Guides · Reading · 14 min read · Updated September 2026

A house, read from start to finish

The second worked reading, and the one the flat could not give, a two-storey house of ten by eight metres with a garden front and back, a family of four born in 1978, 1981, 2012 and 2015, a front door facing south-east at a hundred and thirty-four degrees, built in 2024. The street and the ground behind, the door, the stair and the rooms on both floors, the compass, the four kua, the Period 9 chart with its double star at the sitting and what the school asks for it, the garden, the findings in order of weight and the page at the end.

Oriented SE 134°

Wood

Fig. 01 A house with a garden and a tree in front. The reading a house gets differs from a flat’s in three places, the ground behind it, the stair, and the garden the chart wants something done with.

The flat guide put a reading together for a corner flat on the seventh floor, and three things a flat cannot show were left out of it: the ground a house stands on, the stair that joins its two floors, and a garden that the Compass school, once it has drawn its chart, wants something done with. This guide reads a house, in the same order and with the same links, so that a reader who has done the flat can do the house and a reader with a house of their own can follow it plan in hand. The house is invented and every number is real; the chart is built by the rules the essays give, and the chart builder will check it.

The brief, the street and the ground

The household is four people, a man born in 1978, a woman born in 1981 and two children born in 2012 and 2015, moving into a detached house of two storeys, ten metres by eight, built in 2024, with a front garden to the road and a back garden that rises to a bank of trees. The front door is in the middle of the front, the kitchen has a back door, and the family wants three things: the main bedroom settled, a desk for the man, who works from home, and a pond, which the woman wants in the front garden. The brief fixes the same three things it fixed for the flat: the years of birth, which the Compass schools turn into a kua each; the year of building, which makes the house Period 9; and the questions, the bed, the desk and the pond, which head the report. Then the street and the ground, which is where a house differs from a flat first. The road runs along the front, straight but not at the door, and the front garden puts eight metres and a low hedge between the door and it; behind the house the ground rises two metres over the depth of the back garden to a bank of mature trees, and the houses either side stand level with this one. That is the four animals at the scale of a plot, and it is the good case: the tortoise behind, in earth and trees, the two neighbours as the arms, the open ground and the road in front. The choosing a home guide’s five steps are walked in ten minutes here, and the street’s finding for the report is one line, the same as the flat’s: nothing outside the house needs an answer except the ground behind, which the chart will have a use for.

Plan 01 The plot, walked before the door is opened: the four animals as the ground supplies them Ten metres by eight, two storeys, a front garden of eight metres to the road and a back garden rising two metres to a bank of mature trees, with the neighbours level either side. The road runs along the front, straight but not at the door, and the hedge and the eight metres keep it at a distance — which is the tradition's water passing and not charging the gate. The drawing is turned so the front of the house is at the bottom; the needle carries the real bearing, SE2 at a hundred and thirty-four degrees, so up the page is the sitting direction. The pond is the one thing on it the household asked for rather than the site supplying.

The door, the stair and the rooms

1The front door’s line runs through the hall to the back door
2The stair lands facing the front door
3The main bed has its head under the window and its feet to the door
4The hob stands beside the sink, with the back door in view of it
5The study is in the north, on the 5 · the desk goes to the east room instead

Fig. 02 The house, read: both floors in plan, north up, the facing to the south-east at the lower right, where the front door and the front garden are, and the ground rising behind the house to the north-west. The eight sectors are drawn from the centre of the plan and each carries the two stars of its palace from the chart built in the next drawing, the mountain star left and the water star right. The Form reading found five things, marked. The front door opens onto a hall whose line runs to the back door, the through-house; the stair lands facing the front door, which the hallways page calls the fault of the British terrace; the main bed upstairs has its head under the window and its feet to the door; the hob stands beside the sink with the back door in view of it; and the room the household meant for a study is in the north, where the chart puts the 5 and the window is smallest, so the desk goes to the east room instead. The north-west bedroom over the sitting, on the double 9, is the room the chart and the Form reading both give the main bed. A house of ten metres by eight, invented; the plan is drawn at twenty-four units to the metre. The sectors are the eight of the plan’s centre, not the twenty-four mountains; the chart is in the next drawing.

The compass is set on the front path, two metres out from the door and away from the iron of the gate, and the facing is read from the front of the house, which the facing direction guide gives as the side the house opens to: a hundred and thirty-four degrees, read three times along the front, which is SE2 on the luopan, Xun, the middle mountain of the south-east, and clear of the void lines by nine degrees on either side. The sitting is NW2, Qian. The plan is drawn floor by floor, as the drawing your plan guide shows, with the centre of the rectangle as the centre of both floors and the eight sectors laid from it, and the drawing above carries them with the two stars of each palace from the chart built below. Then the rooms, walked with the plan, and the Form reading finds five things. The front door opens into a hall whose line runs to the back door through the house, the through-house of the front door guide, and here it is the whole depth of the plan. The stair, at the hall’s side, lands facing the front door, which the hallways page calls the fault of the terraced house and answers with a turn or a screen at the foot. Upstairs, the main bedroom over the back of the house has its bed drawn with the head under the north-west window and the feet to the door, which fails two of the command position’s three conditions. In the kitchen the hob stands beside the sink, fire beside water, with the back door in view of the cook, which the kitchen page objects to twice. And the room the household meant for the study is the north room over the hall, the smallest window in the house and, as the chart will say, the palace the school leaves alone; the east room, with the morning light and a wall for the chair’s back, is the desk’s room by the desk placement guide before the chart says anything. That is the Form reading, and it is most of the report, as it was for the flat.

