Hi oklouise, if you click on the link, it shows you the measurements. The image does show measurements, but it's in the tiniest font! I've emptied out the furniture in the hope that you can see it better in the image below.

I don't know what area you're building in but I would aim to allow at least 1000mm as a setback from side boundaries. Anything less and access becomes a real problem.

17.00 metres - 15.800 = just 1200mm divided by 2 = 600mm setback each side. I think you may have misinterpreted the requirement here?

Even taking a lawn mower/wheel barrow to backyard means going through he house if less than 1000mm.

Have a look at the covenants on the site, sometimes they can really muck up your initial vision.

I would either keep looking at project builders plans or use a building designer/architect/design focussed draftsman to come up with a custom plan.

If you can find a project home builders plan that suits you're on a winner usually as their costs are hard to beat. Many are architect designed anyway so you'll get a great plan but you do need to really wade through a lot of crappy one's as well. If not then a custom home can be a bit more expensive but you'll get your wishlist.

Hi MB Design & Drafting, thank you for the feedback! :) According to council, we need to leave 20cm on one side and 1m on the other side, this was further confirmed by project builders when we went through one of them to get a feel for the building envelope.

We found a project builder which got pretty close to what we wanted, but their costing was coming up close to a custom house anyway, so we decided we may as well pay the extra and go with custom to get exactly what we want! :)

Lawn mower/wheel barrow etc will go through the garage (at least that is the plan), hence why the house is not built right up to the 1m boundary behind the garage. There will be a door in the rear of the garage, which currently will be 1-2m, but I am considering making this 3m and a roller door to permit a bob cat for example to get through.

We just wanted to know if we had missed anything during our "rough" idea of what we wanted, obviously the custom builder/architect will have great ideas on what can be improved, the more eyes the better! :) This will be our forever home! We do not want to build again for at least another 30 years!

what is the maximum width and length of the building? nb including thickness of walls...what will the walls, floor and roof be built out of? do you plan to include a front porch and a back deck or outdoor entertaining area? where is north? .. what is the shape of the roof? check with council regarding front setback as it's sometimes not allowed to have the garage the same as the front of the house (hence the small porches on many new builds)..please explain the shape of the vaulted ceiling?

I did a zero setback dwelling some time ago which was 50mm from boundary. The garage had to go on the 50mm side.

If you can, have the drive through garage. Use a minimum 2400mm wide garage door so you can park a trailer/car/etc behind. Some areas have the storage of trailers specified to be hidden from view.... otherwise as what you've suggested would also be acceptable.

The internal living area will need a skylight if you can't get enough borrowed light. Avoid internally located rooms as much as possible, even wet areas such as powder rooms/ensuites.

The guest ensuite could be narrower say 1500 wide.

The walk through robe to main bedroom could also be narrowed

Aim for kids bedrooms to be a minimum of 3000 x 3000 + robe space. Anything makes them hard to furnish as you can really only have a single bed, limited space for desk, etc. can feel stuffy and closed in.

The living/meals would be better at 6000. 5000 is touch narrow for a space that gets so much use. To compensate, make the Laundry/pantry? area narrower. 1600-1800 wide Laundry works quite well for example.

If you narrow up some rooms as noted above this could allow the wider living/meals/etc to be out to 6000mm without increasing floor size.

@ddarroch - the backyard is north facing. Thank you for the passive design link! Will read it and see what I can use :)

@oklouise - The land is a funky shape, the width of the land is 17.2m's, the LHS is 44m long, the RHS is 31m long. The rear boundary is a straight line between the LHS and RHS and has a 2m easement the whole way. The front setback is 5.75m (based on the neighbours set backs). Council laws say to one side we must have a minimum of 1m from the boundary, and on the other side it can be either 20cm or 1m+. To maintain a decent backyard, we would like the maximum length of the house to be no more than 23.25m (not including an outdoor deck), currently it is at 22.25m. The design above has maxed out the width to minimise the length.

It will be a brick veneer house, so I've used a project builder's CAD drawing for the wall thicknesses, external wall is 240mm, internal walls is 90mm. I would really like a front porch, one that we can put some seats on, but if it is at the expense of the backyard, then the backyard is the preferred option. There will be a deck that runs the span of the rear of the house, I just haven't included it in the drawing.

An ideal porch:

I did not realise that garages may not be in line with the rest of the house! I will double check :)

The vaulted ceiling was originally intended to be as the image below

however I am also liking this, so not sure which way we will go

I hope that answered all your questions?

@MB Design & Drafting: I agree with the comments regarding the bedrooms, they feel too cramped. I will maybe take some area from the "activity" area, as we will have 3 living zones anyway. I will also shrink the pantry/laundry and shift around the guest ensuite to make the rear section wider at 6m! Thank you for the great comments! :)

@oklouise: that floor plan is amazing!! :) I have watched you comment on various other discussions in Houzz and have great admiration for your creativity! :) My husband is also equally impressed with the floor plan! Does the CAD program you are using export file in a dwg format? If so, could you send it to me?

