8.4 m is quite a depth. It is always a balance, what are you losing in the floor plan if you take 0.6 m from that and what will it add to back yard. Are there shadow issues? Not enough info to help sorry.

15 x 8.4 m is quite good for small allotment. You could go to 8.0 m and still be happy with backyard.

would love to see your house and site plans as it sounds like a remarkably big backyard for such a small block and assume there's also some front garden but i think you would notice space taken off the smaller deck before the bigger backyard

It will be a 2-storey house with a lift (as we are older and planning to age-in-place), with a 3 metre setback from the front boundary and 1.5 metres from each side boundary. The block faces west towards the river and mountains beyond on the mid-north coast of NSW. We have taken steps to incorporate design features which will minimise the effects of the heat and sun. Upstairs, the bedrooms are dormer style. I apologise for the quality of the plans - hand-drawn on graph paper.

is this being developed in the Greatlakes as 200 plus lots of this size are in a new development

Can we comment on the layout. I am a little concerned with the kitchen which seems to be a thoroughfare with stove in middle on a narrow island. A scale on plans would help.

Yes, OK to comment on the layout.

Re: the kitchen. I would prefer to have northern windows as the "splashback", that's why the hot plates are in the middle of a 600 wide island. I have the same layout in my present kitchen and it works very well. However I welcome suggestions for improvements in the floorplan. The scale is 1:100

I wouldn’t like stove location with small kids running around. Is this your plan or a builders?

It's our plan, we are in our 70's. No children running around.

It's not in the Great Lakes area.

You have an ensuite and an identical bathroom around 3 steps further apart. Can't see any advantage for this.

You could lose the ens, relocate the WIR and end up with a bigger bedroom, bigger WIR and save money.

Your roof has these eaves all close together over what appears to be some upper level windows, but these walls aren't reflected below. If I've understood this correctly you've added significant build cost for little gain.

I think the room sizes are ok but I would suggest a design professional to polish it up.

the extra bathroom is for a live in carer but i'm curious about the "notches" on north and south sides of the upstairs...at first i thought that it may be dormer windows but please explain their real purpose...difficult to read all the details but a rough version of your plan may be useful if you could please correct my errors

Louise, the house design is similar to this style. The notches that you refer to are the space between the dormer rooms.

Love the style!

I would prefer larger porch or extra space in the house more than in a rear yard space which is already more than most people have these days, remembering also it has the benefit of full width of the block, where your porch and the rest of your house is restricted to partial width only, so would benefit more by adding 60cm. 60cm more on a 3m space is 20% bigger. 60cm more on a 15m or 8m dimension is under 10%

The house looks lovely. I would keep the front deck at its full depth if that is where the view is - which is also west s you'll be happy you have deep decks. There is no benefit to the back yard as you have all the utilities on this side and very little access to the back from a living point of view. For resale I would seriously consider opening up the back more for today's lifestyle. East facing is my favourite aspect.

I understand that the view is to the west, but you aren't making use of the best morning and all day winter and summer sun, ie East and North these are blocked off, it would be ideal to step the building back in from the northern boundary which would mean reducing the width of the build