Design observation · What a designer would say instead

A designer writes the same five findings in another vocabulary. The hall is a corridor with a view to the garden and no threshold, which Alexander’s entrance transition corrects with a half-glazed inner door or a screen; the stair to the front door is a stair whose bottom step is in the entrance zone, which Templer’s stair studies find is where people miss the last tread; the bed under the window is the sleep research’s cold surface and the door behind; the hob beside the sink is a kitchen without a work triangle, which the layout guides fix with a half-metre of worktop between them; and the north room is a room with the least daylight, which the lighting guide would not give to a desk either. The two readings differ on the chart and the pond and nowhere else.

The kua, the chart and the garden

Fig. 03 The chart of the house: Period 9, because the house was built in 2024, sitting NW2 and facing SE2, because the compass read the front at a hundred and thirty-four degrees, Xun, the middle mountain of the south-east. It is built by the rules the Flying Stars essay gives and its chart builder draws: 9 at the centre flown forward for the period stars; the period star in the sitting palace, 1, taken as the mountain star and flown backward because Zi, the second mountain of the 1’s own palace, is yin; the period star in the facing palace, 8, taken as the water star and flown forward because Gen, the second mountain of its palace, is yang. The result is the chart the school calls double stars at the sitting: the ruling 9 as both mountain and water star in the north-west, at the back of the house, where the ground rises. The school reads it as strong for people and weak for wealth unless there is water at the back, and the pond it asks for goes between the house and the rise; the front, on the 2 and the spent 7, is kept quiet. Mountain star left, water star right, period star below, north up, the facing at the lower right. Sitting NW2 and facing SE2 are the middle mountains of Qian and Xun; a facing a few degrees either side would change the flight and the chart, which the facing guide’s void-line rule is for. The site labels the chart the Compass school’s; the walk found the bed’s room without it.

The Compass reading adds three things here and the site labels all three as the schools’. The four kua first, by the rule the Eight Mansions essay gives. 1978 reduces to seven and the man, subtracting from eleven, is kua four, Xun, of the East group; 1981 reduces to one and the woman, adding four, is five, which for a woman is kua eight, Gen, of the West group; the children take the same rule, the boy of 2012 subtracting five from eleven for kua six, Qian, and the girl of 2015 adding four to eight for a twelve that reduces to kua three, Zhen, one of each group. The house sits NW2, in the Qian palace, a West-group house: it suits the woman and the elder child, and not the man and the younger, which is the ordinary case of a family and the essay’s answer holds, that the bed goes to the sleeper who sleeps worse and each desk faces its own sitter’s good direction where the room allows. Then the chart. The house is Period 9, the facing is SE2, and the Flying Stars essay’s rules build it as the drawing shows: 9 at the centre flown forward; the period star in the sitting palace, 1, taken as the mountain star and flown backward, because Zi, the second mountain of the 1’s own palace, Kan, is yin; the period star in the facing palace, 8, taken as the water star and flown forward, because Gen, the second mountain of its own palace, is yang. The result is the chart the school calls double stars at the sitting, shuang xing dao zuo: the ruling 9 as mountain star and as water star together in the north-west, at the back of the house, where the ground rises. The school reads it as the mirror of the flat’s chart, strong for people and weak for wealth, and its remedy is the third thing: water at the back, a pond between the house and the rise, so that the water star has water and the mountain star has its hill, and the front, which carries the 2 and the spent 7, kept quiet. Which brings the reading to the garden and the brief. The household wanted the pond at the front, where the water features guide would also put it by the Form reading, in front of the house and to its left looking out; the chart wants it behind. The site’s report says both and says which is which: a pond at the back is the Compass school’s, harmless, and the one the chart asks for; a pond at the front is the Form school’s and the garden essay’s, and the one the household will see from the window. A family that wants one pond has the choice written down with its reasons, and a family that wants two has a house that both schools would pass.

Evidence · Which findings have evidence, and which are the school’s

Of the report’s findings, four rest on research the site cites elsewhere and the rest on the schools. The bed’s move to the solid wall with the door in view is the sleep literature’s; the stair’s screen at the foot is Templer’s, whose studies put the missed step at the bottom of a flight in the entrance; the hob’s move from the sink is the kitchen guides’ and the fire guide’s; the desk’s move to the east room is the lighting research’s, which puts the working eye at a side window. The through-house, the chart and the pond’s position are the tradition’s and the site records them as such: the first is cheap and harmless, the second the household may take or leave, and the third is a real choice between two schools that the report states rather than settles. The ground behind, which both schools like, is the one finding that needed no source: Heisler’s tree research says a bank of trees to the north-west shelters a house from the winter wind, and the tradition knew it as the tortoise.

The report, in order

The facing. SE2, a hundred and thirty-four degrees, taken on the front path three times; the sitting NW2; the house Period 9. Both floors with their eight sectors from the centre, attached.
The bed. The north-west bedroom, head on its solid south-west wall, the door seen at a diagonal and the window at the side; the Form school’s finding and the chart’s, and the one that answers the brief.
The desk. The east room, the chair’s back to its west wall, the door in view, the window at the side; facing east for him, which the room allows.
The stair. A screen or a plant at its foot, or the inner door of the hall rehung to open across it, so that the flight does not land on the front door; the cheapest finding after the hall’s.
The hall’s line. An inner door or a screen a third of the way down the hall, so that the front door does not see the back door; done with the stair’s screen in one afternoon.
The hob. Moved a worktop’s width from the sink, the extractor over it, the back door out of the cook’s line by a turn of the plan or a half-height screen.
The north room. A store, a guest room or the children’s play room; not the desk, by the light and by the chart alike.
The pond. At the back, between the house and the rise, if the household wants the chart’s; at the front and to the left, if it wants the view; both, if it wants both schools; the report says which is which.
What cannot be fixed. Nothing in this house; the ground behind it is the thing most households pay to be told they lack.