The story of the porch.

[biff]

Ah Dear Reader,
          Building or construction is just a simple matter of putting one item up against another or on top of each other. It is perfectly true. Then all you have to do is to allow spaces for Beds,Chairs, Tables, Sofas,,Kitchens,,Bathrooms, and then work out how much light you are going to allow into your new spaces.
If you are not sure, you can visit other houses and see how the stairs leaves a space at the top for turning and that it does not have doors opening onto it.
And you put all this down on a plan,,,to scale, so that you know exactly where you are to the last MM.
And then when you have it all sorted and can visualise the finished job,,feel the warmth of the living room fire and sense the kitchen aroma,( no no  not that old baked bread lark) oranges,apples, coffee (and a slight hint of wet dog)
  You have it all sorted and almost ready to approach the architect.. but just as you are walking up the imaginary hall pass the coats hanging under the stairs,,you remember that you have forgotten the porch or air lock,, or giant post box or hiding place for the house key and then you realise that porches can be annoying,,They can block the view, allowing the xwife to see you through the window before you can hide under the stairs,, so porches have to be approached with great care and consideration.
Porches also reveal a lot about the kind of characters who own them, Big glassy porches are for expansive, open minded, generous people, Small tight to the house porches are for small minded ,tight fisted individuals and each get what they deserve. I have built a few in my time,, in fact, I have built that many that I cannot remember half of them and I say that with the utmost confidence and truthfulness.
Yet some porches stick in my memory because of their knock on effect on the whole building both internally as well as externally.
Perhaps the readers are not that porch orientated and believe that one porch is as good as another, yet there might be those that wish to hear more about porches or a porch in particular ,So,
                                                                      Biff
    I have wood to cut, nails to pull but not in that order.
 

[djh]

Before I built my house, I took photos of every interesting entrance that I saw in the hope of building something that I liked. Then we ignored all the photos because of what PHPP said, but I still quite like it.

[biff]

Very good djh,
             A porch with a water harvester is a porch to be reconed with.. and yet it is simplicity itself, good one !,
 I like your roof but I lacked the courage to tackle similar and tile profile steel roofs were a fraction of the price, Yet I was always building to sell,staying in the safety of conservative and traditional methods.
               Biff

[MR GUS]

That is my kinda roof!   (care to guess what it weighs compared to orrible marley concrete tiles?

Stuffed for solar admittedly.

Biff, seeing as you opened the conversation, I could do with your ear & eyes regarding what i'd like to do to my frontage, before I get it wrong & live with draughty consequences.

have "mentioned"   to wife that if we moved front door to other end of house into my office / dogs room wed have a lot more potential security & privacy + natural cooling.

I've mentioned (a few times) how irksome our hot bay window is, but if I extended the ground floor bay window roofline (front of house) all the way across the front it would provide log storage & shading, plus I'm hoping that It would mean that a 4-5 ft roof covered (but open) aspect would ensure that a nice wide oak door was far enough back from the wet to not cause grief (swelling & shrinking, air leaks etc) ...could then be a nice "safe" natural ventilation point?

Also wide & flat enough to get a tall shopping crate of logs through to acclimatise prior to burning 

thoughts Biff?

PS was at the wholesalers the other day, dented crates of Caffrey's tempted me at £7.50 for 24 cans ...haven't really drunk it since they dropped the alcohol content, still a nice brew, ...I availed myself of 4 crates to see me through any hot weather ..even the wife saw the sense in snapping that up!

[biff]

 Hi Gus,
    If you have a plan or a sketch of the existing down stairs design, I will do my best to forward a solution. Little things to remember are the council will be very difficult to persuade to let you change the facade. You could have a look at similar houses in the area and see if they have changed things around and note how they did it. There is the other aspect of taking the front entry away from the easy access to the stairs, in other words, you could find yourself tripping through the entire length of the downstairs floor space in order to go upstairs and vice a versa.
 But you could perhaps settle for a sliding patio door on the side you wish to enter through. Even french doors opening outwards,,a 60/40 combinations which works very well for us.
I would need to see what there already to be able to offer you any proper help.
                                                                               Biff

[djh]

That is my kinda roof!   (care to guess what it weighs compared to orrible marley concrete tiles?

Thanks!

I don't know how much it weighs exactly, but certainly a lot less than a normal roof. The aluminium is quite thin and under it there's a funky membrane and full plywood sarking, then the roof structure stuffed with insulation (warmcel). We were thinking of using it as a ski slope!

Stuffed for solar admittedly.

Well, that's the north side. Hence PHPP objecting to the side lights on the door that I would have liked.
The south side has 16 PV panels but they're quite difficult to see from the ground.