The Elysian Fields

I griped about lighting and vented about venting in the kitchen in the last episode; many, many moons ago I laid waste to the makers and installers of bathroom sinks.

Those two great tastes poor grasps of basic ergonomics and lack of understanding of use paths and just plain bad design (sigh. I suppose "great tastes" is a bit catchier, and far more succinct. So it goes...) come together to form this particular rant.

I have three and a half dishwashers, you see.

There's one under the counter that does the bulk of the work when it gets filled, and the other two dishwashers take care of the care and feeding of it and the rest of the dishes not suitable for mass cleaning. The half dishwasher just likes to splash in the sink and play with the bubbles.

The glass lids of the two pans used for the bain-marie didn't get all that clean, despite the fact that the senior dishwasher was on the job. I wound up stepping in to provide a demonstration, and I realized the deplorable conditions which could easily lead to the problems at hand and several other related complaints.

You see, unlike the sensible two-basin full sized kitchen sink the builders had, well over a century ago, put into the house I grew up in, this house has a single basin, a bit bigger, but not much. In fact, if you drop a dish pan in, you have exactly four inches in which to stack and rinse soap off what you just washed.

Four inches. You can do the silverware, although some slides under the dishpan and hides. You can do two glasses, although if you put a third down there, you can't maneuver enough to rinse any of them without smashing them.

Now, the sink itself would make a fine utility sink for a basement, garage, mudroom, laundry room, or utility sink room. It's a nice enough sink. Okay, maybe not really deep enough, and a bit too prettified to be a really utilitarian utility sink, but I'm trying to cut it some slack.

What a kitchen needs, if it can't have a gigundo commercial basin with commercial faucets and sprays and so forth, is a double basin sink. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. You can't have something that tries to combine the wash and rinse steps in one sink, it makes for trouble, skips the use of the dishpan, and substitutes perpetually running water, an over-soaped-under-soaked scrubbie, and a lack of thorough cleaning for a proper job.

Two sinks can also help in preparation of foods, providing more room, and they only take up a little bit more counter (and under-counter) real estate. The plumbing is only slightly more complicated ~ I know, I absoflogginglutely hate plumbing, and I've successfully re-plumbificated a ninety year old double basin sink single-handedly. They use a single faucet to swing between the two basins, and a single spray, so the supply-side is identical to that of a single basin sink.

Now, if you want to go a step beyond the double basin, throw in a small sink with a spray on a counter or island, and you've provided a veggie prep station and some additional utility. That's a nice feature, but a distant second to the importance of the double basin.

But there you have it ~ why make the working conditions miserable for the poor dishwashers who don't live under the counter? Put in a double sink... why, think of how much easier and far less cruel it would then be to make a punishment like "You'll do it, or I'll have you wash every dish in this house, young man!" stick?

As you might have noticed in that last recipe, I took pictures. In my kitchen.

Yes, some had the flash and came out decently enough, except where stainless steel or aluminum foil was present. Can you say blinded? Yes I thought you could. I couldn't see you nodding your head though, on account of...

Well, yes.

You see, the kitchen I have was not designed as a photography studio. You can't really blame the architect or home builder for that, of course, how would they know I'd be trying to drop my camera in hot oil?

However, when I'm working with oil, especially hot oil, it's nice to see what's going on.

Now, there's a light over the stove (at the back, so it can shadow things on the front burners), and there's a light over the sink (so you can see when cleaning things).

But there is no light over the counter.

The kitchen light itself? A ceiling fixture, with a single 60 watt bulb maximum.

Might as well wear a blindfold.

The table on the other side of the counter has a chandelier hanging over it. With a fluorescent bulb in the center and 25 watt candelabra bulbs surrounding it. It's usually bright.

Unless you're trying to see things at the counter.

Strong overhead lighting can not be left out of the kitchen. It needs to be there in that central fixture. It needs to be over all work surfaces, and not just back against the wall, but right there, centered over the area.

For one, think of how much nicer those photographs would look if the area was well lit?

For another, think of the possibility of cooking in the kitchen and actually being able to see what you're chopping with that knife! Imagine how many finger tips could be saved! Oh, the humanity!

Oh, and since I'm picking on the light fixture over the stove ~ that's in a hood... do not ever. Ever. EVER. Install a hood that cycles air back into the room. Useless. Poof. Right into the tall guy's eyeballs. Irritating. Poof. Sets off the smoke alarms at the least amount of notice possible.

If you're building the house, prove you're not an alien. Prove you have human eyesight, and provide adequate light. Prove you have eyeballs, a nose, and/or ears, and vent the exhaust outside.

It's easy to do when you're building the place, costs heaps less than it would to retrofit later, and will prevent mobs of angry homeowners from marching you at torch-and-pitchfork-point to the nearest space exploration facility so that they can send you back to the planet you came from. Or, perhaps, the nearest ball of flaming superheated gasses, whichever is closer.

Come on, you've already mastered faster-than-light travel to get here, you have the technology to include decent lights and exhaust venting, so use it!

Saturday, Justin and I spent the morning forking around with over-ripe compost and seed mix - maybe fifteen to twenty wheelbarrows worth. And this wheelbarrow, we joked, was bigger than the other crew's pickup truck...

...not quite, but it was 8 cubic feet of heavy crap (pretty much literally) and mushrooms. Very heavy. After about eight or ten trips, we were joined by one of the members of the board. This made it much easier to get up the steep, soft bank to where we were spreading the stuff. Thankfully, we had two wheel drive - a single-wheel wheelbarrow would have bogged and flipped with what we were putting it through. Of course, the fun part was the scent of amonia that steamed out when you ripped into the stuff to load it.

