Floor plans

Finalizing the Construction Contract

Ed Building a House February 5, 2017March 14, 2017Construction, Design details, Floor plans, Legal 0 Comment

While we settled on a project budget in October and construction was started in mid-November, we haven’t as yet finalized and signed the (primary) construction contract with the builder, a company owned by Brinza Ionut Bogdan who employs our contractor Francisc, or the contract with the geometra, Jimmy.

A key reason for having delayed the signing is my desire to have a clear definition of just what we’ll get for each budget item. Here in the US, we’d call this the construction drawings and specification. In Italy, the specification is called a computo metrico. (I’m not sure what the particular term is for the construction drawings.)

Kevin has been working to get these construction plans done, and Giovanna has been working to get the contracts completed. This week, they sent along a final draft with all the needed attachments.

On the whole, there were no major surprises in any of the documents. The computo metrico stretched to 31 pages and described in detail the construction of the actual house structure — the underground pylons, the floors, the beams, and the support columns. It also included, but in less detail, the installation of the internal systems, such as plumbing, heating, and electrical.

I noticed two small discrepancies between our past discussions and the drawings and elevations, both for items we had adjusted late in the planning: the size and placement of the window in the stairway and the layout of the door and shower opening in the downstairs bathroom.

The one place I had a surprise was when I saw the view of the front of the house. I had expected that the edge of the top floor terrace would be “behind” a section of roof, but because of the location of the terrace, it appears that there is a “gap” in the roofline.

I can see why it happens when look at an overhead view of the terrace and its placement, and there is not an obvious solution: the terrace can’t be “pushed back” to allow a roof section, as the door to the terrace is right on the front edge of the terrace, and that door can’t be moved because of the whole top floor layout, especially the position of the bathroom.

Kevin and I exchanged some ideas about how to handle the issue — which is purely one of the visibility of the “side” of the terrace from the front of the house — including some type of railing or maybe a small stone wall. Nothing seems quite right, but Kevin said he’d get with the architect and figure out a solution.

Giovanna’s instructions were to make two copies of the documents, sign each page, and send them back to her “by courier.” We did sign as requested, which was a bit of a task for me as I needed to carefully write my name on each of the hundred or so pages.

I’m not sure exactly what she meant by “courier” — maybe just not to send regular mail — but I wasn’t doing anything more than sending by DHL, which in itself cost $97, but will have the documents there in three days.

Next will be the “advance” payments we owe Francisc and Jimmy, which add up to a few tens of thousands of euro.

Redoing the Bathrooms

Ed Designing a House January 4, 2017March 13, 2017Bathroom, Design details, Floor plans 0 Comment

Last week, Kevin took the proactive step to bring the bathroom designer, Angelo, into the process. The architect had done preliminary bathroom planimetrie (floorplans), but we need to finalize the layouts so the plumbing work can proceed. (The toilet placement is the issue that needs to be decided now,. The others can be tweaked later, though as you’ll see I think we’ve got it solved now.)

The preliminary layouts we had received before seemed to be reasonable, but I think the bathroom “specialist” made some great improvements, particularly in the placement of the showers and toilets and figuring out how to incorporate the nicchie.

The general recommendation about the nicchia was presented by Kevin as, “Nicchia is accommodated with a “faux” wall extension, seamless to ceiling.”

My question back to him on this was whether this would take too much space from the rooms, but it doesn’t look like it would from the drawings (below).

I’ll cover the individual bathroom. in turn.

Master bathroom

Here is the original design compared with the new layout from the specialist.

New Master Bathroom Design
Click image to enlarge

Kevin presented the rationale like this:

(Kevin loves using capitals for emphasis and an ellipsis to join thoughts.)

• You enter the bathroom, and immediate have access to the double sinks … also, upon entering you profit from the natural light from the window
• The entire exterior wall is COMPLETELY “FREE”…
• The bathroom is very spacious with lots of free room
• Inside the shower area we can “extend” the nicchia wall extension to create an in-shower NICCHIA or an in-shower SHELF…or we can do nothing

The shower is a generous 1.8m x 0.9m (6 ft x 3 ft).

The only small detail, which is no problem to change is that Anne and I think we probably want a single sink rather than double so we have more counter space.

Ground Floor Bathroom

This bathroom runs across the front side of the house, to the right of the entry.

New Ground Floor Bathroom
Click image to enlarge

Kevin’s comments:

• You enter the bathroom, see the glass shower panel, then the sink … the toilet is tucked in the back, out of view when you first enter
• The entire right side wall is “free”, no clutter
• He puts the shower in the wall indentation … allows for a bigger, cleaner shower with glass panel, no cabinet … easier to clean, nicer to look at, more comfortable to use

Here. I want to tinker more.

My biggest concern is with the way the door opens. As drawn, there is no place for wall switches, except behind the door or in the hall, neither of which I like. I want to reverse the swing, so it opens on the right. This requires the shower opening to be put at the other end, so it’s not behind the door.

Again, the shower is a good size, at 1.4m x 0.6 m (4½ ft x 2 ft).

The other tweak is to put a half wall between the sink and the toilet.

