Hi, I'm Sean Canning, principal architect of Ten Seventy Architecture. We're a San Diego based modern architecture and design studio, and today I'm gonna explain our decision making process as we designed our own accessory dwelling unit. This is an accessory dwelling unit that we designed, permitted, and our self-funding the construction of.
It's also available as a pre-designed accessory dwelling unit. If you're interested in purchasing this exact model. Okay, let's jump into it. So first I want to explain the lot conditions that our site has. So our property is located in Southeast San Diego in the Diamond District of Logan Heights. So it's right here on the map.
I'm using Google Earth. This is a great tool. The reason I like to use Google Earth because it has this nice little measuring tip. And we can use feet here. And I just wanna explain a couple things about this lot because it is a little bit of a strange lot. So we have a pre conforming duplex on this lot.
This roof right here is Unit A, which is a one bedroom, one bathroom unit, and that has been completely remodeled in 2016. Unit B is right here. This was built in 1985, and this is a. Two bedroom, one bathroom unit, which has also been remodeled, but the unit in the back here is not my property. So our lot was subdivided from this larger lot.
So our lot extends 100 feet
and 25 feet in this direction. So it's a rectangle, but it does not include this back 40 feet right here. This this part of the lot here. Is owned by our neighbor who owns this entire L-shaped lot right here. So because our lot does not have alley access, like all these other lots do, we are one of the only houses on the block, which have a curb cut for a driveway.
So all of our parking is handled right here in the front. The other thing you'll notice is that all of these homes are set back further or, or set back less from the street than our home. So our home is all the way back here, but all these other homes kind of follow this line right across here. So that means we have this extra space here, and that's where I wanted to position the accessory dwelling unit.
Our lot is a total of 2,500 square feet, and the ultimate goal here was to get three units in that 2,500 square feet. Okay, so let's talk about the setbacks a little bit more. This is a. Drawing from our permit submittal set here. This is where we put the site plan, which is this diagram that you see right here and all the other information about the site.
So you can see if I zoom in on this site plan. Here you can see that the property line is indicated as 100 feet and in this direction it's 25 feet. You can see that this is the street over here and we're, we have indicated a existing 12 foot curb cut. So that's how we get into the driveway. And you can also see back here is the alley, and our sewer line comes through our neighbor's property and then reaches the alley.
Now for setbacks, we have this little section on our cover sheet where we talk about all of our setbacks. So our dwelling units have a front minimum setback of 15 feet and a standard setback of 20 feet. The side setbacks are three. And the rear setback is 15. So if I go back to the site plan over here, you could see this magenta line indicates those setbacks.
So we have a three foot side yard setback, which is indicated right here. We have a 15 foot rear yard setback, which is indicated right here. I'll talk about the front setbacks in a minute. But you'll notice that this back unit encroaches quite a bit into this 15 foot minimum rear setback. So this is considered a pre conforming condition, and when we proposed this accessory dwelling unit, we're not gonna be responsible to correct that setback.
This home was actually built in 1925 before the lot was subdivided and before any of these setbacks were in place, unit B actually respects the setbacks quite a bit more. And this is stepped back about four feet from the property line. And the reason that there's a front and front standard setback and a minimum setback is because this is how that's applied to the lot.
So your minimum setback can be 15 feet from your property line, and that's allowed to be the width of half the distance of your structure. Now, we chose not to build in the setback because we had to make sure that we were able to keep. These three parking spaces. So why do I have to keep these three parking spaces?
Well, not only is parking a nice amenity for any renter or for any owner for that matter, but the city has a requirement for parking for dwelling units, and we have two units, unit A and unit B. Unit B is a two bedroom, so it does require 1.75 parking spaces, and Unit A is the one bedroom, so that requires 1.25 parking spaces.
So in total, We're required to have three parking spaces here. What about the parking for the accessory dwelling unit? Well, accessory dwelling units require zero parking and you may see this term companion unit in the set, and that's because we made this submittal when the city of San Diego was still using both terms interchangeably.
Currently they're only using accessory dwelling unit and junior accessory dwelling unit, so you will not see the term companion unit anymore in San Diego. Okay, so unit C does not require a parking space, but these three are required to verify unit A and unit B. Now, if I can't get three parking spaces here, Then the city is going to tell me I can't build this.
