Skillion roof with covered veranda

This post was edited by mrtea on Sun, Jan 11, 15 at 22:06

I've never heard of a skillion roof- I had to google it. I guess it's just an upscale term for a shed roof.

Anyhow- It won't cost much more to build your floorplan as an 'L' rather than a rectangle, especially if you just have one roof plane as shown. The nice part is that the 'L' could have windows on 3 sides, which is something I personally like.

The other argument against complex shapes is that they do waste a little more energy due to having more wall area. A square has the least (actually, a circle has the least). As a rectangle gets longer and skinnier, the wall area increases for the same square footage. The shape you have shown doesn't have excessive wall area, and how you build and site the house will have a bigger effect on efficiency than the actual shape.

I like the "L" better as it puts the bathroom closer to the bedrooms. More privacy.

I agree about the L shape and privacy!

Something that will add to your cost with the L plan is that your ceilings will have to be higher.

At a minimum, you need the ceiling to be 8' high. If you slope it at 1' every 2' in run (for easy math), and your house is 20' deep, your walls are going to be 18' tall on the high side. If your house is only 12' deep, then the high side is only going to need 14' walls. Obviously, the 14' walls are going to be cheaper to build than 18' walls.

And the lower ceilings will also be cheaper to heat.

There's a difference between ceilings and roofs, though. The ceiling inside could be flat, just like it is in most houses, so it wouldn't be any more to heat. The house in the picture is a rather low pitch- probably about 1' in every 6'. Personally, I think that's a little too flat to shed water dependably, but steep roofs cost more all the way around.

Fair enough, the heating issue may be moot. But you still need exterior walls to hold up the roof. And the longer your house is from front to back, the higher the high wall needs to be. After about 12', you need an engineer's input.

The point is that even though the roof itself is simple, there are more ways that the footprint of the house increases the costs.

Okay that all makes sense. Thanks folks!

Obviously bent elements cost more than straight elements for the foundation, exterior walls and the roof. But the cost premium is often worth it. Unfortunately, there are few rules of thumb that are useful in the design of your own house. Many important decisions are better left to personal preference rather than cost control. Knowing when to use one criteria or the other is usually based on experience for which there is no short cut. Every house you design will be better than the one before it. My solution has been to keep designing houses.