Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: kitchen and dining facilities

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

Sharingwood is in the middle of designing our commonhouse. We have 
remodelled a basement of one of the existing 11 houses to use as an 
interim commonhouse. We have done dinners, four nights a week for two 
years now and had the dinner population grow from 12 to 20. Our 
commonhouse is being designed in phases with the first phase as a great 
hall which will be the kitchen and eating meeting area for the final 
community size of 29 households. We project a daily usage of 60 with 
capicity of 80. OUr goal is to be cheaply functional, meaning this will 
not be a shiney, expensive building but rather a homey, low rent sort 
of place that is usable and comfortable. We are planning to use lots of 
recycled materials in building and do much of the work ourselves. We 
project a budget of $120,000  for the first phase, which if all goes as 
planned, will begin construction this summer.  We have two contractors, 
a designer, two experienced carpenters ready to volunteer labor on this 
project.

In  answer to these questions I reference our current set-up and also 
what is in our plans, which are under development.

1.  What percentage of your total community eats meals regularly?
20 out of 33 residents. We often have guests also. Plan for guests.

2.  Is your dining area large enough to seat every member of the community
for dining?  No. Our plan covers regular seating for 60 with set up 
possible for 80. We expect our final community population will be 
between 75 and 95.

3.  What is the square footage of your kitchen and what is the size of your
community?  Rough estimates will do.

Final size is not determined for either. Our current plan, which is 
likely to undergo significant change is 240 square foot kitchen 
(20X12). We envision teams of four cooking dinner.

4.  How large is the dining area compared to the size of the kitchen and in
relation to the size of the community?  Again, a rough estimate will do.
The planned dining area is 30X40 which will seat 80 people.  The 
kitchen plan has not been worked out yet, early estimates were 20X12.

5.  Do you have a special dining area reserved for families with small
children?  Small children don't do so well in a noisy dining
environment.  Would a separate area, available to those that wish to use
it, help the problem?

In our plans we break up the great hall by using portable room dividers 
(bookcases on wheels and fabric panels). Some of these smaller spaces 
will be for the tots.

6.  How do you keep the noise down when a large number of people gathers
for dinner?  Any noise reduction built into the dining room?  Any other
means you use?

Acoustically engineered ceiling design is being studied as well as 
special sound absorbing wall coverings. We are currently searching for 
an architect with acoustic experience to collaborate with.

7.  What size is your pantry?  Is yours too large or not large enough?Any
experience with food storage?

We currently get much of the staples for community dinner as a bulk 
food order.  We keep things in five gallon, sealed lid buckets.  We 
have one large shelving unit for bulk food storage and two cupboards 
for the remainder. The planned pantry area is a 8 foot wide, floor to 
ceiling shelving system.

8.  Do you use a commercial dish washing machine?

Currently we use a regular house sized dishwasher.  We are thinking of 
using two such dishwashers in our final commonhouse in that we can get 
servicable used ones pretty cheaply, whereas used commercial 
dishwashers are 4 times the expense.

9.  We think that we need a stove with 6 burners.  We are less agreed on
the size and number of the oven(s).

We will be using a large sized, residential stove top of 4 burners.

10.  What size refrigerator do you recommend?

Many thanks,
Monika Stumpf, Monterey CoHousing Community, Minneapolis MN area