How to Tell if Architects & Home Builders are from Another Planet, #23846

[ellyssian]

Picture, if you will, a bathroom.

Picture a single towel bar mounted on the wall.

Picture the sole heat source in the room installed less than half a towel length below that towel bar.

That's right: muffle the heat if you hang up a towel.

Yet more proof positive that the good folks designing and building our houses and other everyday items are actually amorphous aliens from galaxies and/or dimensions far, far away, who have never used towels, opened doors, or changed a lightbulb.

Comments

[rowancat.livejournal.com]

Heh! :)
Well, probably the sole silver lining, you could get a makeshift humidifier
by hanging a wet towel on the rack :)
Of course running the shower would do the same, though only for a rather short time.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

It stops the airflow, so the air (and accompanying heat) goes to a different vent.

[tewok.livejournal.com]

Or maybe they consider it not so much a room heater as a towel dryer.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Oy, I realize now I probably should have clarified:

It's air. The towel acts as a damper, and the air finds an easier route, so little to no heat makes it out to the towel.

[kay-brooke.livejournal.com]

My bathroom is designed in the exact same way. :/

[tattermuffin.livejournal.com]

I think it's an "on purpose" design thing - so as you heat the bathroom it also heats the towel, so you have a warm toasty towel ready when you get out of the shower.

Sadly, I've never known a single person living with it to actually find it works that way - instead the towel cuts off the heat to the bathroom and while the towel may be a bit warmer, it doesn't make up for a frakin' cold bathroom otherwise.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

More than the heat, the towel cuts off the airflow, so the hot air goes elsewhere, so even the towel doesn't get warm.

[tattermuffin.livejournal.com]

Ugh! Well that just makes NO sense at all!

[wolfette]

well, it'll dry your towels and if your towel bar is set up right, shouldn't muffle the heat by much, since convection will take care of it.

But I don't have that problem - any towel hung on the towel rail next to the radiator will be quickly pulled down and piled on the floor against the radiator by Dakota Cat.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

It's an air vent - the towel drapes against it, sealing it almost entirely off.

The air won't force through, most will go to another open vent.

[wolfette]

We very rarely use air vent heating in the UK - very inefficient. Back in the 60s some council housing estates here in Scotland were built with that kind of heating. (I spent my teens in one of those houses, but when my parents bought the house from the council, the first thing they did was to pull it out and fit a new heating system). These days the housing authorities have mostly re-fitted those houses with the more normal gas powered furnace, hot water radiators central heating systems.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it wasn't used so much - if at all - up in the Boston area, but down here and further south it's often the only thing you get in new construction (i.e. 1970 and beyond).

I would like it if it was done well as a secondary system - mostly to circulate and refresh air, not for heating. Maybe for cooling.

I like the idea of radiant heating in the floors, possibly with additional hot water radiators if needed. A co-worker has radiant heat in the ceiling, and I never quite figured out why they would have done that. Doesn't seem very efficient.

[wolfette]

apparently underfloor heating is the most efficient - heat rises, after all, so you heat the floor area, where it would normally be coldest and it will rise to warm the rest of the room. However it is expensive to install and usually has to be done in a "new build" building, and then only usually by individuals building their "grand designs".

No doubt you'd find the family cats flopped out all over the kitchen or bathroom floor if you installed that :-)

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what these guys use (check out 2006 Photos, #10 - they've got an install pic of the heating getting installed!)

Definitely makes for a warmer, cozier castle.

~ ~ ~

As for the cat, she'd have to push me aside to get at the floor! =)

[patrixa.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, you can put in towel bars in other spots... behind the door, on the closet and vanity doors come to mind. I never found 1 towel bar enough and though I live alone, I put in 2 full size, 1 small and 1 double hook hanger. You may remember, we always had several in the houses we owned. ;-O

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Umm, yeah, that's exactly what we did.

The point was, the problem should never exist in the first place. It would be kind of like having the front entry door open up on to a chimney. Doesn't help much as a door, and doesn't help the situation with the smoke in the chimney.

[rowancat.livejournal.com]

One person's ceiling is another's floor. If it's a multi-story
house or if you're a bat ;)

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

That was my answer to her to - but it's a one story house, and it's open attic storage space above it.

I suppose whoever designed it might have been from a bat-like race of aliens... =)

[belgatherial.livejournal.com]

Also those rack things for drying washed dishes. The people who design those have CLEARLY *never* washed dishes in their lives...