then, there's a deck going almost all the way around which is NOT shaded / covered by the roof, possibly it should be. And especially with that deck going two-thirds the way around the house, that's an awful lot of posts! (I guess the deck-posts could be thinner though right)

Anyway, ta-daaa :








Also a challenge:

* WHERE do I fit the bathroom?

* What should I do with the roof?

* The stairs are a bit weird, but it shows there's stairs.

[somtamslap]

* WHERE do I fit the bathroom?

Make a couple of rooms under the house and use one of them?

I like the design..Nice and simple...how much u reckon to build it?

[WhiteLotusLane]

No clue how much it would be. I've had budget of about 400K in my head, and that should include a water well / filter system and sewage / cess pit system as well as all the basic bathroom fittings though nothing fancy.

As for 'a couple rooms under the house'.... I think those spoil the looks of a wooden house. So often I see a really nice wooden house, but then with this brick & cement 'wart' at the end of it where the bathroom is. I think it's hideous, and I also think it results in a dark & dank bathroom.

Ideally I'd use some of the deck space upstairs I think and bring that under the roof and have it as open/airy as possible.. but then bathrooms and wood don't go that well together do they.. Or, I would go with 'rooms' under the house but they'd be pretty much 'virtual' rooms and partitions through using (potted) plants, bamboo screening or perhaps using those glass blocks for part of a wall. But then you'd get critters there. Anyway I don't know, I haven't solved this one.

[splitlid]

great effort, well done,

columns can be 4m no problem,(better for underneath parking also)
looks like you have 8m including the balcony area.
so 3 colums ok, would recommend 200mm x 200mm for the column dimensions on the lovere level, 150mm x 150mm on the upper level.
makes it sturdier as there will be no infill blocks.
handrail should be 900mm(1000mm is now reg in uk etc but looks fIcking daft) with 100mm spaces between uprights.
dont worry about internal columns, they can be 5-6m apart and designed so none are visable.
windows and door frames try and keep at the same finished height if possible.
use columns around the verandah area and extend the roof to give the covered area required.
bathroom could then easily be built under the new roof area.

good luck

[friscofrankie]

As for 'a couple rooms under the house'.... I think those spoil the looks of a wooden house. So often I see a really nice wooden house, but then with this brick & cement 'wart' at the end of it where the bathroom is. I think it's hideous, and I also think it results in a dark & dank bathroom.

The option is to have sewage pipes water pipes and electrical all going up to the house. The "concrete wart" as you callit is a perfect utilities area (water pump? piping, etc) and there is absolutely no reason teh room has to be dank, dark or anthing but light and airy is that is what you want. You will need some sort of utility room and if you don't want the bathroom down below place it on top of the utility room. Then tehre's the whole idea of a kitchen...

[WhiteLotusLane]

Yeah..kitchen.. I'm not planning for any proper kitchen right now. If it does happen then indeed it'll be downstairs or even completely detached.

Anyway, I thought this might come up so I just snapped a picture of an example case where I think the cement part destroys the overall look.

[WhiteLotusLane]

Some more examples of small wooden houses on stilts. They're remarkably similar in design but the pictures are of different houses.

[Marmite the Dog]

If you made it over 4m posts, you'd have more than enough room to have a layout like Dr Andy did, which works superbly well.



The brown is the living are, the green a small kitchen and the blue the shower room. You go through the kitchen to get to the shower room, and it won't make the outside look crappy, as you can have it made in wood rather than concrete. Even wooden floors.

There may be some good pictures in Dr A's thread about them.

[WhiteLotusLane]

Which topic is that? I found the 'DrAndy's wooden cottage in the rice fields' topic but that looks much bigger. That's a proper house really. Is there another topic?

[bobsaigon]

I would try to have the roof overhanging the deck and would try to locate the stairs so that they would remain dry/accessible during rain storms.

[grasshopper]

Rain? In thailand?

