Wrap Around Sun Fun

This weeks 2025 square foot home wraps around a huge 4 season sun room for maximum light and winter passive solar heat.

This house is much more the size that I think Grampa Tom and I need. It's about 75% bigger than the trailer we live in now and it has at least a partial basement under the kitchen living room area that houses a root cellar and a large storage room.

The guest entry is a small enclosed porch on the north side. It comes into the light filled great room that consists of a large kitchen and a cozy living room area. We used to live in a huge farm house that had a gigantic kitchen. I really miss that kitchen! This kitchen has tons of counter space, room for both a refrigerator and a full size upright freezer, a professional range, an island, a large bank of floor to ceiling pantry cabinets and room for a kitchen table as well. I really like the corner bench style like the one below. It would  look great in this kitchen, but my program doesn't have any images of it :( The kitchen has wide doors opening into both the family room and the sun room so that I don't have to feel exiled when I'm cooking.

The sun room  not only opens into the kitchen, but into the master bedroom, the mud room and the family room. A large bank of windows opens it up to the living room as well. It has a hot tub and the rocket fire stove  that I talked about in my last post and an out door shower to rinse off before and after your soaking massage. 

The utility room for the hot water heater and the supplemental heat pump is located next to the hot tub so heat from the thermal mass can help heat the home's hot water and heat pump. During the summer, heat pumped out of the house will help keep the hot tub warm. The walls of this room only go up about 6 foot so the green house ceiling covers the entire area between the wings. 

I envision some sort of thermal awning that can be rolled out  under the greenhouse style roof of the sun room to keep the heat in at night and the sun off in the summer. The south wall windows would open during the summer, converting it into a screened in porch with vines climbing out of the garden bed just inside.

And then there's the basement steps. I placed them just outside the kitchen door so I could take all of my home canned goodies down there!

The mud room has a large walk-in closet, a locker style shower and a half bath. It is connected to the family room so I have half a chance at keeping the dirt contained in the west wing of the house :) 

In the east wing there is a private master bedroom, a guest bedroom and two full baths. There is a closet between the bed and the master bath so those middle of the night flushes aren't quite so loud. I thought about putting the closet in the second bedroom on the east side so the door could be closer to the bathroom and I could put another closet at the end of the hall, but natural light in the hall and east-west airflow through the house during the warmer months.

What would you change?

Got any suggestions for a good name for this house?

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue