Today was one of my favourite days when it comes to working with my clients on a high performance home project.
While the weather was cold and wet we put on our gumboots to find the best location for the house on their fantastic site. The site on the the family farm is located at the Tai Tapu end of the Tai Tapu Lincoln Road. While it can be boggy out there the site has a good piece of high ground to the south allowing plenty of northern aspect for a family friendly lawn and garden with a rural backdrop.
With large rural sites the building could seemingly go anywhere given there is so much space, but in fact there are always factors contributing to the best location.
These are some of the things we considered for this house.
1 - Road access location and how much drive they want to build.
2 - Length of services from the road and how much they wanted to spend on this.
3 - Shade from large trees and whether they will remain or become firewood.
4 - Wind protection from shelter belts balancing shelter and sunshine.
5 - The neighbours house they don't want to crowd and after all they want to live in the country not a subdivision.
6 - View of an ugly shed, oh well will have to deal with that with more planting.
We can now engage the geotechnical engineer and land surveyor to do their work with a defined house site established.
Number one take away if you have a great piece of land where ever it is make sure you build the very best building you can and put it in the very best location.
If you need help with this I'd love to assist. I am Graeme Jacobs a Christchurch based Architect specialising in high performance homes often using SIP PREFAB.
