Thoughts on the ideal household, to be grown when I am older and wealthier.

A household should protect, nurture and encourage the people it includes. That means that it should be no great crisis if the TV breaks, if a potted plant's pot breaks in the kitchen, or if a baseball flies through the window. People have more important things to worry about. That's why I start this collection of ideas with Philosophy -- everything else is subordinate and negotiable.

Households are leaky systems. The individual parts may each individually fail: lightbulbs burn out, walls crumble, roofs leak, fires break out ... it's taken me a long time to accept the idea that the great advantage of a leaky system is that it can survive as a system even if its components fail.

Philosophy: A household should ...

• establish the possibility of a (temporary) sensory break from all of the world outside.
• be a place of comfort, relaxation, fellowship, rest
• shelter guests, whether expected or not, 24 hours a day
• allow both privacy and communion as each occupant desires within the household, and more thorough privacy (even secrecy) from those outside.
• encourage learning, growth, interest, skills, happiness ...
• be able to respond to emergencies with grace
• be capable of short-term independence from outside inputs of energy, water, gas, food, etc.
• shrug off storms -- no fancy porticos, or wind-catching canopies that can't be rolled up. Should have emergency provisions even for semi-ludicrous natural disasters -- like a rowboat for floods, cistern for droughts, inner stronghold for earthquakes or tornados.
• bend with the seasons; most of the year, I would like doors, windows and ceiling flaps to be open to let in outside air and temperature and breezes
• be self-repairing -- that is, parts should be accessible, removable, fixable with ordinary tools, replaceable, conservative in their tolerances, clear in their purpose from their own design, well-documented
• intelligently equipped with automata but not crippled by their absence or breakage

Materials and Appearance:

• should be replaceable and interchangeable, should not rely on proprietary materials or elaborate custom installation, even if those are used in places
• should be durable ... basic structure should last for hundreds or thousands of years barring true catastrophe
• appearances should be harmonious with surroundings, but not contrivedly so.
• angles and measures should be reproduceable -- easy, round angles (30 / 60 / 90 / 120), integer lengths for measures.

• Every entrance should be welcoming to residents and visitors, but as uninviting and unattractive (or at least bland) as possible to intruders. Window glass can be tinted or even one-way; the outside of the gate need not be supremely friendly.
• Speaking of that -- at least one (closeable) main gate, perhaps more, around the yard, at least one of which should be non-obvious even if not actually secret. Or, it could be operable while appearing not to be (overgrown with weeds, etc.)
• Shaded areas -- honeysuckle, raspberry, grape arbors ... a gradual break from the outside world.
• entrances for light -- portholes, fiber-optic daylight ports, side-to-side windows
• certain doors should serve as airlocks for temperature and draft control
• ramps should lead to at least one major entrance, for wheelchairs, strollers, sledges, crutches, wheeled carts, crawling babies, pets, gravity experiments, bathmophobics ...
• large doors to make furniture moving easy
• small doors for convenience, deliveries (think dutch doors, carry-out windows, laundry chutes)
• all doors should be easily removable (by legitimate occupants) for easy access, furniture moving, or just because they like it that way
• there should be different doors / door equivalents available for different seasons / reasons: screen doors, beaded curtains, mosquito netting, super-insulated doors, fortress doors ...
• sliding doors are nice, and don't remove a big swinging segment of living space the way hinged doors do, and would probably never need to be fully removed unless broken.
• removeable floor / ceiling areas likewise for moving furniture between floors
• stairways should be sensible, with reasonable headroom
• steepish stairs are fine (again, as long as headroom is respected) but should have good handholds.

Horizontal transitions

roof should be carefully watertight; this is a particular concern if it is flat (which is otherwise nice)
• ceilings can be decorative but should be simpl
• should be built with cantilevering in mind, for shade, additional space, whyever.

Rooms

• bedrooms -- none need be large. At least one officially free (guest) bedroom, in addition to other rooms that could handle guests gracefully if necessary.
• eating / living room -- these could be two basically identical rooms that could be mixed and matched as the occasion requires.
• kitchen -- modeled after industrial kitchens, with cleanable surfaces, hard floor, safe appliances, orderly food storage
• toy room / playroom - music room, too; should be sound muffled but observable.
• study / planning / map room
• household office - bills, records, taxes, photos ...
• toilet room -- wooden or otherwise not chilly seat, heated floors, good airflow and sound insulation for aesthetic purposes. Foot flushing toilet. Variable flush volume, not low-flush idiocy. Toilet should be utterly immune from running-tank problems.
• Workshop -- this could be a garage, or a basement area, or (climate allowing) an outside area with sufficient shade. Should be as dry as reasonable.

