Robert J Morton
Robert J Morton |
The bedrooms of my ideal home are not just for sleeping. The host all the closely associated activities of sleeping - washing, dressing, defecating and laundry.
These activities are facilitated respectively by a bed, wash basin & shower, clothes storage with mirror doors, toilet and washing machine. All but the laundry activity are personal and self explanatory.
Laundry once was quite an involved operation requiring outside resources. It was therefore conducted on at least the scale of an entire household. In many cultures it was done on a communal scale and was an active conduit of social contact. The modern automatic washing machine has, however, made it possible to bring the clothes washing process close to its primary input/output - namely, the bedroom where people change their dirty clothes for clean ones. The system flow model of the laundry process is illustrated below.
Since the individual here does his own laundry, it is to his own advantage to discipline himself to segregate dirty clothes into their appropriate washing cycle types at the time he takes them off. Furthermore, by hanging damp clothes to dry in wardrobes and drawers subject to forced air ventilation and dehumidification, he removes the need for ironing for all but a few special items.
My physical realization of an ideal bedroom is centred on a 1420 by 2060 mm double bed with a 600 mm wide path on 3 sides as shown below.
Each side of the bed is a built-in cupboard of 700 mm internal depth running the full length of the bed. These are divided appropriately between drawers and hanging space. The bottoms of drawers and internal partitions are slotted to allow the free circulation of air within the cupboards. The bottoms of the cupboards form a waterproof catchment tray. Upper and lower air ducts connect the cupboards and the hot water tank housing. A small fan propels air gently around the circuit. A vapour exchanger allows excess moisture from damp clothes in the cupboards to diffuse to the outside without actually exchanging air with the outside. This helps to conserve warmth within the cupboards. The circulation fan is triggered by a humidity switch. When the air in the cupboards is too humid, the fan switches on. When the air is sufficiently dry, the fan switches off. No heating is necessary other than the residual warmth from the insulated hot water tank.
Beyond the bed, beside one of the cupboards, is an automatic washing machine. This is driven by a high voltage (115 or 240 volt) motor which is accessible only from the back of the machine from outside the bedroom. All control circuits are via isolated low voltage switches and fail-safe relays. This ensures safe use by somebody who may operate the machine while wet from showering.
The machine is raised so the user has no need to bend down to load and unload it. The space beneath is available for laundry baskets. It also allows access for servicing the machine. The back of the washing machine must be accessible from outside the bedroom for servicing in situ. Above the machine is storage for washing powder, softeners and machine spares like drive belts and motor brushes, plus any specialised servicing tools.
Dirty laundry is accumulated in the baskets beneath the machine. There is a separate basket for clothing requiring each common type of washing cycle. At a convenient time, whenever a basket is full, its load is washed in the machine. The spun-dry clothes are then hung to dry in the cupboards. Damp clothes may, of course, be hung outside on a clothes line or on a balcony during fair weather if preferred.
Along the wall opposite the bed is a shower, wash basin and toilet. The hot and cold water tanks are in the blind corner between the washing machine and the shower. This placing minimises the length of hot water pipes feeding the washing machine, shower and wash basin. The heat loss, and the amount of cold flow before hot water is thereby also minimised. A waterproof drainage tray covers the entire floor area beneath the cupboards, washing machine, tank housing, shower, wash basin and toilet to protect against leaks and flooding. The tanks, pipes and wiring are easily accessible by the removal of dedicated panels for maintenance.
The bedroom is lit by a large square central collimated skylight. Artificial lighting is by low voltage quartz halogen lights appropriately placed. Each service - water, drainage and electricity - is connected at a single point.
I want the bedroom unit to house 4 bedrooms plus a personal work booth. I also need these bedrooms and work booth to be accessible via a common entrance space on the outer edge of the bedroom unit. This requires 6 spaces + a central access space to be tessellated together. This cannot be done with near-square rectangular bedrooms. On the other hand, the internal space of each bedroom lends itself far better to the near-square rectangular shape of the above layout. A compromise is necessary.
To tessellate the 7 spaces optimally, I adopted the same 7-circle gun-chamber model used for the other units in my ideal home design. However, to keep the individual bedrooms as close as possible to their ideal near-square rectangular shape, I changed the containment space for each bedroom from a circle to the asymmetrical segment shape shown below.
This resulted in one of the wardrobes having to be sliced off at an angle and the other to over-hang into the outer rim of the bedrooms' ellipsoid beyond the extent of flat floor level.
I was concerned about the weight of the hot water tank and washing machine being so far towards the outer edge of the cantilevered part of the ellipsoid. I therefore reduced the floor space of the toilet by placing the toilet tank over the toilet and moving the toilet and the wash basin to the left (in the above diagram). I also opted to have a large common hot water tank in the middle of the central access circle of the bedrooms' ellipsoid. This lends itself far better to the vastly larger hot water tank needed in a solar heated system. Shifting the toilet and wash basin and removing the hot water tank allowed enough space for the shower to be replaced with a proper bath.
The asymmetric segment shape of the bedroom containment space leaves a triangular area behind the bed. This is accessible via narrow panel doors - one each side of the bed. This triangular room is ideal for a washing machine. It is also safely away from the bath and wash basin. In fact it is now in a separate room. The front of the washing machine is accessible from the part of the triangular room entered through the panel door on the right of the bed. The washing machine can be plumbed and serviced from the back by opening the panel door on the left of the bed.
A power-operated roof section of the ellipsoid opens to turn the drying area into a balcony. This can be used for fresh air, taking in the view or drying clothes. The roof section closes automatically at night, when it rains or when the house's central locking key is used to lock the house when everybody is going out.
The only draw-back of the large wardrobe on the right overhanging the outer rim of the flat floor is that it needs part of its floor to be raised slightly. This is really no inconvenience. The slicing of the smaller wardrobe is a bit inconvenient. However, the sliced part could be turned into an attractive bed-side dressing table with mirror. Both wardrobes are ventilated with filtered forced air.
The bedroom is lit by a central collimated skylight over the bed. This makes it very private. The triangular washing room has a window in the opening roof section.