What to do with internal floor levels?

[Athers1971]

Hello, this is an old cross section of our stable which was converted and extended by previous owner (but not completed and what was done wasn't great!).

We are on the very lower slopes of a hill and so the natural gradient falls from the front of the house to the back.

The rear section (marked 3/4) is actually split level too, and so we have four levels running from front to back. The intention is to make the front section (1&2) a kitchen and the rear (3&4) a dining room, and as such we need to get to one level at the front, and one level at the back.

Our architect had suggested to lower the front sections 1 & 3.

However, we have dug a trial pit at the front of the building and the bottom of the stone wall is only about a foot down, plus the front section is at the outside floor level.

All four floors are concrete slabs, about 6" each with a DPM underneath, sat on a few inch of loose stones and then subsoil.

Not sure what to do now. I think we will have to build up the floor level in section 2 to match section 1 (and 4 to match 3), but I'm hesitant to leave the DPMs in place. Also bear in mind there is no insulation in the floor. It will also mean a step up on entry from the connecting door in the main house seen in 2.

I guess we could excavate the lot and remove the DPMs, carefully around the wall perimeters, and then backfill with glass insulation in 2 and 4 where we need to raise the levels, and then concrete or limecrete to get us back above the external ground levels, but this sounds very expensive and also runs the risk of needing to underpin if we disturb any of the big bottom stones.

Any other thoughts?

The Mrs won't have a split level kitchen that's for sure!

 

[a twig]

Bit controversial but maybe challenge the architect to come up with concepts to make the split levels work?

A previous house of ours was three miners cottages knocked together and every room was on a different level, with at least one or two steps up or down at each doorway. We got it to work pretty well for us.

 

[Flyfisher]

Not controversial to me. Our house has floor level changes to almost every ground floor room but we soon got used to a single step between rooms, just as we got used to ducking down when using the stairs and low doorways. Oh, and some of the bedroom floors that slope. I think it's called 'character'

 

[a twig]

Alternatively if you want some DIY concepting, you could knock up a quick and dirty carboard model using 4 boxes with the bottoms filled in to the respective floor heights of each of the 4 sections, and play around with dolls furniture, bobbins, offcuts of wood etc to help visualise each of the desired rooms in different places / layouts and work out where steps might be less of a bother. Much easier learning curve than getting stuck into CAD as a novice

 

[a twig]

Hang on, something rings a bell when we toyed with knocking a wall out, we would have had a split level kitchen/diner and my plan was to mask most of the height change with a split height peninsular (sort of like this) and leave just a step up/down walkway at the end. This meant that whichever level you were working at all the surfaces would be correct height and it would be fairly easy to have a cutout or something to allow easy transfers of large dishes etc. The split height peninsular would also give you the visual cue that there is a step, so less likely to tumble over it. Annoyingly the designs I drew up back then I think all got binned when my wife eventually vetoed the project.

You'd have to think about how you divided up the kitchen from a task point of view, what appliances go where etc but that could work? I'm also assuming that any dividing wall between 1 & 2 is already gone and that is just the post for the stairs? Worth bearing in mind that fire safety people tend to get a bit twitchy when the only upstairs exit is through the place where a house fire is most likely to start.

EDIT: Just to add - from a friend that had low ceilings in two rooms and could only afford to DIY it, the first one he dug out, but ~250 wheelbarrow loads of material later, when it came to the second one they took the easier option of raising the ceiling.

 

[Athers1971]

Yes, there was never a wall between 1&2, the separation of the spaces being the 10” step due to the floor levels. The staircase is coming out and access to upstairs will be via a whole in the cottage wall where our shower currently is

Got a structural engineer coming next week now to do us some calculations for widening a couple of opening and also re design the First floor structure as previous owner made a complete mess removing and trimming beams to accommodate the staircases!