Your ideal laundry room?

Blitzkrieger

Hi All.

I'm hoping to start building my own house this time next year and was hoping I could pick your brains for a bit of advice. I was reading through some of the stickeys and have a vague plan about deciding exactly what I want first, then consulting with an architect to try and fit it to the site. I'm going to be on a budget, but I'm committed to doing things "right". I want this to be a long term home.

The first thing I'm wondering about is a laundry room. What would you put in your ideal laundry room?

I'm a lazy sod and want to make the business of doing laundry as easy as possible. In general, I'm thinking I'll put it upstairs - to save myself carrying clothes up and down the stairs - in the south-east corner of the house. I don't want to have to run the dryer all the time, so this leaves the problem of how to dry the clothes without dragging them down to the garden and hanging them out.

I was hoping for a relatively simple system, at least during the summer, of hanging the wet clothes on a big clothes horse in the laundry room. I was thinking of putting in nice big windows to try and catch the heat off the sun and provide ventilation. Possibly with nice shiny (impossible to keep clean) tiles on the floor to reflect heat better. That'll work, right?

I'm wondering do I have to do much else for the winter? Sure the clothes will dry slower, but if I really need something dry fast I could bite the bullet and throw it in the dryer.

Which brings me to heating. Obviously if the room is going to have to be well ventilated, it's going to be difficult to heat without doubling my heating bills. Should I man up and just freeze my ass off whenever I go into that room? I was intending to have the house as air tight as possible, and set up a heat exchanger to provide fresh air. Would it be overkill to have two? One between the house and the laundry room and one between the laundry room and outside?

Space wise, I'm thinking 10 foot by 12 would be plenty? But I'm wondering, should I have a drain in the floor? It might mean less mopping up water off dripping clothes, and could also save a fortune if the washing machine leaked on the first floor.

Another thing I'm worried about is noise. Not so much at night, because presumably I just wouldn't do laundry at night, but would the washing machine be audible through the whole downstairs? I'm guessing wooden floors so I just make sure there's plenty of insulation underneath?

What else haven't I thought of? Cupboards? I'm kind of worried that if I put in a few cupboards to hold things like a spare duvet and spare sheets they'll go all stale/mouldy. Presumably it'll be well enough ventilated to avoid that........

It does seem like it'd be much easier to put a clothes line on a covered balcony on the first floor. I don't want to do that for a number of reasons - it'll be a rural house and I think it'd be hard to design one that would look good in the setting, and mainly because I want to put a sun room on the south side on the ground floor and don't want to end up in the shade. It'd also be handy to hang up the clothes indoors so I don't have to get dressed to go outside and hang them up. :eek:

LoTwan

I'll formulate a better response later but for now a decent 1400+ spin washing machine should leave clothes so that they are not dripping.

I wouldn't in wildest dreams put a washing machine upstairs because of the potential damage from a flood. I have a washing machine & dryer in 60sq ft I wouldn't be drying many clothes in there.

If you are going with a MHRV system then why not have a warm air vent at the bottom of your airing room & an extractor at the top so that you are in a position to dry laundry without increasing the moisture content if the air in there.

Putting a room in the SE corner really does depend on the site, orientation & whether you would be better served with a different room in that corner.

gman2k

How about putting the laundry room downstairs, but serviced by a laundry chute from upstairs.
Personally, I think there are better uses for valuable SE facing glazed FF areas in a house than for clothes drying.
You can still incorporate MHRV systems into the laundry room, but nothing beats drying clothes outside!
I also think it is 'better' for the house and for the general house environment to keep moisture levels and humidity at a minimum.

Blitzkrieger

It does seem like a bit of waste of sunlight to have it on the south east corner, but I was hoping to put the kitchen and a large sun room on the south side on the ground floor so I think I'll be okay. I was also planning on keeping the 'kids bedrooms' away from the south side, in the hopes that if the sun isn't streaming in the windows the little ****ers will sleep longer....

Drying outside is the best way to go, but it's probably one of my biggest pet peeves as well. I hate trying to watch the weather for that one 5-minute shower that's going to ruin hours worth of drying. I just can't relax. I was thinking if I did have to go down that road, I'd probably try to set up a motorised awning with a rain sensor attached. That way I could put the clothes out and forget all about them. Though they would still get a little wet before the awning covers them.

Having the laundry room upstairs was an idea that came from the "Things I wish I had done when building?" thread. A laundry chute would be handy, but you still have to carry the cothes back upstairs. I'm sure there's some lean manufacturing advocates out there that would see the merits of me trying to contain the whole process in one little are?

Having a washing machine upstairs is a flooding risk of course. I reckon it's a fairly minor one - I can't remember the last time I heard of one actually flooding. The damage it could cause would be massive though. Maybe I could just put it on it's own little raised platform and build a slight slope to a drain into it? Raising it up could make it easier on the back when loading and unloading too.

I wonder what the benefits of having a sink in there would be? Surely it'd be easier to just bring the offending items out to the bathroom when needed?

Wolfhound14

Blitzkrieger wrote: »

Hi All.

Which brings me to heating. Obviously if the room is going to have to be well ventilated, it's going to be difficult to heat without doubling my heating bills. Should I man up and just freeze my ass off whenever I go into that room? I was intending to have the house as air tight as possible, and set up a heat exchanger to provide fresh air. Would it be overkill to have two? One between the house and the laundry room and one between the laundry room and outside? :eek:

I don't agree with this statement. Surely the room needs to be warm to dry the clothes?
What heating are you planning? I have heard that UFH is a good job for drying clothes on a clothes horse.

Blitzkrieger

Wolfhound14 wrote: »

What heating are you planning? I have heard that UFH is a good job for drying clothes on a clothes horse.

I'd say it would be. My concern is that if the room is well ventilated so it won't be damp with all the clothes drying in it, that it might also lose me a lot of heat. I'm hoping somebody with experience could give me some advice. How much dampness would we be talking about and would the normal "air tight house & heat exchanger in the attic" set up be enough for ventilation? I just have no idea.

mfceiling

Simple equation for laundry room size...double the room size for every child you have!!