My parents had an eccentric friend whose house included, in my semi-mythic memory, a firemen's pole right down the center. Maybe it was actually an old fire station? Anyway I was completely obsessed with the pole, don't remember anything about the visit, and still find it kind of fun to shimmy up a pole on playgrounds and so forth. (You have to wrap your prehensile tail around it use your feet to give you extra lift from below.) I think this would be so much worse than the ladder that your kids would use the ladder, especially if you (duh) put a chute next to the ladder. Chute, ladder, pole, Panama.
We used to slide down the laundry chute, but it didn't go down a floor.
Our 200-year-old vacation home has stair risers that are like a foot high (or feel that way), and have carpeting on the tops only. I remember finding it somehow enjoyable to climb growing up; not sure why, but not because I thrilled to danger. That might just be me.
We had a laundry chute as well, which was mostly locked up to prevent us from sliding down it. It wasn't unlocked until I was in high school. I think I went down it once, but the thrill was diminished. Then my parents converted it to cabinets.
Our friends lived in a loft unit for a time with a fairly steep wrought-iron spiral staircase. I didn't live there day in day out but I thought it was awesome. Not at all like a ladder. No qualms about letting our toddler climb the steps. It did attract a lot of dust for some reason.
My school had a stone spiral staircase. It wasn't particularly narrow, but it was slippery.
My school didn't have an elevator that went to the second floor. It did have classrooms on the second floor as well as a student who required a wheelchair.
what kind of elevator stops at the first floor? or did it stop half way between the 2 floors?
what kind of elevator stops at the first floor? or did it stop half way between the 2 floors?
7: I think so. I filed it under "for some reason" because I wish I understood electromagnetism better.
10: It went to the basement and the main floor only. Mainly because the basement was used as social space for church stuff.
13: If you rub cat fur on metal, you get static electricity and a whole bunch of questions about why the fur was from a cat.
The answer is that apparently the reason people ask about ways to skin a cat is that they want to sell the fur to science teachers.
So 7 wasn't a recommendation on how to easily get up to the loft?
Maybe it would be appealing if you put a tiny violin at the top.
get one of those rolling Victorian library staircases. Then you can trap the kids up there when you don't want to deal with them.
My dad added a second floor to his place and put in a spiral staircase. A little steeper than a regular staircase iirc but fine to go up because of the handrail, not like a ladder at all. However, it was open to the sides so no way you'd let a toddler on it.
My cousin has an alternating tread staircase going that doesn't take up a lot of space and which is really cool if you don't mind sometimes falling down the steps.
That would be awkward for me because when I'm tired I always use my right foot to go up or down.
Vaguely on topic, I recently learned that the formulators of the International* Building Code decided scissor stairs should not count toward the two-staircase requirement because of... 9/11.
*American; model code the states usually adopt most of
That code was written by Big Staircase.
Scissor stairs meaning the two staircases are immediately adjacent to each other, but where one goes L to R, the other goes R to L?
I can see why that's a problem when 9/11 happens.
There's all kinds of weird stuff in building codes that often serves the interests of companies that make building materials. It's one of the reasons construction is so expensive in this country.
Speaking of box cutters, a relative dropped one and hit his foot. The bleeding was so bad it took an ambulance and stitches. Don't cosplay 9/11 on a staircase.
28: Interestingly, the instructor in the class I'm taking mentioned that (at least in California) there is a formal process for parties to challenge the commission's finding of a new standard's cost-effectiveness, and pointed to a recent success where a window-related energy standard was successfully overturned because the cost-effectiveness study was only on commercial buildings where most windows don't open. So there is some countervalence from builders at least.
But yes, I'm sure there's plenty of capture regardless. (The concrete-and-metal lobby in Los Angeles has been trying to ban the new state-allowed mass timber standards.)
Are you allowed static electricity?
Depends how thick you start at the base, I think.
31: I think I forgot to tell you at the time, I toured a new development in Portland last year where the developer showed us what appeared to be a cob house - because it wasn't habitable per code, but one of the contractors had enthusiasm for it, they built a sauna with it, of all things.
34: I don't recall you mentioning it. That's great they are building them.
Portland seems like a weird place for cob building, climate-wise.
I was going to mention alternating tread stairs as a possibility. Spiral stairs are a lot more compact than regular, but are still pretty big: 60" diameter.
I'm genuinely surprised that none of the kids like the ladder. I would've been all over that as a kid. Doubly so if there were a cool, semi-private loft space at the top. So I'm just kind of surprised by that.
My first post-college apt had a permanent ladder to a loft above the bedroom. Might have been a bit less steep than the ladder you have, certainly would have seemed more sturdy. But again, I'm not sure why the kids are rejecting the ladder, so maybe it wouldn't help at all.
You know what would be cool? A staircase with flip-down treads side-mounted onto the wall. Steeper than standard, but nowhere near a ladder. Whole thing hinged together with the railing on the outside, so it works in unison.
Might be really hard to engineer, I don't know. And I'm not sure you have a suitable spot for it. But it's a cool thought, so I'm putting it down here.
Googling "folding wall staircase" seems to show something like that.
