Victoria's Cottage Bath

[melwynnd]

John,

Like I mentioned in my other posts, I am interested in the Victoria's cottage plan.  I do have a question though.

How hard would it be to extend the back utility room across the house to add a bit more space to the bathroom(I admit it, I love large bathtubs ).  I realize the mechanical room would still be there, but it could open to the inside, couldn't it?  Or would it be better to put the mechanical room on the other sice and the w/d next to the bathroom.  I guess I'm not sure the point of having the mechanical room open to the outside anyway.....

Thanks

Sherry

[DavidLeBlanc]

I think the most important reason for having the mechanical room open only to the outside is if you are using a gas, oil or propane fired hot water heater or furnace. It avoids having Carbon Monoxide exhaust going into the living space. Also avoids pulling conditioned (heated, cooled) air out of the living space to feed the heating fires.

Another consideration is that if you have a leak, it will drain outside and not into the living space.

Lastly, if you have a fire, the isolation of the mechanical room will give building occupants more time to evacuate (I think - not sure - that most codes require thermal isolation (fire wall) between mechanical space and dwelling space).

[John Raabe]

Yes, in our area a propane fired appliance must be naturally vented to the outside (such as high and low vents in an outside door) and in an air sealed and insulated space.

Propane is heavier than air, can pool in low spots and go boom. Natural gas is lighter than air and floats away from a leak. A natural gas furnance in the basement is safe - propane not.

If you aren't installing propane and want to open up the rear wall with headers, then the pop-out could be extended for more room at the main level.

[melwynnd]

John,

Thanks for the info.  We use natural gas here, but I have to agree with David's surmise that leaks would better run outside.  We don't have any codes out of town here, but we still plan to follow most of them.  Besides, with the price of gas, I may wish to switch to a coal(we are very close to some mines here) boiler(too bad I can't figure out a way to burn cow manure ) in the future and it would be nice not to have to bring those things into the house.  So I think the best solution is to move the mech. room to the other side where the w/d is drawn and keep the door outside.

Sherry

[glenn kangiser]

too bad I can't figure out a way to burn cow manure )

Sherry

Depends on how bad you want to, Sherry.  Build a methane generator -the cow manure provides the gas and you are left with great fertilizer as a by-product.  Probably the most research has come from India.

[melwynnd]

glenn,

I had actually looked into a methane digester. It's very hard to find good info on that.  I do have a book called "back to basics" that has some plans for a small digester, but I'm not sure how to convert my appliances(I have gas stove and dryer as well as gas heat) to run off the thing.  How do you control pressure, stuff like that.......  

I only have the milk cow, a steer for beef next year, three calves, and two horses(I use the horse manure for my hotbeds because it heats up so much better), but the neighbors down the road have cattle too and would probably deliver all the manure I'd take when they clean their corral.

Do you know where to get more comprehensive plans?  With the price of fossil fuel these days, you'd think that there'd be a bit of money in that sort of thing.  I'll bet there soon will be anyhow...

Sherry

[glenn kangiser]

Sherry,
Let's move this discussion to the referral links forum- energy subject already started-- and I'll post some of the information I have found -If I can find it again so we don't mess up the support forum.

Lets go here:

http://countryplans.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=0003;action=display;num=1104438924;start=0#9

Glenn

[glenn kangiser]

too bad I can't figure out a way to burn cow manure )

Sherry

Sherry, somewhere recently I just read about burning cow manure -MEN? Anyway the guy dried it and burned it - no bad smell and the ashes were great fertilizer causing great increased growth in about the 3rd year.

He made forms and dried it into blocks.