RANT: Architects & Contractors: Stop building dumb bathrooms!

[PowerWordDumb]

In Prague they had a bunch of restrooms with a women inside you had to pay before you could use it.

Even a working girl deserves to make a living, but I resent you calling her "it".

 

[frankthedm]

That only works when the trashcan is near the door.

It works regardless if the trashcan is near the door, if there is not, just chuck to the floor.

 

[frankthedm]

You think bathrooms are badly designed. I could tell you lots of stories of buildings that I have worked on- okay, stopping there.

Lets hear about them, [maybe in a new thread.] I have an arcitect in my group who often has me in stiches about bad building plans.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

And I'm not a big fan of the "toilet closet" that a lot of houses use. This is where you have a smaller room inside the bathroom which is just large enough for a toilet and nothing else. It wastes a ton of space.

I think the idea is that a couple who are toilet-shy can nonetheless use the bathroom at the same time in the morning, so one is brushing teeth while the other is taking a dump, etc. Plus if there is a fan in the toilet closet, you avoid the issue some couples have of "AUGH! I need a gas mask before I can shower! I'm going first tommorrow!" So the space wouldn;t be wasted for a couple that benefited from it.

edit: the hotel I stayed in in hawaii had the bathroom built into the master bedroom except the toilet closet being seperate. It was great because we could close the baby out of the dangerous/gross part of the bathroom.

This bathroom also had a door which led to the closet. That's right, the master bedroom's closet was accessed through the bathroom. Dumb.

Again, dumb for you maybe, but I would love that! Towel off and step right into the walk in to get dressed? Awesome!

I redisgned that bathroom myself - moved the door to the other side of the wall for the closet, removed the toilet closet, and just put the toilet in the open. I saved so much space, that I was able to squeeze in an entire jacuzzi bathtub.

The builder said that he was going to use my design from then on out.

Thank god.

huh, I'm glad you got the bathroom you wanted and a jacuzzi tub is cool, but the builder would be much wiser to offer both styles, as one isn't objectively better than the other, depending on use.

 

[Harmon]

That only works when the trashcan is near the door.

There is usually one outside the door in a public building.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

2 more:

#1
Just experienced this today while taking my mom on a shopping spree of sorts. A women's clothing store with one bathroom.

Located all the way in back of the changing rooms.

Its a good thing it was a slow day, otherwise, there would have been many screams as I ran for it. I'm on diuretics for my high blood pressure- Furosimide does not ask- it demands.

#2
Youth hostel in Italy. 4 beds in the room, which has its own facilities (a rarity)! The toilet is in its own room yay!... but the free-standing shower is in the main room, 2 feet away from one of the beds. Directly across from the room's entryway, and fairly close to the window.

The shower curtain was transparent.

And there was no towel rack within reach of the shower.

If yours was the bed closest to the shower, you could make a quick reach. Anyone else had a little running to do.

 

[Bront]

Women in those countries apparently don't wear pants. I found the same problem in Japan. The Japanese have lovely home bathrooms overall - the tub/shower area is in a completely separate room, so no problems of the hubby needing to take a leak while the wifey is in the bath, and water heaters that heat the water as it flows instead of storing it up, so you can never run out of hot water even if 8 people take a shower one after the other. But those hole-in-the-floor toilets are the worst, especially if you've had a bad reaction to strange water...

Women have worse problems in public restrooms than men, IMHO. First of all, why has it never occurred to builders of public spaces that you need more and larger bathrooms for women? We have to get partially undressed and sit down to pee! And I think it can be scientifically proven that women go to the bathroom more often than men. Surely that would tell the architects that they should include more than three stalls in the restroom. Many womens' restroom stalls don't offer enough room to get in with a large purse, let alone luggage, as Jubilee points out. There's no place to put your purse and coat, or insufficient space for both. You have to lean over the toilet to close the door. And often the stall doors are so small that you barely get any privacy at all. Then there's only one sink in a bathroom with four stalls. And don't get me started about how much I despise the air dryers...

The heat as you go waterheaters are available here. I know some people who have them, and I almost got one myself, and would have if the cost hadn't ben prohibitive. As it stands, I have a fairly good water heater that recovers very well.

I think in Chicago, there's an ordinance that women's bathrooms need to be some % bigger than men's bathrooms, since they need more space due to a lack of urinals as well as room in the stalls.

 

[mythusmage]

Given where it was, it seems very possible that it could be that it was specified to be exactly that, so that no-one could be alone with a little kid in a bathroom out of view of others.

And small children don't care. In most any kindergarten there will be occasions when children will be gathered together gabbing about something while one is having a poop. Most small children in the U.S. live in homes where they do their business under the watchful eye of their parents, so doing it where other adults can keep an eye on them is no problem. Has a big advantage in that they can't lock themselves in.

 

[Algolei]

Ahhhhh the troughs. Here in Winnipeg, the troughs in our old arena were hated. People complained about them, it was suggested that we were behind the times and that humans required more privacy to pee.

Then came the new arena, where there were no troughs. Instead there was brand new semi private urinals. The first event at the new arena resulted in looooooong line ups in the mens bathrooms, and what do you think the people were saying? "Bring back the troughs" of course.

My father taught the guys who installed the elevators in that thing. One word of advice: Do Not Pee In The Elevators.

I've probably already said too much.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Casting Raise Thread...

OK, things haven't gotten any better. This year, I have encountered:

1. A Multi-person bathroom with urinal spaces that-AGAIN!- were so small that I could wedge myself in for a hover-piss
2. Toilet stalls in which I had to ride sidesaddle because he TP dispenser was installed about 1cm from the toilet- no space to put my leg
3. Toilet stalls in which the TP dispenser was located 2+ feet from the toilet- what is someone in a wheelchair supposed to do?
4. Toilets with singing pipes: I just left one in a hospital where turning on the hot water from the sink gets you the dropping devil-groan from Ronnie James Dio's Holy Diver.