Site Planning: Strategically Site Your House

One of the most important things you can do to lower the cost of your new home is to strategically locate your home on the site in response to not only the surrounding site features, but also to climatic, geographic, and existing infrastructure.

[Healdsburg Residence by John Maniscalco Architecture. Photo by John Maniscalco Architecture.]

Site features such as topography, soil conditions, and vegetation can affect the amount of site work necessary to build your home. It’s important to analyze the site and select a location by being mindful of how these site elements will influence your home design.

In terms of topography, a relatively flat location is usually most economical to build on as opposed to a sloped area. The topography also plays a role in setting building elevations, which can result in excavation or building up more soil. There may be large rocks or clay soil that could influence the siting your home and the type of foundation you have to use. Large trees with extensive root systems cost money to remove and the idea of creating a complex home design that dodges all the trees and roots is costly, also.

You also want to consider utility access and existing infrastructure on your site. You usually have utility access at the street, so the farther away your house is from the road you build, the more utility and site work you’ll have to lay longer pipes, cables, and wires, and the longer your driveway will need to be. If you don’t have access to all public utilities and instead have well water or a septic system, you’ll want to be mindful of those locations also and plan accordingly.

Also, don’t forget to consider what is happening on neighboring sites. If you’re located on a suburban lot without a view or outwardly focus, you’ll want to consider how you site your home to provide privacy.

House Orientation and Configuration on the Site

In addition to determining where your home should be located on the site, you should also consider the orientation and configuration of your home in response to the site, climatic, and geographic conditions.

Reviewing solar orientation, wind patterns, and other climatic conditions can influence the shape, size, and organization of your floor plan, not to mention window placement, shading devices, and roof profiles. Understanding the implications of environmental elements and how a home responds to them can have a major impact on the energy demands and operating costs of your home.

Your site’s topography or other site feature may suggest (read: offer cost-prohibitive alternatives) a certain shape for your home. Maybe you are confined to a certain area, shape, or size because there is a forest of trees on one side and steep grading on the other.

If you live in a relatively hot climate, you may want to consider a building shape that minimizes direct solar heat gain, especially in the evening. Or maybe your climate and geographic location are conducive to nice cool breezes. So your home could benefit from a design with a courtyard or porch.

Another way to think about this is to consider the solar orientation and sun paths. Designing your home in a way that encourages solar gain in the winter but shields it in the summer is ideal. The south and west sides of the home usually see the most solar gain (in the northern hemisphere) so perhaps consider shading devices, large overhangs, deciduous trees, or less fenestration along these faces.

If there are strong winter winds coming from the Northwest, try planting large coniferous trees near the house on that side to shield the house from winds. Operable windows are also a great way to introduce natural ventilation and to control user comfort and adjust temperatures with less reliance on mechanical systems. Windows also provide natural daylighting so you can minimize your use of artificial lights during the day. Consider window placement, open floor plans, and borrowing light from other rooms with interior windows.

If you can passively control the indoor temperatures and air quality to a certain degree, you will be less reliant on your mechanical and electrical systems. Thereby reducing your equipment sizes (read: construction cost savings) and your utility bills. Finding ways to harness nature’s energy is a great way to reduce your demand from the utility company.

Good site planning is the first place to start making the design of your home more affordable. The location, orientation, shape, and size of your home all have a direct effect on construction costs as well as monthly utility costs.

While these strategies suggest ways to save money, you may have other project goals that might lead the project in another way. There are valid reasons to go against these strategies and build in another location, or build over a large rock cropping or orient your home to optimize views of the mountains even if the climatic conditions are less than ideal. You ultimately have to determine what is most important to you and what meets your project goals and project budget.

These ideas simply show that minimizing site disturbance, having less infrastructure work, and orienting your home a certain way to take advantage of passive heating and cooling will save you money both during construction and in the long term. It’s up to you whether you want to consider these ideas or not.

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