Available Space Diagram

[Adelie]

OK gang, I laid my plight out a few weeks ago. My current construction has stopped because my wife threw up a flag that she thinks we should move out of this area (something we have talked about before) next year. My suggestion is that if we are going to do it, we should consider building a house.

One of the plans we like has a basement as an option. I got the company to email me the diagram, which obviously has far less detail than the actual plan they would sell me.

Out of boredom, I input their drawing into CadRail with my best guess as to the dimensions. These should be pretty close (based on basic dimensions on the first floor). The staircase is the blob in the middle covered in diagonal lies. From the basement, you enter the stairs on the lower left side of the matched 45-degree angles, and you climb "up and right" to go upstairs. I "slashed" out as space beyond that to protect a walkway to/from them.

The link to the diagram is: http://home.earthlink.net/~adelie/Available_Space.jpg

If anyone wants to play along, here are the space constraints.
1) This is an unfinished basement in an unconstructed house, so it is raw space. Walls can be added, plumbing put where it needs to be, electrical where it is needed.
2) We would want a bathroom, preferably "full", somewhere. Since this is new construction, it can probably go just about anywhere.
3) The plan has an exterior door on the bay "appendage" on the top of the drawing. The door is on its left wall, in the center (right about where the arrow for the 176" dimension is). Obviously, this needs to be readily accessible from the stairs.
4) I'd probably wind up building a glorified wine cellar, location and size TBD after I figure out what space I will use for this.
5) The basement will be shared with a treadmill, my desk, computer, etc. Their locations will be determined after the railroad space is nailed down.
6) The bump out on the bottom is 24" deep. The box under the first-floor fireplace measures 42" x 21". I have a helix for an identical space, and would like to reuse it here (lower level would enter from "above" in the plan and could exit either "above" or "below" on the upper level).
7) The furnace and water heater are shown in the garage. They would be located somewhere in the basement, usually near the center. My guess is they would be located immediately "above" the staircase in the center.
8) Obviously, utilities come in somewhere. That is a function of the lot, so that will have to be accounted for later on. The space in the lower right (where the "180" dimension is) is under a garage, so they won't be on those adjoining walls.
9) The dashed lines running parallel to the basement walls are 24" from those walls, the width I use for around-the-wall construction. I am open to moving those up to 30" from the wall, if necessary. Use them as a guide.

For now, all I'm looking at is ideas on how to use the space with the above constraints.

As for the railroad, it is (and will be) N-scale. The assumptions are 27" curves. The grids on the space plan represent 30" squares. I'd prefer no duckunders, which generally means a dogbone of some variety. The ability to run continuously is desired (no point to point). The current design under construction has a mainline that is about 9-1/3 scale miles (roughly 307-1/2" actual feet in a folded dogbone), so something along that line would be good. Not that it matters for this exercise (yet), but it is set in 1958, somewhere in southern Colorado, northern New Mexico and northern Arizona.

Please keep in mind this is all just something to do while time passes. The odds are against this panning out, but not overwhelmingly against it. So don't be surprised if any suggestions wind up ultimately in the electronic bit bucket. A few months from now, I very well could be down in THIS basement working on the current railroad.

For that matter, if Joe or somebody wants to use this as the basis for a railroad design forum, in any scale, that is fine, too. I can modify the diagram as anyone sees fit for such a purpose. Since I'm not in the railroad construction business right now, I have time to play around.

[jrbarney]

Adelie,
Two suggestions. If the financing will support it, get the entire basement finished including flooring of some sort and lighting for your layout, with input from your wife, so that you don't wind up with a big project. That's based on personal experience. Have a separate electrical breakout panel in the basement to give you maximum flexibility for your power tools, including Catgory 5 wiring for your computer if you don't use something higher tech.
Bob
NMRA Life 0543

[grayfox1119]

Mark, here are few suggestions for you:
1. The furnace does NOT have to be in center of the basement. That tends to screw up everything for lower room space. Here in the Northeast, what a lot of homes now have is a laundry/mud room between the garage and the entrance to the house, usually the kitchen. UNDER this area, in the basement, is a utility room. This is where you place your furnace, water heater, oil tank ( if you have oil fired furnace ), a water tank ( if you have artesian well, or shallow well), This completely frees up your entire lower level of your house.
Also, oil fired furnaces now are very small and do NOT need a chimney!!! They use what is called a POWER VENT. It just goes straight to the outside, a foot above the ground level, and not near a window or door, I believe 4 foot clearances.

2. You basement stairs...if you place them properly, they can divide the downstairs space such that they will not fowl-up a nice layout area. You can use a landing part way down these stairs, and then turn the direction of the stairs. This is very usful when you want a large room/space at one area without the stairs dumping into that area.

Hope this helps,

[Adelie]

Thanks *** and Bob. I will be laying cat 5 wiring through any house we build BEFORE drywall goes up. I also anticipate finishing the entire basement, less any area that winds up be devoted to storage.

As for the stairs, they are part of this plan and I don't see any easy way to relocated them (looking at the first and second floor plans). I guess I can accept that compromise, if it comes to pass, being that I am essentially designing the rest of the basement around the train! Actually, the door to the outside is more of a problem and building code permitting, might be eliminated, particularly if it requires stairs to get to the outside..

[grayfox1119]

Mark, the basement stairs may have to stay where they are located, however you CAN turn them at a landing halfway down to the basement, either to the right or left, so keep that in mind. It is very easy for carpenter to do.

And, very smart move wiring ahead of time with Cat5 ( or 6 for better video signal ). I do not like wireless, it is for people who cannot or don't know how to run cable. Cable is SECURE!

[Adelie]

My bad on the stairs, ***. I was looking to physically move them when I looked at the plan. When they laid out the first and second floors of the plan, they did it very efficiently in that it is hard to change much on those floors without bolluxing up something. The basement, however, is a clean slate!

When we moved into our first house, we bought it pre-construction and the contractor let me run my cat5e after the electricians were done, but before the drywall went up. The current house was 2 1/2 years old when we moved in, so running the cable was a bit more of a challenge. I managed to get it done, thanks in large part to an air handler in the attic with a set of freon tubes running straight down to the basement (and near the patch panel). Needless to say, running without obstructions (like walls) is much easier!

I prefer physical connections to wireless, myself. We have a wireless access point but I rarely use it (great if I want to take the laptop on the front porch with a cup of coffee). It is plugged into the network only on demand.