Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Common House Usage Questions

[Kay Argyle (argyle]

Responses for Wasatch Commons, Salt Lake City.

> HANGING OUT  > - Does [hanging out] happen in your CH?
Not much.

> "magnets" that draw people in?
Meals and other scheduled events generate interaction.  Instead of watching
a video at home, my room-mate and I take it to the common house, because the
sitting room has a (gas) fireplace.

The mailroom is an airlock hallway, which I think was a mistake.  People
don't have to come into the c.h.  I would put the mailboxes into an outside
wall, so the mail carrier loads them from outside (and the building being
locked doesn't prevent delivery), and people pick up mail inside, near the
kitchen.

> a visual connection from outdoor high-traffic areas?
The c.h. patio, visible from the central path, gets used for hanging out.

We don't have adequate semi-private space -- an intermediate between the
public path and the private house interior.  Porches ought to fulfill this
function, but ours don't get used much for hanging out.  I think one reason
is that, while big enough to collect clutter, they are not quite big enough
for a table and chairs to be entirely out of traffic. In addition, our
buildings are clustered close enough that most front yards feel very public.
For me at least, this was a major inhibitory factor against sitting on the
porch when we moved in, and by the time a couple of years had passed and I
felt comfortable with a much smaller personal space separating me from
somebody walking past (who by that time was practically extended family),
the habit of not sitting on the porch had been set.   (There is a valuable
discussion on gradations of privacy in Christopher Alexander(?)'s A Pattern
Language.)

The one good spot we have of this nature does get used.  One duplex is set
further back than average, maybe 15 feet, at a curve in the path.  A patio
was built next to the path, with a thin screen of plants.  The four adjacent
households use the patio regularly -- it is supposed to be for all the
households on the north end, but the geography of it makes it feel like it
should "belong" to those four households.  If designing a community, I would
create little clusters like this, sharing common patios.

> Any success with enhancing the laundry experience ...?
Our laundry room isn't well designed for more than one person to work in it
at a time.  I don't find it a pleasant space personally; it has a hulking
big ugly furnace hanging out of a ragged hole in the ceiling.

> - What if any "Rec Room" amenities get used ...?
We have had both air hockey and pingpong tables.  They got used for a while
when new.  I don't know what became of the air hockey table.  The pingpong
table is folded up in the back hall; I haven't seen anyone get it out for a
long time.

> QUIET PLAY & CRAFTS
> - Do children utilize your CH during non-busy (meal/mtg) times?
Rarely.

> - Is there a rule or system for supervision of children during busy times?
Children must have a supervising adult present in the common house.  If a
parent can't attend a meal, sometimes they will request someone to "sponsor"
their child(ren) at it.

> ... what is the key factor in enabling [quieter activities for children]
to work?
Supervising adults.  A few craft parties have been successful.

> - Do quieter play & boisterous play require separate rooms ...?
Boisterous play is sent outside.

The community play areas have been a mixed success in terms of the children
actually using them.  The c.h. kids room has had problems with breakage and
rough horseplay and being left a mess.  The two lawns are well used.  We
could use four or six swings instead of two on the play structure by the
common house, but I've never seen anyone play in the "fort".

The sandbox got used until the parents realized they had used treated* wood
to construct it, and put it off-limits. (*contains arsenic)  The sandbox
cover wasn't well-thought-out either.  It is a wood frame with screen.  The
kids walk on it, so the screen has rips and bulges, and the wood has warped
and doesn't lie flat anymore.  (From childhood experience with sandboxes, I
had advocated a permanent enclosure, but was ignored.  This is what happens
when one gets a reputation for being particular about how things are done.)

The tetherball and (I think) the climbing dome get played with/on.  The kids
do a lot of "free, constructive play" in the wild area -- and leave trash
strewn around, which is a bone of contention.  The toddler play structures
get used -- they are in a separate location from the two school-age play
areas.

The kids room is barricaded right now, waiting for a new project manager to
take over its remodeling, since the person who started it is on crutches for
the next few months.

> INTEGRATING CHILDREN
> ... what works for including children in daily activities ... ?
Some individual households have chosen to involve their children. A few
teenagers have served as head-cook for meals.  Several of the preteens
occasionally attend work parties, sometimes even without their parent(s)
being there (totally cool).

> - We have windows between play room & dining area .... What other space
adjacencies/strategies have worked out
> well in CHs?
We don't have windows between the dining room and kids room, which I regard
as a major mistake.  I think if we did we wouldn't have nearly the problems
in the kids room.

> LIBRARY/MEDIA
> - Have you had success in sharing music CDs, videos, etc?
There are bookcases of donated books and several dozen videos. I
occasionally thumb through a book while I'm waiting for something, and a few
times someone has mentioned reading a book they found there.  Sometimes
somebody gets cds from the public library and leaves them at the c.h. player
for anyone to play.

> - Success with sharing computers, printer, fax, etc?
The office (a glorified closet) has a computer and printer.  The computer
has had an
internet connection off and on -- most recently it got disconnected when
somebody found porn sites in the browser history.  I don't know if it has
been reconnected.

> - Success with TV/VCR?
The cd player gets used during events.  The dvd & video players get used on
scheduled movie nights and by individuals, for instance, people who don't
have one of their own, or late at night when the rest of their household
wants to sleep.

> FLEX SPACE
> - What other uses for flexible space have you found & what makes them
> possible?
For dances, the dining room tables get folded and carried into the back
hall, and the chairs are either arranged around the sides or stacked up. The
downstairs
guestroom has a futon, folded into a couch for meetings, the room's primary
use. Big pillows provide additional seating.  A desk in the small lobby
between the upstairs
guestroom and its bathroom gets used for quiet study when the guestroom is
unoccupied.

