Rooms and storage · Room schedule, adjacency and escape routes · rooms-2

Plan adjacencies: which rooms sit next to which, and why

Adjacency means placing rooms that work together side by side and keeping rooms that conflict apart. Off grid, good adjacency shortens pipes and cables, keeps cold stores cold and keeps hazards away from sleeping rooms.

How

Put day-use living rooms and the kitchen on the sun-facing side and service rooms on the west or pole-facing side as buffers, following the orientation rules in design-4 and Your Home.
Group the wet rooms (kitchen, bathroom, laundry, water room) around one plumbing wall so supply and greywater runs are short (design-10, sanitation-13).
Place the pantry next to the kitchen but on its cool side, separated by an insulated wall and away from the stove, oven and hot water pipes, which Clemson extension says speed up food spoilage.
Place the battery and inverter room close to the PV array and main switchboard, but away from living areas and bedrooms, as power-16 sets out.
Put the mudroom at the entrance used every day, linking outside, the laundry and the workshop, so dirt and wet gear stop there.
Keep the medical cupboard away from kitchen heat and bathroom humidity (medical-12) and the secure store out of view of visitors (secure-3).
Keep bedrooms on the quiet side, away from the generator, workshop and battery room. Draw a simple bubble diagram and check every line before the floor plan is fixed.

Safety: Keep battery rooms, fuel stores and workshops away from bedrooms and escape routes.

Do these first

Sources

Orientation. Your Home, Australian Government, accessed 2026-11
Food Storage: Pantry (HGIC fact sheet). Clemson Cooperative Extension, Home and Garden Information Center, accessed 2026-11

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