I don't see a bathroom in the basement where you have two bedrooms. I like your house though and being soon to be a retired couple it works for me.

elizabeth,
I am no expert at looking at house plans so I know others will give you great feedback on them. But I wanted to say I love the concept of "laundry/clutter" room! And the study area off the kitchen seems like it could be such a cozy place, tied in with the kitchen as it is. I bet you will do lots of your living in that room.

We have a radiant heated floor and it is really, really great - we are very glad we did that.

And your wonderful basement where kids and other family can stay when they visit seems like the ultimate luxury to me.

We are also a retired couple, have a newly built house, and it seems as if the challenges and excitement of planning and building a new home are keeping us young... you will think so too!

Good luck on your project.

Is the reason for the distance from the garage to the house the topography? Do you get wind, rain, and snow at your altitude? If so, I'd want the garage closer to the kitchen if possible, because the older we get (we're retired, too), the less we'll probably want (or be able) to lug groceries long distances. Also, I wouldn't want the front door opening directly into the living area in a cold climate. And I don't like having anyone (mailperson, FedEx, UPS, neighbor kids selling stuff, etc.) who comes to the front door seeing everything that's going on in the living area. A defined front hall area would block cold air blasts and provide some privacy. Just some thoughts, which may not apply to you.

We just built our house using ICFs to the top of the first floor. We seriously considered radiant heat, but went with geothermal instead. We also put 2" of XPS under the lower level walkout slab to help keep the heat in, and put the wood stove down there in case of emergencies and to provide supplemental heat to the entire house. For more energy efficiency, we went with solar hot water, which I highly recommend since it is cost effective, especially with the govt incentives now (that we didn't get).

Anne

Hi, like you, my husband and I are retired and building our forever house. We also designed our house so that our visiting children (and grandchildren) would be on another level of the house during visits.

I agree with the posters who do not think you will want to trudge through your house to get to your kitchen or open up your front door directly into your living room. I think you will enjoy your sunny breakfast area. I love that it will have windows on all three sides.

Since this is going to be your forever home you might want to make sure your doorways are extra-wide and wheelchair accessible. We won't have step-ups or step-downs on the level where my husband and I will be living either.

Nice layout, but why 2 toilets in the master bath? I'd rather see a toilet added to the laundry room, where you could zip in from outside and use it without having to walk across the dining room.

Thanks to everyone for your comments - please keep them coming.

The garage needs to be where it is due to the topology of our site - but we will have the walkway covered hopefully that will help.

OKHouse - was your radiant installed in slab? We need to have ours on the floor above the basement so still trying to work out the best way.

Anne - what type of solar and ICF's did you go with?

Lisa: The second toilet is actually a bidet. We are now planning a toilet and sink in the garage - for when we are outside. The reason we are not putting it in the laundry/clutter room is because - we have a lot of clutter!!

Archie - we didn't remember to label them but there is a bathroom with each of the bedroom in the basement.

Thanks again,
Sue

Our ICFs are from Nudura, a Canadian company which has a distributer in Ohio that got the ICFs from their plant in Georgia. A couple of their advantages are that the sections are 8' long (most/all others are 4'?), and they collapse so take up less space when trucking them to the site (and storing them there) which reduces costs and there are fewer seams to deal with.

Don't know which brand our solar is, but we have two 4' x 8' flat plate collectors that face SW on the garage roof on the back side of the house. Our roof pitch is 10/12, which provides an almost perfect angle for our latitude of 42+ degrees. We get so much hot water, that DH is working on a way to connect it into the geothermal setup so that we can get some heat from it. He says if he lived in TN (or most other places that don't have a lot of cloud cover during the winter), that he'd put in the piping for PV, so that down the road when it becomes more cost effective, he'd be ready.

Anne

** OKHouse - was your radiant installed in slab? **

Yes, it is in our slab. In California, that's about all we have.

Margaret