Some of the most important time you will spend when building your healthy home will be the design phase. When planning the layout of your healthy home an important question to ask is “who will ever use it.” The last thing you want to do is to create a public space that is only accessible through your clean 8-hour sleeping space! Most commonly this happens in general building design with 1 room in particular… the bathroom.
Perhaps you’re saying you plan to live alone, so why does it matter: one important reason – trades! Unless you are qualified to fix plumbing issues, reseal your shower when the healthy sealer wears away, get your tap to stop dripping, or the myriad of other problems that arise over the life of a home, if you don’t plan an alternate entrance into your bathroom, someone will be traipsing through your clean bedroom and leaving their scent behind in order to fix what went wrong. Don’t despair, there’s a simple fix. Think about “containment” – with a little pre-planning you can arrange your home’s layout to limit your exposure when a scented person comes to fix something!
Here are 3 layout solutions:
– Have an exterior door in your bathroom. Before the tradesman arrives shut & lock the door from the bathroom into the rest of your house (and put on an air filter). Ask the tradesman to use the “back door” which leads directly into the bathroom and wait outside for him to finish so he knows where to find you (and doesn’t try to go looking for you through the house).
– Place the bathroom (and kitchen & laundry room for that matter) as near the front door as possible to limit how far the trades enter into your healthy sanctum. IF you can plan to put a fire door and separate air handling systems between the “public” areas and “private” areas, that will help contain the scents to the public areas so after they leave you still have a safe place to be while it airs out.
– Do not have an attached bathroom. I know this seems counter-intuitive for modern living. But if the bathroom isn’t accessed through the bedroom, then you can shut your bedroom door and have a modicum of protection from the “invading” scents and chemicals that the tradesman uses.