@girlguides: hahaha good question, we will most likely have an elderly parent living with us :) thus they will need their own ensuite to make their life easier in the long run. Probably don't need the powder room, but if we have it, it also means we won't need to constantly keep the main bathroom clean :)

unfortunately my creativity does not extend to understanding the dwg format?? but is a furniture free copy of the plan useful?

As you may already know the DWG is just a versatile CAD file that can be imported into other CAD programs that allows that user to then continue to work with it.

Surveyors send contour DWG to me that I import into my 3D program. Saves me redrawing it but more importantly, the lines are in the exact position as surveyed.

Your program may allow you to convert to DWG and email it.

By the way your plan looks pretty good oklouise.

There are always constraints to negotiate and here you are endeavouring to achieve a fair amount of building program on a single level within site/boundary/setback limits etc. If it's a more traditional style you're after then the variations on your original concept as developed here will work fine. There are of course alternative and creative options to achieve the requirements and one thing that I always endeavour to minimise for the purpose of cost effectiveness is corridor/passage space where possible. It comes down to personal opinions though over many different aspects, but another solution for this type of scenario is to consider a side entry setup, potentially via a wrap around porch that removes the long central corridor, and connects the residence entrance more directly with the main living zone. Design/planningwise you then have greater flexibility/more room for options across the site with arguably more appropriately scaled room dimensions etc that are not as limited/squeezed by the fixed central corridor and boundary setbacks. But without properly understanding your site/context detail, that suggestion may not be appropriate. Agree 4x toilets is arguably unnecessary as you can set-up separate main toilet that essentially functions as a powder, or possibly if you need to just put a toilet within the main bathroom space as an extra option. Be also mindful of long skinny 1:2 proportioned living spaces such as the kid's living that may not function as well in reality, particularly also with access/flow set-ups that have you walking diagonally across spaces to access other rooms - it makes furniture/layout/function particularly hard to resolve. ALWAYS design with furniture (Home Design 101 ;) ) My instinct is that there's enough space to get what you need, but you could make more use of the actual spaces/rooms if you considered a design that reduced the circulation space - but that would be less traditional/conventional and accordingly not be right for you and your vision...... anyway just a few thoughts I thought I'd offer, best of luck :)

to my knowledge plans drawn on my vintage CAD program can only be manipulated by someone who also has the same vintage CAD program??

@oklouise - that's ok, I've managed to redraw and tweak it a little as well! I think for us, we will actually not use the formal living as a formal living, but as an Office/Library. We work from home quite a lot, so we would need to look out at something, preferably a nice garden or the backyard. At the moment it will be looking out onto the side with 2-3m's of gardens, so that will be very nice :) We can create a nice courtyard area for where the formal living/study windows will look out to. The area that is marked as a study in your plan, maybe is not needed or used to create a larger ensuite and WIR.

I quite like the rectangular kids zone, I can't see it fitting two sets of seating, but I can see one half of it having a drop zone where bags/jackets etc can be dumped as they enter the house. At the moment in our current house (which will be knocked down to build this), we don't have a dining space, but we have a huge deck which we entertain on a lot in summer, but in winter, we cannot entertain at all :( That is our biggest gripe! I am wondering if this problem can be solved with having a deck that can be closed off with stacker/bi-fold doors, because to be honest, if we can entertain outside in winter, we would much rather sit outside looking at the gardens then be inside! :) That also means we can shrink the footprint of the house, and thus have a larger backyard.

@Paul - We actually did want a side entrance, but I couldn't think of how to work that in .... Wrap around porch would be amazing!

@Ruth - The rooms will not be looking out onto a 20cm blank wall :) They will be looking out to 1m gap, thus will have a side garden. Ideally everyone is sitting together in the living zones together and not in their rooms :) Porch hardly counts as a living space! The formal living will double as an office/study, so I don't think that will count as a "living" space. Three living spaces does seem excessive, but there will be three generations of family in the household! I think as the family grows, we need to allow space for kids play areas to evolve to craft areas to evolve into studying areas then to relaxing areas as they start working. Also want some of these living areas to double up as guest sleeping areas for sleep overs and friends coming over :)

Would love an internal courtyard for the master! Originally we were trying to get the master to have a view into the backyard with doors that go out to the backyard! I think taking into account what I've said earlier, I will try and do that by removing the formal dining area which we don't really need! I also wanted to have a rooftop garage, but I think that's probably too ambitious taking into account our budget.

Everyone's comments have been great! Has given me lots of ideas of what can be changed/updated to improve the floor plan :) :)

Grannies room should be accessed from Hall not via the kids living room. Not teenager would be happy with that and it is hard to keep noise down with door. Give her a front room with a good view

Yaz, you have lots of ideas, a vision of what you are endeavouring to achieve, and clearly some skill in visualising and developing a floor plan along these lines - that's fantastic! The thing is, depending on your particular needs/priorities in context etc you may or may not get there on your own to your satisfaction, that is getting the most out of the opportunity to build from scratch and maximise value to budget. At a glance, given your comments about how you'd like this and that, but either not sure how to exactly achieve it or whether or not it would be viable with a budget, cuts to to core of what we as designers do in assisting people for a living. You may find it money/time well spent to engage a designer, even for just some concepts/preliminary sketches to provide you with some options/solutions that are resolved with industry understanding/expertise on costs. Best of luck :)