Northeast Indiana (Auburn) | A few things we did. The garage floor is one inch lower than the kitchen floor with the garage floor built up one inch at the garage/kitchen entrance. This makes it nice period. The older I get the more I hate steps. My garage measures 32'X42'. I have a 20' wide by 8' tall door and a 10' wide by 8' door plus a 3' wide entrance door on the 42' side. All walk doors inside and entrance are 36' wide, Hallways are 5' wide. I would suggest cutting a piece of plywood 30"X72" lay it flat then carry it thru all hallways and door ways into all rooms, you don't know when you might need to be carried out on a gurney. Forget about any heat source other than Geothermal and build the house for Geothermal heat. Hire a Geothermal installer that only does Geothermal systems. If you can drain the basement without a sump pump put a drain pipe about 1' below the floor into the sump pit. Most builders will tap an at grade drain into the perimeter drain tile. I did this. My builder said the perimeter tile would be low enough to keep the pea gravel under the floor drained. I have water about 6" below the top of the floor most of the time in the sump pit. When you consider there is 6" of pea gravel under the 4" floor there will be 4" of wet pea gravel under the floor. |
Building new home tips