Non-Rooms

• herb garden
• courtyard, so the outside is inside is outside etc.
• vegetable garden (important: raised beds, not backbreaking)
• grape arbor for shade and fruit.
• multi-layer garden .. rising terraces, so you can go for a small hike upward

Divisions by function and use

• toilet in toilet room, not bathroom. Bath in bathroom.
• Places that are private, loud, dirty, or likely to house strong smells (bedrooms, bathrooms, workshop, kitchen) on edge, not center, and separated from each other.
• communal living sections (dining, meeting areas, kid-watching places) in center
• cleaning-off areas near entrances, for shaking off mud, snow, sand, goop, grass ... no antique rugs here. Interior should be intentionally cleaner but need not be fastidious. Keeping out the major dirt should help a lot. If there is a clean room, it should be surrounded by tightening rings of cleanliness.

• outside - nature, exercise, fruit, sun, picnic
• roof - plants, stars, sunlight, fun, good weather sleeping, perhaps a fire enclosure
• above-surface floors (2?) sunlight, kitchen, dining, music, fireplace, work, bedrooms
• basement - games, kids, storage, visual entertainment, guest overflow, infrastructure like communication equipment, data storage, gun cabinet.
• cellar - storm protection, food storage, meditation, ultra guest overflow

• Framework should be strong and accessible. Steel I-beams, triangle trusses, thick wood beams, slotted angle ...
• All cabling, piping, major systems non-destructively accessible -- who knows what connections we'll want in 20 or 100 years? Having this stuff outside like the new Louvre appeals to me, except that it would be more susceptible to damage from storms or malice.
• low-energy use lights, but as bright as practical, whether that means low-wattage incandescents, flourescents, or some yet-unkown system ...
• fixtures on walls and ceiling to accomodate lighting systems, whatever they end up to be
• all controls (switches, buttons, etc) should be moveable and reconfigurable ... they might be put high up in a toddler's bedroom, and lower down in an older child's room
• As of 2002., optical cabling looks like the best way (but currently expensive) to network a house / yard / garden for high-density, hard-to-eavesdrop information flow, but some sort of wireless would be useful, too.
• solar and wind power for those things which lend themselves to it.
• few built-ins, though bookshelves I can handle
• good insulation for heat and cool -- probably meaning at least outside walls should be very thick; water tank should be large and well insulated as well.
• hard floors (wood, ceramic, stone) with rugs, not wall to wall anything.
• Surfaces within 8' of floor should be easy to clean - in fact, all surfaces should be easy to clean. Dirt-collecting surfaces should be smooth.
• speaking tubes throughout, naturally.
• Major systems should have backups; sewer lines have clogs, electricity goes out, gas lines get cut. The backups should be workable even if they aren't the first choice. Inconvenience beats impossibility.
• Elecrical outlets (I assume we'll still have those when I build this haven) should be at waist height as a default. Actually, they should probably be in triplet-pairs of baseboard, waist-height, eyeball height.
• Recycling / composting / reuse to be encouraged along with general good practices ... waste vegetable matter straight to aerating composter, grey water to do the things greywater can do. Microdrip gardening.
• ceiling-mounted pulleys for easily suspending and moving furniture, mounting vacuum canisters, swinging babies in safety harnesses, etc..

Kitchen

• The kitchen should be able to: broil, bake, grill, fry, steam, freeze, chill, dehydrate, microwave, boil, braise, and other things not yet thought of.
• dumbwater if necessary to long-term storage areas; short-term storage areas right in kitchen itself.
• Cooking space for at least two people

Workshop

• Safety is the first priority here; eye / hand / face protection goes without saying, but also with saying.
• Tools should be neatly stored, logically arranged
• Creativity encouraged
• Planning surface, drafting table, art supplies
• Should be large enough to build things to hold people (hot tub, boat, easy chair ...)

Operation of each household function should take into account how it is that businesses in the analogous field of endeavor do things.

• Security -- cameras, visible (some fake) and hidden. Residents and guests should know where cameras are and where they're not; intruders should always feel watched. Bright lights should be available in the event of a human problem.
• Food -- supplies should be planned, bought and stored in bulk, meals should be planned with participation of the diners.
• Signalling and Communications -- there should be central message locations and methods. If not on refrigerator, a big magneto-board somewhere sounds like a good start :) bells, speaking tubes, raisable flags, email, puffs of smoke, etc. Without being Pavlov's dog, there's nothing wrong with a known sound for mealtime, or to alert others to an emergency. There should be some semi-secret codes, too -- "two longs and a short" = come quick, etc.
• Household pest elimination should be thorough and safe -- vacuum better than poison, poison where necessary
• Books, Movies, Documents -- employ library and archivist methods. Right now (2002) that means barcodes would be a good organizing tool, and an established system of categorization (Dewey?) ... checkout system for lending and borrowing.
• Bills and records -- careful accounting, off-site backups.
• Training -- Every household has things that not everyone knows how to use -- dishwashers, computers, powertools ... These should be examined and learned by all who can access them.
• Safety -- Things like emergency fire exits and storm safety should be discussed and practiced (which must be made fun, not frightening); fire-sighting and other emergency stuff on hand.