Advice The Home Improvement/Automation Thread

fly said:
What's a wet bath?

edit: looked it up. That's odd. Is that common up there?
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Pretty common in small houses. I don't marvel at the idea of having a shower with the shitter getting constantly rinsed down. It just seems weird. Most RVs have wet baths as well. If you want a rain shower you pretty much need a wet bath though.
 
ZRH said:
Pretty common in small houses. I don't marvel at the idea of having a shower with the shitter getting constantly rinsed down. It just seems weird. Most RVs have wet baths as well. If you want a rain shower you pretty much need a wet bath though.
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That is not this. This is a tub inside the shower enclosure.
 
gee said:
New house plans are finalized.


View attachment 16261

Just under 1500sqft interior space. Single floor, heated slab on grade.

I'm debating between forking out the $$$ to hydronically heat the slab using an air-source heat pump, or just resistively heating the slab and spending the same $$$ on solar panels instead to offset the difference. Gonna sit down with someone to calculate all the insulation and BTUs and all that other crap and make the call shortly. In any case, big heated slab qualifies for time-of-day heating.

Speaking of solar panels the house faces directly north, and the back roof of the house is angled 45 degrees which matches the 45°04' latitude we're at.

Utility room is in the middle of the house. Since I'm doing a slab on grade, I can just run the electrical service through a conduit in the slab and put the panel wherever - my big electrical loads are in the kitchen and in the utility room itself, which saves me a bunch on wiring. Hot water heater is also in the middle of the house right next to the bathroom, so people can run whatever water they want with zero effect on whoever's getting a shower, fixing a major pet peeve with the last two houses.

Big ass kitchen with a walk in pantry because we might as well admit that we're big fucking foodies.

And a woodstove for backup heat, and also because woodstoves are awesome. With the insulation we're putting in, it's gonna be hard to find a small enough woodstove that doesn't make the place ridiculously hot inside, but that's fine.

No dining room, no dining room table, we've never used either of them so fuck it. Eat at the kitchen island or eat on the couch.
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wheres the garage
 
Also: every floor in the house, with the probable exception of tile in the wet bath, is gonna be polished/epoxied concrete.

Fuck carpet, fuck shitty laminate, fuck vinyl flooring.
 
gee said:
Also: every floor in the house, with the probable exception of tile in the wet bath, is gonna be polished/epoxied concrete.

Fuck carpet, fuck shitty laminate, fuck vinyl flooring.
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Sounds like a recipe for aching feet. I stood on enough concrete all day for work to want to do that shit at home.
 
Dog shower is gonna be because there's a fenced in yard off the mud room door for dogs. Dog rolls in another dog's shit? In the door and straight to the dog shower.

Wet bath means that the shower sprays in the same room as the bathtub which is just sitting there in the middle of the place.

I don't have a good explanation for why, that's the missus' part of the house design. I'm handling utility room and office and electrical/HVAC/whatever stuff, and and she's handling the pretty HGTV stuff like countertops and bathrooms and backsplashes and shit.

Garage is an outbuilding so separate drawing.
 
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gee said:
Also: every floor in the house, with the probable exception of tile in the wet bath, is gonna be polished/epoxied concrete.

Fuck carpet, fuck shitty laminate, fuck vinyl flooring.
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I like vinyl planks. They seem to hold up well to dogs and helps keep echos down in the house.
 
Im sat here thinking why not wood then I remembered you need a mortgage to buy plywood.

My bedroom in my old house I put down commercial style vinyl tiles. If you buff them once a year they are pretty resilient also super easy to clean. That was because it was on the second floor though and the underlayment was masonite.

I lived in a really cool house once that was completely made of cinder blocks, basement had a 10ft cieling and was epoxied, first floor was ash with I assume some sort of wax over it and the second floor was vinyl tiles. It was literally the best designed little house I've ever lived in. Couldnt have been more than 1800 sq ft. The ONLY complaint I had was that the bathroom was off the kitchen which just seemed weird.
 
ZRH said:
Im sat here thinking why not wood then I remembered you need a mortgage to buy plywood.

My bedroom in my old house I put down commercial style vinyl tiles. If you buff them once a year they are pretty resilient also super easy to clean. That was because it was on the second floor though and the underlayment was masonite.

I lived in a really cool house once that was completely made of cinder blocks, basement had a 10ft cieling and was epoxied, first floor was ash with I assume some sort of wax over it and the second floor was vinyl tiles. It was literally the best designed little house I've ever lived in. Couldnt have been more than 1800 sq ft. The ONLY complaint I had was that the bathroom was off the kitchen which just seemed weird.
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I've always installed wood over a permeable underlayment, so it doesn't echo as much as epoxied floors either.
 
Jehannum said:
I've always installed wood over a permeable underlayment, so it doesn't echo as much as epoxied floors either.
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Yeah, usually felt. My old house had a inlaw apartment that was basically a garage. My brother trashed it though, let a kerosene heater burn out and it smoked out the whole place with greasy soot, but I gutted it and convinced my mom to let me put down birch plywood as flooring. So I did roofing paper, then a layer of "stickers" idk what the real name of them is, it's the wood that they package other wood with, they're like 2 in thick pieces of oak. Then masonite then the plywood. Polyurethaned it. It was nice, very bright though.
 
Jehannum said:
I like vinyl planks. They seem to hold up well to dogs and helps keep echos down in the house.
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We put LVT in a room in the house we just sold and I wasn't a fan.

I did vinyl square floor in the dog shed at the previous house (what I call 'walmart floor') but polishing and finishing the slab is quicker and cheaper and it'll look a whole lot less walmart-y. Especially where it's a scratch build - pour slab, finish slab, build house on slab.

And yeah, we're gonna put rugs and mats everywhere so don't worry about sore feet.
 
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ZRH said:
Yeah, usually felt. My old house had a inlaw apartment that was basically a garage. My brother trashed it though, let a kerosene heater burn out and it smoked out the whole place with greasy soot, but I gutted it and convinced my mom to let me put down birch plywood as flooring. So I did roofing paper, then a layer of "stickers" idk what the real name of them is, it's the wood that they package other wood with, they're like 2 in thick pieces of oak. Then masonite then the plywood. Polyurethaned it. It was nice, very bright though.
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Stickers is the right word. Why do that though? It was on slab right?
 
Domon said:
Stickers is the right word. Why do that though? It was on slab right?
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Air gap. The national wood flooring association always recommends an airgap over a slab for drying. It's more a thing further north where you get condensate from the hot side hitting the cold side. I've noticed in MD a lot of stuff doesnt have gaps which are pretty standard up in NY and Canada.
 
ZRH said:
Air gap. The national wood flooring association always recommends an airgap over a slab for drying. It's more a thing further north where you get condensate from the hot side hitting the cold side. I've noticed in MD a lot of stuff doesnt have gaps which are pretty standard up in NY and Canada.
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I've always just seen a good moisture barrier and a permeable underlay to allow for limited air movement.

Big sheets of ply might present unique challenges though due to less cracks
 
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