So it's very important to plan ahead for this. A couple other things about parking that you need to understand. There is a minimum width and length dimension. So even if you have a fiat like I do, you still need to provide an eight foot wide by 18 foot long parking spaces. And the, in certain cases, you're actually have to provide an additional foot if you have an existing fence.
Or you're gonna park adjacent to a structure. And if you park in a garage, you also need to add an additional foot to the length right here. And then one more thing about parking. So previously before we had proposed this, all of our parking was shown in the frontier. And we know that because we have the permit set of drawings, which was submitted for Unit B when that was built in 1985.
So what I think happened, I think the reason why unit B is set so far back, Is because they couldn't park in the front yard setback under the previous municipal municipal code regulations. So all of the parking had to occur here, which is the way it was drawn on the site plan. And if you're not building an accessory dwelling unit, then you do still need to provide parking over here.
You're not allowed to park in the front yard setback. However, once you build an accessory dwelling unit, Or a junior accessory dwelling unit, you now are allowed to park in the front yard setback. So that's the condition we have here. Two years ago, we wouldn't have been able to do this, but now the mean book code has changed to allow for easier parking regulation to add more housing to San Diego.
The second thing we want to do before we plan the location of this, we know we're limited to the front yard setback, but we can encroach in the side yard setbacks like we have shown here. However, we're not showing it here and there's an important reason for that. We have to consider how all of our tenants or tenants, guests, are gonna access these units.
So unit a's entrance is here on this side and Unit B's entrance is right here in the front. So what we're planning is that all of the tenants would park here and enter through a side yard, just the way that Unit A is entered now. Same way Unit B is entered now, but it would come down in here and then unit C would be, would enter from the side right in here.
So this preserves all of our parking and we just have to leave a little bit of space here so that we can bring in furniture for a tenant or maybe replace a refrigerator or a washer dryer in the future. So you really wanna leave at least three foot clearance and that's not three feet from the property line.
If you build a fence, it's gonna be a little bit more narrow. So the absolute minimum you want for this passage is gonna be three feet.
Okay? So let's jump into this design here. So just to orientate you guys, this is my street. The alley is back here. This is unit A. This is unit B, and this is the footprint where we're planning unit C. Now, if we keep unit C detached, Then we're gonna have an easier time permitting this. If we were to attach this, this would create a triplex and a triplex structure is going to bump you into an R two occupancy classification, which could trigger mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering.
We didn't want to do that because we wanted to really keep the cost low.
Okay, so what you're seeing here is the driveway, the walkway, which we just discussed. Two patio slabs, one for unit C and one for unit B, which they're gonna use to enter here. And then this is the entrance way for unit C. This is also the footprint for unit C. So if I click into this, you can see that's the footprint and that's where we're gonna locate everything.
So the width that we have to work with here is we have just about just about 13 and a half feet. By about 21 feet, just under 21 feet. So 13 and a half by 20 feet. 10 is the actual finished exterior wall to finished exterior wall dimension if you're considering this model for your own property. Okay, so I'm gonna turn this back on.
Here's a slab. Okay. I should mention why, why would I build a slab? Instead of a raised foundation? Well, there's pros and cons to both. I prefer the slab because the slab doesn't have an unventilated crawlspace. If you have a crawlspace, your first floor is gonna be up a little higher and it's gonna require more stairs to enter the unit.
And in the case of heavy rainstorm, that may be beneficial, but when space is very limited, We're gonna build this slab about eight inches above finished grade. So that should be enough to prevent any precipitation from getting in. But it also means I don't have to have any more than one step to enter the unit.
And clearly we just don't have the space for some sort of porch entry. Okay, I'm gonna turn on the first floor. Now this is a two floor structure, so we did plan to go two floors. The first decision we had to make was where was the bedroom and the bathroom gonna be in relationship to the kitchen and living room.
So the bedroom and bathroom are considered private spaces and the kitchen and living room are considered public spaces. The bathroom is kind of a hybrid actually, because your guests will use the bathroom. A good way to consider this is if you were to have a party, the public spaces would be where you'd want your guests to be.