We did something similar into the OP when we renovated to split three bedrooms into five. We opened up the space under the peak of the house and two of the bedrooms have access via ladders I built so they have semiprivate lofts. The bigger section has a mattress and a TV and some toys (a mini bubble hockey game and an electric car racetrack), the other side just toys. The ladders are not completely vertical but about 70 degree angle. I think I found something called a captain's stair when I was researching designs. The main benefit was I got to be smug with the kids about how important it was to learn trigonometry.
Yes, captain's stair is precisely what that apartment had.
34: Cob sauna sounds like realtor-speak for a
clay oven.
Or a small, poorly ventilated bathroom.
I'm genuinely surprised that none of the kids like the ladder. I would've been all over that as a kid. Doubly so if there were a cool, semi-private loft space at the top. So I'm just kind of surprised by that.
Our kids are needy little weirdos. They also won't really play outside in the backyard, or in the woods between us and the river. They are happy to play outside at grandparents' houses when no other kids are around, or outside at friends' houses. They say it's because our porch has hornets, which is often true, but they go through the porch every time they enter or leave they house anyway, and it's not like the entire outdoors is full of hornets. I think it's because they feel too far away outside (specifically because they are a story below the house and can't see in windows, the way they can at grandparents' houses.) And also because there's a lot they like to do indoors. Not even technology-heavy things - just pokemon cards and whatever arts and crafts.
If I were a kid, I would have spent a ton of time in the wooded area. It's confounding.
Oh wait, cob doesn't have anything to with corncobs, does it. I think the sauna was something else crunchy, but not cob. Some plant's husk?
So my hypothesis is that they feel too far away upstairs in the loft? I truly don't know. Maybe a spiral staircase is not the answer, either. But at least we could have guests sleep up there more easily.
Oh wait, cob doesn't have anything to with corncobs, does it.
Oh, huh.
Also, corn cobs look nothing like a husk.
Because I'm a farmer now, I know stuff.
Cob is essentially adobe, but in a solid mass rather than formed into bricks.
It's not really used in the Southwest since the Spanish arrived, but it was common prehistorically. Archaeologists call it "puddled adobe."
I don't know if the use of bricks matters for this, but "cob" seems to be the term used in places with enough rain that the cob material needs to be sheltered from the rain. I don't think a southwest-style building would last in a year in England, where you need a roof with big eaves and a foundation of stone reaching above ground.
I think where the word is "adobe", there's so little rain that you just need to re-apply mud every so many years. But I haven't been that way in decades.
I have fond memories of Roswell, but Roswell really didn't have much adobe that I saw.
56, 57: Yeah, the two are essentially the same material but they come out of very different building traditions and environments. I had wondered how cob building works in humid climates, so the eaves and foundation part is interesting. Adobe construction in the Southwest is definitely the way it is because of the arid climate. Replastering regularly with mud is indeed the way it's maintained. It's very labor-intensive so actual adobe construction is rare these days. Much more common is cinderblock (or even stud-frame) construction with stucco to mimic the adobe look in more durable materials.
According to the cob literature, the occasional windblown rain won't matter, but you need to keep ordinary rain off the walls.
And also, keeping a fire going in the house continuously for like a year was how they got things to dry out.
It looks like cob is now an option in the California Residential Code, but your local jurisdiction has to choose to adopt the appendix.
The appendix is where you learn that Gimli and Legalos left Middle Earth together.
Legalos are the ill-fated product experiment to provide an age-category transition between Lego and Duplo brand bricks.
Have you tried keeping hornets downstairs?
I thought Legalos were the people who wear clown makeup to Supreme Court oral arguments.
On the topic of the world is shit and everything in it is also shit, it turns out you simply cannot use google images at all any more. I've used google images for years, and now it is completely garbage. It disregards multiple key terms and gives horrible stock photos based on the most generic term related to what you've typed. I tried to find something on google image and horrible unhelpful garbage. I typed the same terms on duck duck go image search and found the images I was looking for instantly, first hit. I just switched my default browser, it turns out google is now the twitter of search engines.
On the topic of the world is going to shit, I just learned that in Florida if a child is accidentally shot, the police can't arrest anyone for seven days. I can't decide if that's humane or not.
68: No one is clear on any of that.
(I've probably linked to that like six different times, and I'm sure this will not be the last.)
71: seems like they'd have to be pretty damn sure it was really an accident, right?
I think they take your word for it if you're white and middle class.
Regular Google search results aren't so great anymore either.
Google search went to shit once they started injecting their judgment of what you really wanted to search for, whether to boost ad revenue or because they assume users are dumb. If I type a word in the box it means I want results with that word, not results that don't include that word unless I click on "must include word".
Bing, n. Scots, derived from the Old Norse bingr "heap" or Gaelic binnean "small hill". Modern meaning "large pile of unwanted waste material" as in for example "coal bing" the heap of spoil beside the pithead of a coal mine, "shale bing" the waste pile beside a shale oil extraction plant, "slag bing" for the slag beside an iron foundry, etc.
Elsewhere "spoil heap", "spoil tip", "waste tip", "slag heap" etc are used.
They built an entire subdivision on top of the slag bing near me.