Dogtrot house

A dogtrot house is a small house design that originated and developed in the southern United States. Its basic form is two rooms or sets of rooms separated by a covered porch. This provides two distinct areas for domestic purposes – for example, living in one end and sleeping in the other. The covered porch or breeze-way is well ventilated and can be screened to provide protection from insects. The ventilation across the breeze-way and through any openings in the rooms aids air circulation and cooling and makes the porch area ideal for occupation during hot and humid spells. All-in-all a practical design for a hot and humid climate.

Whilst hot and humid is not exactly the environment I’m designing for there are elements to Dogtrot house design I value and will incorporate into my own design – ventilation and the covered porch.

Ventilation
Like passive solar heating natural ventilation has to be a worthwhile design feature and also like passive solar heating it is something that is very difficult to retro-fit. So I’ll attempt to design it in from the start.

Covered Porch
The covered porch is a great example of a multi-functional design solution. By that I mean a design decision or series of closely related decisions that lead to a solution to multiple requirements or solve a number of problems. In the case of the Dogtrot porch, we get improved ventilation for the whole building as well as a sheltered multi-functional space… win-win

So perhaps I’ll bring a little of the spirit of the southern US of A to the south of Wales…