And the private spaces would be areas of your home where you find it very strange if you found a guest. So the bathroom kind of serves both purposes, public and private. So we do have a couple interesting conditions on the site. So for one, we have this amazing view of the bridge. If we can get up onto the second floor.
We've, we know this because we've been climbing on our roof. To verify that we can get that view and sure enough, we are able to get that view as long as we can get up to the second floor.
So that's, that was one of the conditions we really wanted to meet here. So the second condition is we're gonna have his entry here because we've already established this is the most efficient path to access these units. That path should generally be a straight line. Anytime you're gonna have like an L shape, it's gonna be a little less efficient.
We do have a little bit of an L here but anytime you can get this in a straight line, that's gonna be preferred. So the next thing to consider was once we enter into this little foyer space, you wanna be able to take your guests to the living room as fast as possible because you wanna make an efficient floor plan to fit in something this, this size.
And we are about 550 square feet total across both floors here. So this is the bathroom right here, and this is the bedroom. The reason we decided to put the bedroom on the ground floor, it, there's really two reasons. First, we wanted to preserve the view for the public spaces so that the guests can experience the Corona bridge at night when it's lit up.
Really looks beautiful from our living room. The other decision was because we wanted to put the bedroom and the bathroom on the same floor. I think this is the most important decision we made because in the middle of the night, if you have to use the bathroom, you don't wanna walk up or down a flight of stairs.
So that was very important. Okay, so we do have the bedroom here. We have a closet under the stairs, and we have the stairs in the front of the home. The reason we did that is because as people pull in to park their cars here, they're gonna have their headlights on and they're gonna be slamming their doors.
So we wanted to create as much buffer from the bedroom and the living room space for that matter as possible. So that's why we located everything here. The bedroom width is basically nine feet wide. This is the absolute minimum. I would design a bedroom in a one bedroom home. This is just big enough to fit a full size bed on this wall and have about 18 to 24 inches to circulate around the bed.
So I don't think I would go any smaller than nine feet. This is just about the smallest bathroom you can design. We have a 36 by 36 inch shower. We have a toilet, which requires two foot 10 inches of clearance space, and then we have a 24 inch floating sink vanity. And we did run our medicine cabinets all the way across the wall to give ourselves some additional storage space.
The last thing I'll mention is we have this pantry closet, or not pantry. We have this coat closet over here, so you can put your shoes or, or take your visitor's jackets and put them in that closet. We'll also probably store our vacuum cleaner in this closet. And the bedroom is positioned, so it has a private patio right here.
Both of these doors open, and this door is fixed. So that's a nine foot wide by eight foot tall door. This is one of the more expensive components in the project. And if I was gonna value engineer this, I would probably reduce this to a six foot wide sliding door system. This door system, I think, costs us about $5,500, and the total budget for the project is about $130,000.
So it, it was one of the larger items that we splurged on. The nice thing about this door system is we have that full nine feet. In width and the clear opening is just about six feet because both of these French doors open, by the way, this patio is gonna have a fence around it, so it'll be completely private from the entry for this unit, which is very important.
And we also have a washer dryer planned under the stairs over here. So this is kind of an upgraded unit. Okay, here's the second floor. So one of the things you'll notice across the board in the 10 70 architecture portfolio is we really stress ceiling heights, and this unit is no different. So I'm just gonna hide this real quick.
We have about 12 feet, six inches to the peak here, and then the ceiling slopes back this way because it's a sh it's considered a shed roof, which means it only slopes in one direction. It's a very simple roof to build. And you're gonna experience that from the inside. So you will see that slope from the inside.
So on the second floor, we have our living room space, and then we have a very small kitchen space here. And then in between would be a dining table. So our thought is that the tenants would bring their own dining table and they would be able to use that as an additional surface to prep food. This pantry over here has gone through a couple changes since we've created this design.
Originally it was just supposed to be a pantry for food and dry storage and, you know, things like that. But as we were building this in construction, we actually decided to take a cabinet end countertop and extend it over to this area. So that will serve as kind of like a mini butler's kitchen. Maybe like in a, more like an appliance garage, somewhere between an appliance garage and a butler's pantry.