[Sparky]

I think its a bloody good attempt at putting your thoughts on paper as a design others can understand for a first time effort . well done that man . I agree it does look a bit posty but making them 4mtrs apart will fix that and cut down costs . Two ideas for your bathroom put it downstairs made of blocks but wood clad on outside , that way you have a tile able surface inside and not the look you dislike outside . Or change the upstairs to accomodate the same idea on your deck area .Ive seen something simular on the free Thai government house site for plans check that out .

[Milo]

Great drawing! Wanting to do something similar myself, but will be using all concrete & block, then just faced with timber for the Thai style look. Suffer very badly with termites in our current rented property, landlord has to get them round to spray annually. He reckons he's paying 10k/time (4yrs in a row!) and will therefore be getting rid of all the teak flooring in the place just as soon as we go away on tour again for a couple of weeks. Thai house next to ours in Chiang mai has also been ravaged by termites, just cost them 100k to have the roof replaced with steel trusses, beware!

[Marmite the Dog]

Is there another topic?

Yes. You posted in it yesterday afternoon at 2.20.

[WhiteLotusLane]

Hmm.. posty indeed. version 2.0 looks even postier. :/ As Marmers suggested I took some inspiration from DrAndy's cottage in the rice fields. I also paid much more attention to roof construction.

Anyway, I read through DrAndy's topic again and it's really more than a cottage of course.. major structural thought went into not having posts in the interior space.

For this 2.0 attempt I wanted to make sure the house didn't get too big so I reduced some sizes.. However I also reduced post spacing to 2.5 meters apart in the X direction and 3 meters in the Y direction. I dunno, I thought it would save cost if thinner posts could be used but what do I know. It results in a very posty look, I guess also because I know inlclude posts around the deck to support the roof. (I guess those are needed though if I want to cover/shade the deck)

Oh, and I fit in an upstairs bathroom.

And I know NOTHING about roof construction.. (Or any kind of construction really) I googled a bit on truss frames and the like, but it's unlikely that I got near an actual roof construction. I do know that I would like to have the roof structure showing from the room, so no lowered ceiling. At what height should the horizontal truss beams be anyway? I put them at 2.5 meters which is probably too low if you want to hang a ceiling fan. (or maybe the fan could go above the lowest horizontal beam for the roof)

Oh and don't look at the post size; they're huge of course and way too big especially for the roof.

I also explored some more features of Sketchup, including making it look nicer, backgrounds and shading. You can actually set the shade for the specific location on earth, the time of year and the hour.. Pretty advanced stuff (for me anyways)

Anyway:






















Oh, it was 2am again last night..

[WhiteLotusLane]

Jeez.. :



I have some studying to do.. Or find a builder / architect.

[Twocam]

Your little design is quite like our holiday place but ours looks slightly more traditional with Thai clay tiles & a higher roofspace for venting. Like you I don't want a bathroom under the house and am not keen on kitchen smells wafting up either. We have been going to bookstores every weekend and looking at outdoor bathroom & kitchen designs. I think we're going to have a concrete wall with a roof extending a couple of metres each side. One side will be the outdoor kitchen with a concerete benchtop for chopping and food prep (we use a gas BBQ). The other side will have the bathroom, probably with the remaining 3 walls made of flotsam&jetsam rescued from around the land. We have no electricity or running water so we have bought some camp showers that you can put in the sun to heat. We're trying to make it as open air as possible to avoid the mozzies and to let in light. We'll probably stick a few concrete blocks here and there to balance candles or lanterns on...

Our budget was 400k but with price rises in building supplies this past year we think we are now looking at closer to 500k.

[baldrick]

did you look through these designs ?
Living in Asia

[WhiteLotusLane]

Thanks!! Yes I'm familiar with that site, it's an excellent resource.

Looking at them again I might pick one of the bigger Thai style homes and chop most of it off, leaving just one of the roofed rooms initially. (Style 29 for example)

Meanwhile, I downscaled things a bit, using just 9 posts.

These two are the same in layout, just the roof style is different. .Maybe expensive and weird to do a full roof also on the veranda bit. Though it apes a more traditional Lanna style that way with a double roof.. anyway.