Single-storey house in Batumi: design and construction

A single-storey house in Batumi is the choice when stairs have no place in the home: elderly parents will live there, or the children are still small. This convenience is paid for in land and structure. The house takes up more of the plot, and for each square metre of living space its foundation slab and roof are roughly twice the size of those on a two-storey house with the same floor area.

Who a house on one level suits

The main advantage of a single storey is that the whole house can be reached without a single step. If this is thought through in the design, you can live in such a house at eighty, or after a knee operation. In a two-storey house the staircase and its landings take up several square metres on each floor, while here that space goes into the rooms.

The second advantage is the connection with the plot. You can see the garden from the kitchen, step out of the bedroom onto your own terrace, and in summer the house and garden work as one. There are drawbacks too: the house needs a wide plot, the corridors are longer, and the bedrooms are on the same level as the living room, so quiet in them has to be won through the layout. If land is short, it is more honest to cost a two-storey house on the same footprint straight away.

How much land a single-storey house takes up

The built-up area, meaning the footprint of the house including its external walls, is slightly larger than the total floor area of a single-storey house, and larger still with a covered terrace. A 150 m² house will take up about 170 m² of the plot, while a two-storey house with the same floor area takes about 85–90 m².

How much you can build is decided by the zoning rules: what share of the plot a building may cover, how much floor area in total is permitted, and how much of the land must stay as open ground. A single-storey house usually hits the limit on plot coverage first: it is within the floor area limit, but its footprint is not. The architect checks the figures for your plot against the registry extract and the current version of the rules, and before the concept sketch also checks whether a carport and a terrace on posts count towards the footprint.

Then we look at what will be left around the house: parking, a drive to the gate, room for a septic tank if there is no sewer nearby, and the garden. It pays to set the house with its long side facing south. A deep roof overhang then shades the windows from the high summer sun and lets the low winter sun in.

A foundation under the whole footprint

A house on one level is lighter than a two-storey house of the same floor area, but its weight is spread over twice the area. Most often we build a cast-in-place slab under a house like this. The slab also serves as the base of the floor: before the pour we set sleeves into it for the water supply, drains and cables, and lay insulation underneath so that the floor doesn't draw cold from the ground. The structural engineer makes the final choice of foundation based on the ground survey, and we explain how the options differ on the page about piles and slabs under a house.

A single-storey house has a contradiction of its own. We raise the plinth so that rain splashes and water from the paved apron don't wet the walls, but elderly residents and a pushchair need a step-free entrance. We solve this on the plot: a gentle path or a terrace at floor level leads to the door, and we fit a drainage channel in front of the threshold.

The drains under the slab are longer here, because the kitchen and bathrooms are spread across the plan. We draw the falls and access points in the design and photograph the pipes before the pour: afterwards they can't be reached without breaking up the floor.

The roof of a single-storey house

The roof covers the whole footprint, so for each square metre of living space there is twice as much of it as on a two-storey house. On the other hand, it protects a low house better. The 60–80 cm overhang we usually build shields most of the wall from wind-driven rain on a single-storey house, but only the top of the upper floor on a two-storey one. That is why, for a single-level house by the sea, we more often recommend a hipped roof with overhangs on all sides and a simple facade.

Under a pitched roof, every room sits directly below the loft floor. In summer the loft heats up, and if the loft floor is poorly insulated, all the bedrooms will be hot at once, not just the upstairs ones as in a two-storey house. We lay the insulation in a continuous layer over the whole loft floor, ventilate the loft through the eaves and the ridge, and make the hatch insulated and sealed.

Long eaves need gutters of a calculated size and more downpipes than the sketch suggests, otherwise in a downpour water spills over the edge of the gutter straight onto the windows. We choose the covering to suit the site, and how metal roof tiles and asphalt shingles behave by the sea is compared on a separate page. If you want a terrace on top of the house, we build a usable flat roof with falls to the outlets and overflows in the parapet.

A layout without stairs

Here the bedrooms and the living room sit side by side, so we usually divide the plan into wings. One holds the kitchen-living room and the entrance, the other the bedrooms with their bathrooms, and between them there is a walk-in wardrobe, a storeroom or a corridor that dampens sound. An L-shaped or U-shaped house also gives you a courtyard sheltered from the wind and from the neighbours.

A wide rectangular house is cheaper, but its middle ends up dark. In Batumi we are cautious with rooflights, because every opening in the roof becomes a weak spot in a downpour. More often we bring in light through windows onto an inner courtyard or through a band of windows under a raised section of the roof.

For elderly residents we build in what can't be changed later without renovation: 90 cm wide doors to the bedrooms and bathrooms, a level-access shower with a floor drain, a wall-hung toilet at a comfortable height, and backing in the walls for grab rails. We put the plant room with the water heater and the consumer unit closer to the middle of the house, so that pipes don't have to run across the whole plan.

How long it takes to build a single-storey house

There is no floor slab between storeys, so the shell doesn't have to wait while that slab gains strength: the foundations are followed straight away by the walls, the ring beam and the roof. A 120–150 m² house of blocks in a cast-in-place concrete frame is usually under its roof 2–3 months after earthworks begin. The key date in this schedule is the slab pour. By then all the pipes and sleeves under the floor are in place according to the design, and after it the kitchen and bathrooms can't be moved, so we approve their layout before earthworks begin.

We do the finishing wing by wing: while tiles are being laid in the bedrooms, the living room is being plastered, and the crews don't get in each other's way. The whole turnkey house usually takes 6–9 months of construction. The plot check, design and permit are not included in this period, and the order in which they are done is described in the section on house construction.

How much a single-storey house costs in Batumi

The price per square metre of a single-storey house is the same as for any of our mid-range turnkey houses: from 1,680 ₾ per m² of total floor area. That is the whole house, from the slab to the finishing, with windows, building services and facade. The plot is not included, and the design is paid for separately. If you want to do the finishing yourself, construction can stop at the shell, from 690 ₾ per m², or at white frame, from 1,050 ₾ per m².

Two lines in the estimate of a single-storey house are noticeably heavier than on a two-storey one. A slab foundation costs from 390 to 480 ₾ per m² of footprint, and here the footprint is almost equal to the floor area of the house. A metal roof tile roof with materials costs from 200 to 240 ₾ per m², and there is also twice as much roof slope per square metre of living space. On the other hand, the estimate has no staircase and no floor slab between storeys, and the scaffolding for the facade is low.

The price goes up with a complex roof with valleys, lots of sliding doors onto the terrace and weak ground under the whole footprint. It comes down with a simple rectangular plan under a hipped or gable roof, and a level plot. A turnkey timber frame house on one level costs 1,620–1,920 ₾ per m², almost the same as a masonry one, but it is lighter, and on weak ground the foundation under it sometimes turns out simpler.

We send a preliminary estimate from photos of the plot and a plan within 24 hours on business days. The final cost is set on the basis of the design, after a visit to the plot and once the estimate is agreed. In the contract the price is split into stages and doesn't go up unless the scope changes.