We wrapped up with a single load of wood chips, to assist the singing wheelbarrow, split between a garden bed at the Osprey House and a bench overlooking the pond. Then it was pizza, donated by one of the other members who was volunteering, and we were done.

After that, we headed over to deliver and review the three detailed designs with the customers. We added a few things to one of the design, and should get approval mid-week.

Note: Although this study was completely scientific in nature, it may, perhaps, point at another alternate theory: the designers may simply be victims of head-shrinking techniques, as practiced by certain witch doctors and other such folks.

1. Design sink with minimal space - just a bit bigger than a human adult head.

2. Design sink with a faucet jutting into said space, requiring facial surface to be high above sink, so that water splashed on the face lands on the floor, on the faucet, on the next county over, and some even makes it into the basin itself.

3. Design faucet with large handle to catch water.

4. Bonus: Design faucet handle so a forehead, brought close to reduce splashing, presses it down and turns it, changing water flow and temperature.

5. Double Bonus: Have handle lean out over the side of the faucet so that hands, when scooping water up towards face, bump handle, thus changing flow and temperature of the water.

6. Triple Cooperation Bonus: Design humans with eyes in their face that generally are best kept closed when dealing with facial soap and splashing water.

A challenge to the automotive design engineers who read this (who number, to the best of my knowledge, somewhere around exactly zero individuals):

Whereas windshield wipers (hereafter referred to as Wipers) are not mounted in the trunk nor are Wipers mounted under the dashboard by the heater nor are Wipers mounted on posts in otherwise deserted tropical islands;

Whereas Wipers are quite often found on the exterior of automobiles, trucks, trains, helicopters, and other such exterior applications;

Whereas exterior applications are, by their very nature of being exterior and not interior, exposed to the elements;

Whereas elements have a tendency, on a somewhat seasonal basis and driven by a chaotic system, to vary in such ways that include Wet or Cold;

Whereas certain regions have, at certain times of the year, the habit of experiencing both Wet and Cold at the same, or closely alternating, instance in time;

Whereas Wipers are designed to move by electrical and mechanical means;

Whereas those means may be halted in their tracks by even a small quantity of Wet that has become Cold;

Whereas at least one flavor of heat-application doesn't always reduce enough for the Wet to get out of the way;

Can you please design the frickin' Wipers so they don't burn their motors out or snap off their linkages or keep forcing their way in one immovable direction without resetting safely and calmly and waiting to try again later when the situation may or may not have changed; resulting in eventual success when the Spring Thaw happens or when whatever heating technology you allegedly have actually does what it allegedly should.

While you may consider it entertaining to design things in such a manner as they currently exist - akin to including a failsafe in all jumbo jets that forces the engines to prepare for takeoff any time they're started, even if that means flying at force into the nearest terminal - I'd really rather not have to replace any more wiper motors or wiper linkage or anything else involved in a fairly important piece of safety equipment.

A common problem - that of the blades freezing to the windows - would also be less painful if the wiper motors didn't continue to strain at the leash. This issue is the one that seems to be addressed when "frozen" and "wipers" are the query; sadly, this is easily handled manually, and a quick scrape and the basic windshield defroster can handle the issue. There's also these, designed to cope with the situation.

That low hanging fruit, the frost glazed squeegee stuck to glass, is not what I've been experiencing these last two years. Over a quarter century of New England winters and I've not experienced what I'm seeing now down here in the tropics. All three vehicles have had it happen this year, it's like an epidemic. All visible surface ice can be removed, everything you can get at without disassembling grills and so forth can be cleared and this problem still occurs.

It's one of those design issues that just shouldn't happen. Why, having those motors designed to hope against hope and commit suicide makes about as much sense as making commonly replaced items, such as headlights, difficult to replace. Or mounting sensitive electronic components in an environment exposed to extremes of heat and cold and oils and vibration, such as those experienced in the engine compartment of a car. Or knowing for at least thirty-five years that energy efficiency is a Good Thing and, instead of increasing both efficiency and performance, pretending that you can only do one or the other, and having delusions that the former can only happen if the car is butt-ugly.

When I was just a wee little lad, I spent my spare time designing houses.

These were houses in the way that, say, a mansion of the rich and infamous that sprawls over Hollywood Hills might be called a utility shed.

I liked wings. Lots of them. And different levels. Not to mention waterfalls, pools, recording studios, movie theaters, gardens, grist mills, libraries, gaming rooms, and all kinds of other things - and that's just within the walls of the house itself.

This resulted in Rooflines. Many, and of various angles. Still with something of a Classical or at least Gothic architecture.

I would show them to patrixa, and she would smile and nod, or maybe ask where I would put storage closets or something useful I had forgotten.

I would show them to my dad, and he would say: do you know how many places that roof will leak? The water will pool up here and there and everywhere...

~ ~ ~

My mom pointed out an article on the almost Suessian¹ Stata Center building at MIT. Now, I remember discussing the building with my dad while they were still building it, and we both made jokes about how much it will leak, not to mention other design aspects. Clown College, he called it, as did other MIT faculty.

Apparently, surprise surprise (not at all, really), it leaks.

¹: Almost Suessian - too many sharp edges. Suess rounded things, generally, and left them with a more organic look.