A room upstairs in the workshop started as a rented private workspace, and
since has been used for aikido (which gave the room its name, the "dojo"),
belly dance, men's/women's groups, yoga, etc.

> FITNESS EQUIPMENT
> - Good or bad experiences with sharing fitness machines ...
A donated (new, good-quality) treadmill and some free weights get used.  The
original programmed location for the exercise room, a loft area in the
common house, was wildly unsuitable -- treadmills aren't quiet, and the
parents worried about safety, since it wasn't a secured area.  First the
equipment took over the downstairs guestroom, then it got moved to the
workshop.

> DISH ROOM
> My experience is that the noise & moisture associated with dishwashing
> necessitates a separate room adjacent to dining area.
Being in the 2nd driest state in the nation, moisture isn't a problem, but
the dishwasher is too noisy to run during meetings or after-dinner events.

The pass-thru between the kitchen and dining room has an overhang on the
dining room side, like a breakfast bar, and a sink and counter on the
kitchen side.  It is too wide and too much of a stretch to pass dishes
across, especially hot serving dishes.  During potlucks sometimes desserts
get set there, but otherwise it goes mostly unused -- in fact frequently the
buffet table gets pushed up against the wall, totally blocking access to it.
It would be more useful if it were narrower -- three feet wide at most.
There could be kitchen cabinets with doors to both rooms underneath it, for
dish storage.  I would also like shutters to fold closed to reduce noise, or
simply to reduce visual clutter at non-food events.

> COMBINING FUNCTIONS
> - What functions [with permanent fixtures] have you successfully combined
into one space?
N/A.

> OFFICES
> - What positive or negative effects has your community felt from private
> offices in (or external to) the CH?
At move-in, the workshop included a private workspace for a luthier.
Enlarging the workshop to provide space for him cost an extra $30K, if I
remember right, and the carport storage units were postponed.  Then he moved
out.  The extra space gets used for community purposes, but we still don't
have the storage units.

> GREEN FEATURES
> - What ecologically sound features have worked well (e.g. solar cooker,
> herb garden, etc)?

Our units and common house are supposed to have passive cooling from
clerestory windows (chimney effect).  Unfortunately the automatic window
openers got cut during a budget crunch, and it's too much hassle to open and
close them manually every day.  It's done with a very long pole with a crank
inside and requires a lot of wrist strength and dexterity.

The units (although not the c.h.) are constructed with R-Control panel,
which provides great insulation.  If we close our windows in the morning,
our downstairs is typically fifteen or more degrees below the outside
temperature (most households have a swamp cooler, since 15oF below ambient
is still 80 to 85oF).

Some, not all, units have radiant (in-floor) heating, which is supposed to
be more energy efficient.  (I'd recommend it even if it weren't, it's so
nice.)

We have a newly built common clothesline, outside the door closest to the
c.h. laundry.

We returned one dumpster and use the enclosure for a recycling center.  One
of the guys put a shed roof on and built shelves to hold big bins and
garbage cans for glass, newspaper, magazines, different plastics, aluminum,
steel, and cardboard.  A member with an SUV loads everything up and takes it
to a recycler several times a month.

We persuaded our contractor to leave as many trees as possible.  Shade trees
are a dire necessity to survive Utah summers without astronomical cooling
bills.

A small wooded space that eight households back on used to get water from a
now-dry irrigation canal.  We've got a few people who want it left unmanaged
and "wild" -- no trimming, no path, no replanting, no supplemental water.
The trees are badly stressed, with more dead branches, wetwood, and insect
infestation every year, which we're having trouble getting some of the
nongardeners to grasp.  The situation is scheduled for community discussion
soon.

The herb garden by the common house has chives, coconut thyme, tarragon,
oregano, sage, lovage, and onions (the latter to be ripped out. Now I
understand why Utah isn't a big onion-producing state.  The heat affects
their taste: Uck).  Elsewhere there is fennel and basil, and various
nonculinary herbs.

The east side of the property has a garden with private vegetable plots in
raised beds.  Every year there is discussion of a "community" bed, but so
far it hasn't happened.  Most people use soaker hoses and straw mulch.
Excess veggies get given away, donated for common meals, left in the
mailroom, taken to the city food pantry, etc.  Several people in the
community do canning.  Pest-/herbicides are verboten in the garden (but not
elsewhere on the property -- an unsettled issue).  I've tried interplanting
veggies with marigolds, chamomile, and feverfew, but I can't see that I got
fewer bugs; I've got a total of four carrots this year, which came up after
something ate the rest of the seedlings.

Earlier this year we planted a thirty-tree fruit orchard for community use,
with preference to fruits like peaches that don't have many pests.

Most falls we get the city streets department to divert several truckloads
of leafbags our way during the autumn pickup.  We open the bags and spread
the leaves a foot deep on the unused portion of the garden, where they
suppress weeds and enrich the soil.  One year some volunteer pumpkin plants
did without supplemental water for an entire month (+90oF) after the last
rain, living off water stored in the layer of "dry" leaves.  Having seen the
benefits, members who disliked the leaves in the beginning -- the bags were
ugly, opening them was a lot of work, and the leaves blew everywhere -- now
eagerly ask if we are getting some this year.

We have about four composters, different styles & locations, for kitchen
scraps, plus a pile in the garden for grass clippings etc. (weeds and
branches go in the dumpsters).  We also buy a lot of compost, mostly from
the dump, sometimes from the waste treatment plant, and once in a while some
pricey super-premium stuff from a truck farm that makes its own.

We keep talking about getting a branch chipper.  We rented a big one several
weekends the first year to take care of a two-storey pile of bulldozed
trees.

Kay

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