So you'll be able to store your blender and toaster on the countertop over here. It'll, it'll be already plugged in and you can use it in here. So you don't clutter your countertop over here. We're also gonna have some shelving all the way up to the top, and the top shelf will be a router shelf because we're gonna have some security cameras in the corner on the outside over here.
It is a small unit, so storage is plus a huge advantage to have some storage. So on top of this refrigerator enclosure, there's gonna be additional storage on here. That's the stuff that you would generally store in your attic if you had an attic. So that's the second floor. I just wanna talk about some of the windows here while we're at it.
So this is the window which is gonna look towards the Coronado Bridge, and that's a nice casement. Fixed casement window. So these swing open like a, like a door would, and that's a great way to sort of catch some of the breeze off the bay. And cool down the interior space. Down in the bathroom we have a awning window.
So this opens like a, like an awning from the bottom up and it doesn't into this little entry patio for unit B too much. So that's why we went with an awning window, and that is a privacy glass on it. So most of the time it'll probably stay closed. And you can't see through the privacy glass, so people in that bathroom will have privacy from unit B.
This is a double hung window. I really like the function of a double hung window because you can pull the top sash down and sort of exhaust some stale air or some cooking smell, and since it's so close to the kitchen, I think that makes a lot of sense. You can also open the bottom sash and get a bunch of area in there and you can open both at the same time.
If you wanted to sort of create a Circula circulation loop and then this window in the front here. Now we were required by code. Our goal was to create a very, very minimalist front aesthetic. We were required by code to have one window in the front. I don't like it when the code requires things like this, but we were able to satisfy that requirement with this large window here.
So this would count as like three windows. It's nine foot wide, just like all the other windows here. And here that door system all nine foot wide and this awnings open and this one awnings open, although you'd never really be able to reach this window. And this is a fixed window, but you can stand on the last landing of the stairs here and just about reach the crank on this one and open that up.
This window is positioned strategically higher than all the other windows. And I just wanna show you why. So if you were down in this room, you're gonna be looking at this window from like this perspective. And from this perspective, you're gonna see the sky and palm trees, but you're not gonna see the street and you're not gonna see the driveway.
So this was an intentional move because we realized that the relationship between the driveway and the interior of the space is very important to address. If the tenant from Unit A comes and pulls their car in and slams their car door shut. You don't want those headlights coming into your unit and interrupting you watching a movie.
So this is why this is set higher than normal. All these windows, by the way, are set at eight foot head heights, so we're at eight feet here. This is a full one foot four inches higher than your standard head height. And by doing this, it extends the room upward and it makes it feel bigger. We've also pushed most of the windows to the edge of the wall, which helps sort of dissolve the wall from the exterior space.
So it makes it look like the window is not just a hole punched in an exterior wall, but more like part of the design. We also have sort of a symmetry going on here with this nine foot door system, and here we have that nine foot, or excuse me, nine foot window system and another nine foot window system.
And then below we have a nine foot door system. And then behind this, we actually have a nine foot closet system, which opens to the space below the stairs. So the stairs kind of run up here. You can see like that. And here's our washer dryer. So in terms of the relationship between the parking, which is out here and the bedroom, this stair and closet space actually serves as a great acoustical buffer from the bedroom.
So strategically, that was really another smart decision that we. Had to make early on in the project. Let's see what else we can talk about here. I'm gonna turn the roof on. Okay. So these new ADUs are required to have solar panels, so we wanted to plan ahead for that. This was the ideal orientation for solar.
So we sloped the entire roof like this. We did this. Primarily for the solar orientation, but as a secondary reason, it's a very easy roof to assemble. And also we wanted the front appearance to look more like a flat roof. But we didn't have the budget for the flat roof. So we went with, this is considered a shed roof.
So from the side it looks like this, but when you see it from the front, it looks kind of square. Now this roof will have a gutter and that gutter will run along here. So all the. Water from the roof will drain into that gutter. It'll come down a liter down the side here, and it'll kick out down into the front yard where we're gonna have a little bit of landscaping over here.
This w this is all getting stuccoed. Actually, this week it's getting stuccoed and it's gonna have a nice white stucco with a little black accent here, which helps align the windows to the door system below.
