We built off Cool House plan chp-31382. Not a 'farm house plan' and has an attached oversize garage. The nice thing about an attached garage is with any luck, you can orient it on the west side of the house to 'hide' a sustantial part of the house behind it to minimize solar heat gain. One reason we picked this plan was the all hip roof that is stronger and gets an insurance discount here in hurricane country. Also, I wanted to go with a single level home as it's easier to manage heat gain. A 2 story is difficult to manage window and wall heat gain like you can do with a single story with oversize eaves. A metal roof or radiant barrier in the attic can compensate for the extra roof area with the single story. We've ended up with a 2000 sq ft home with an average $130 power bill (includes pumping from well). 10 foot ceilings and heat recovery unit on A/C also helps. I'd suggest you spend some extra time researching all the little things that can add up to substantial energy bill savings as you narrow your plan search. Good luck, Gary

Looks like it will be very dramatic. I hope you have some views out of that great room and MBR. I'm sure you do. I can't really offer suggestions, looks fine. Perhaps if there were some dimensions? Is there a second floor? A loft of some kind would be nice.

The key issue is whether you are trying to design the house or create construction documents - two very different goals. Many homeowners tend to think of the "design" of a house as a "plan" when, in reality, it is just one of many ways to help someone to visualize the actual design and it is not always a very good one for complex designs. Plans, elevations, details and schedules work well for builders because they aren't trying to evaluate the overall design, only build the house one piece at a time. IMHO nothing compares to SketchUp for preliminary design at any price (SketchUp basic is free, SketchUp Pro is $495, the Student version of Pro is $49/year and a trial version of Pro is free.) Since it is unlikely a homeowner will have the knowledge to draw a set of construction documents I would suggest sticking to preliminary design and hiring someone with the proper experience to do the rest. A SketchUp model can be easily looked at in plan view especially with the Section Tool shown in the link below. It doesn't take a skilled drafter much time to enter the information from a SketchUp model into a 2D CAD file because the drafter can use the tape measure tool to find all of the dimensions (if they are not already labeled in the model) and it is possible to import a 2D version into almost any CAD program (Pro has DXF export and the free version will need a plugin script that is available free online.) SketchUp may seem intuitive and for a grade school student it is but for a house designer it has so many valuable features that it requires taking a course at a school or online to be used effectively. You should study and experiment for a month before starting to design your house. There are books available at Amazon and online courses from SketchUp and from SketchUp for Dummies/aidanchopra.com. When I open a SketchUp model from 10 years ago I am surprised at how few of the features I was able to use. There is never an end to learning with any CAD program. Each new version of the software adds incredible features. SketchUp view inside model

Are you willing to make any changes to the existing exterior walls? E.g., enlarge the "Family Entry" area to put a Laundry Room in the Family Entry (to the left in the layout in the next post - the layout has been turned 90 degrees to fit the page better)? Is this for a young couple or growing family, or is it for a retirement home? If retirement, I would not want the Family Entry at a different level than the rest of the floor - it could become difficult to navigate if you have knee problems later in life or if a wheelchair is needed someday. (If a retirement home, then this floorplan would be problematical anyway unless there's an elevator b/c there's no full bathroom on the first floor. The Library could be transformed into a bedroom, but without a full bathroom, but there's no full bathroom.)