Top Floor Bathroom

Here, we told them we didn’t want the bidet and he has the great idea of how to use the space: add a shower along with the tub. (We want to tub for guests with little children (grandchildren?))

first floor bathroom — Original Top Floor Bathroom
Click image to enlarge

Kevin:

• He recommends going with BOTH a tub and a shower – his reasoning is that by eliminating the bidet, we pick up some space … the vast majority of usage will be shower over tub … also, from a cleaning point of view, the shower will keep the bathroom cleaner, contain more water splashes, etc., than will a shower in the tub … he cites the fact that you might rent the house as another motivator for the cleaning/usage rationale
• You enter the bathroom and have immediate access to the sink … the toilet is tucked in the back, out of view when you first enter

Our only comments are that we’d like that half wall here, also. (There may be a slight issue with the door placement, given the special door we’d like to use for the adjacent linen closet.)

We sent our comments and questions off to Kevin.

Update

After hearing the recommendations from Angelo and Kevin, we decided to drop the half wall idea, as the spaces are somewhat small and it would chop them up unnecessarily.

We did make the small revision to switch the master sink from double to single.

My biggest concern was to redo the way the door opens in the ground floor bath. They were able to deliver what I wanted, as shown in the plan below. (I have rotated the previous revision image so they can be seen side-by-side in the same orientation.)

ground floor bathroom design — Original revision of ground floor bathroom
Click image to enlarge

Ground Floor Bathroom — New revision: Ground Floor
Bathroom
Click image to enlarge

Strong as Bull

Ed Designing a House December 10, 2016March 13, 2017Construction, Floor plans 0 Comment

Kevin sent along the technical drawings for the pilings, foundation, and framework of the house. Some of it is Greek to me, but its reassuring about the strength of the construction.

I can see that the construction is solid. The supporting columns seem to be 30cm x 30cm (12 in x 12 in). There are sixteen of these, even for this 205mt² (2200 ft² house. Plus, the beams supporting the floors are 55cm x 30cm (22 in x 12 in) with the floors 25cm (10 in) thick.

Here’s a look at the structural drawing for the ground floor. Trave is a beam and soliao a floor panel.

Beams and Floors Click image to enlarge and see plan details — Beams and Floors
Click image to enlarge and see plan details

Lighting It Up

Ed Designing a House December 8, 2016March 12, 2017designs, electrical and network, Floor plans 0 Comment

When I was in Marche a few weeks ago, I asked Kevin about the electrical plan. I had assumed the architect or geometra would handle this and we’d comment. (The architect and geometra have overlapping roles. The architect has more formal training and certification, and seems to handle the big picture elements of the design. The geometra handles the details, plus acts as a surveyor and project manager.)

He told me that I ought to make the first pass at an electrical plan. I was happy to take this on, as I wanted to avoid some shortcomings in our current house. (This house was built in 1946, so some of the weaknesses, such as outlet placement, remain today. Also, an addition was put on in 1997, which was done without paying attention to some details. For example, we have light switches behind doors which could have been avoided by hinges on the other side or switches on the other wall.)

Kevin gave me a couple of examples of plans past clients had done. I thought they were a bit incomplete in that they left out some important details, like switches in general or the connection of which switches to which circuit.

My goals for our plan were to make sure we have enough outlets and in the right places, having logical switch locations and connections, and appropriate built in lighting. (One thing I wanted to avoid was hanging lights in the main room, as it seemed to me they’d look awkward hanging out by themselves.)

I also wanted to be sure we’d have good wireless internet coverage throughout the house.

I’ve probably been through five or six iterations of the plan, which included the network plan, which I wrote about before. I’m fairly pleased with the plan as it stands right now.

I tried to meet our goals by including an outlet on almost every wall inside, using quad outlets in high use areas like the office and kitchen, and waterproof outlets for outside; clearly showing switches and the connections to circuits and using three-way switches and dimmers as appropriate; building in recessed lighting in the main room ceiling and in the walls in the stairway; and providing connections for outside elements like landscape lighting and irrigation system wiring.

I’m also wanting to have a separate ice making machine, as Italians don’t use much ice and refrigerators don’t have ice makers, so I specified a special outlet for it. (I’m not sure if I can make the ice machine happen. Those I can find online that would work in Italy might be too big or too expensive.)

I considered, briefly, the idea of a “smart home” with special outlets and switches and smartphone control, but I found it’s pretty expensive and when I thought about it, would be more for fun than useful. We can just use timers instead of computer controls.

electrical plan for a new house in Le Marche — Electrical plan
Click image to enlarge and see electrical plan details

When Kevin saw this, he called it, “one BEEFY electrical plan.”

He’s off this week to discuss the plan with the network and electrical specialists. I’m hoping that the plan won’t be too expensive to implement. I’m counting on the incremental cost of a few outlets and switches as being fairly small.

Heating and Cooling

Ed Designing a House December 6, 2016March 12, 2017Construction, designs, Floor plans 0 Comment

I’m writing this post now mostly so can show this cool diagram — which I don’t completely understand.

Underfloor heating areas Click image to enlarge — Underfloor heating areas
Click image to enlarge

It shows the plan for the underfloor heating. The different groups of pipes are shown by the colors. They come together in a ground floor zone and a top floor zone which can be controlled separately.

Cooling the house will be done by a progression:

Open the windows.
Use the ceiling fans in the bedrooms.
Use the portable A/C units in the bedrooms.

These portable units and only cost a few hundred euro, so using them is MUCH cheaper than building an air conditioning system for the house. We’re building vents into the walls in the bedrooms so the units can exhaust the warm, moist air to the outside and we won’t need drain pans that have to be emptied.

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