Okay. Let's see if there's anything else I should mention. So we did kind of talk about the front yard setback, and that's what this pink line is, but it's also important for you to understand your curb to property line dimension. So this is what, this is the edge of the sidewalk and a lot of people would assume that that's their front property line, but in most cases it's actually not.
Our property line actually extends five feet past. That edge of the sidewalk. So you have to fill out, in San Diego, you fill out a Curbed property line form and you send that to the city and they mail it back, and then they have this information. That's where you get that information from. And then I just wanna wrap up here and show you what a submittal set of drawings looks like to the city.
So this is our site plan. This is a requirement for that submittal. We also have to have all this standard information on there. And these are my standard architectural notes. So these get updated almost every project. And this is, these are notes that the contractor can refer back to if he has any questions about maximum plumbing fixture flow or things like that.
It's also these notes also serve as a good refresher that the contractor should read at the beginning of the project and make sure he's gonna meet all these requirements. These are some storm water forms and the water meter data card that you have to fill out to permit something like this. And here's a minor storm water pollution control plan.
So that's another form that we have to fill out. And then we like, we like to provide like a really nice construction floor plan. So here's our first floor plan. You can see this is where you would enter, you enter into this foyer and we have that coat closet. The bathroom will be here. We have a. Our bedroom in the back here, and then there's a closet under the stairs.
And then down below we have our second floor plan. So we can see the pantry, the refrigerator, the small kitchen, and the living room space. And then we have window schedules and door schedules, which reference back to some of these numbers for which door and window would get installed there. And here's a roof plan, which shows some of the joists, that gutter detail that we designed.
We also have elevation. So you can see it's gonna have a very, very minimalist front elevation. We actually do have a beautiful mural, which fits where this dash line is, and that's gonna be mounted and it basically aligns with the window above. So that's a prince mural designed by Mario Terrero that will get mounted back in the front.
We have some side elevations. We have some sections, so these are slices through, so you can see exactly how tall that ceiling is gonna be. We got some detailing here, some wall details. You can see this is the gutter detail we created, so it's a very simple gutter. Should be low cost, but because we stepped the roof back, we can get a flush condition with this gutter.
So it's gonna create a really nice little detail still keeping the cost of the project reasonable. We also have some floor assembly details. And on this particular project we provided our own electrical plans. And our lighting plans. So for example, this is a plan which shows where all of the lights are gonna be mounted on the ceiling and where all of the switching is going to be.
And then this is our Title 24 report. So we hire a consultant. He produces this report just to verify that everything complies. So here it says building complies with computer performance. So we passed. And then we pair this up with the structural set, which is another 12 pages or so, so, and we make that submittal to the city.
Okay. Last thing I wanna show you. I do have a little bit of a, with this software, we are able to take a look at the interior and the public spaces where we really try to maximize the ceiling height and just get that overwhelming feeling of space. So you will see that Coronado bridge out in this direction.
We took all of our structural joists and we purchased them with architectural grade lumber. So these are all gonna be exposed and we're stuc going right now. So all this is framed and this looks spectacular. And then we put all of our insulation above the, so we use a little bit of an atypical detail for the roof assembly.
And then you can see we're actually looking past. We're gonna go look past the stairs. So the space that we actually experience is closer to 12 foot three and a half than that nine foot width from here to there. So that's really important. So that pretty much wraps it up. I think that's a pretty good overview of how we go about designing these accessory dwelling units for our clients.
And we do specialize in permitting these in the city of San Diego. The ADU regulations are in constant flux in San Diego, but we've been leveraging the state code since the beginning of 2020 and we've been sort of forcing the city to acknowledge the state regulations. In spite of the municipal code regulations for accessory dwelling units, in November of 2020, the city updated their accessory dwelling unit regulations and now there's quite a bit of opportunity for these types of lots.
So if you have an accessory dwelling unit that you're considering building, or you wanna hire us to do the design, We'd love to help you with it. We specialize in modern and minimalist architecture. So if that's something you're, you, like, you, you've come to the right place. So, I'm Sean Canning, principal architect of Ten Seventy Architecture. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.
